On Barricades

In her 2002 book, Barricades: The War of the Streets in Revolutionary Paris, 1830-1848, Jill Harsin tells the story of revolutionary republicanism from the birth of the July Monarchy in July 1830 to its crashing demise in February 1848. In doing so, she argues that revolutionary republicans shared an ideology called montagnardism that is characterized by violence against the state, a sense of honor wrapped up in working-class definitions of masculinity, and a pervasive romantic consciousness rooted in the cultural and intellectual currents of the 1830s and 1840s.

While not mentioned explicitly, she also makes it clear that failures of insurrections and assassination attempts forced working-class ideology further to the left, leading workers and other leftists to embrace new ideologies like socialism, communism, and mutualism. Eventually, in 1848, a republic informed by socialism was created by radical republicans. Unfortunately for these activists, the socialism of the Second Republic was short-lived, lasting only until June 1848, when the Republic took on a far more conservative (even reactionary) character.

The structure of this text is conducive to her argument. Indeed, it is broken down into five parts of two to five chapters each. These chapters are Honor, where Harsin puts forth the idea of montagnardism and tells the story of the final assassination attempt against Louis-Philippe I; Insurrection, where Harsin argues that moderate republicanism failed, forcing republicans to lead insurrections in 1832, 1834, and 1839; Assassination, with the argument that insurrections failed, leading individuals and small groups of people to lead solitary assassination attempts against the king; Recrimination, which explains revolutionary republicanism’s relationship with socialism and communism, as well as tells about the prisons where radicals were imprisoned; and finally Defeat, about the rise and fall of socialist republicanism in 1848.

Harsin’s book is heavily sourced, allowing eleven contemporary newspapers to guide the narrative throughout much of the text. By paying special attention to the radical newspaper, Le Moniteur républicain, the author gives a window straight into the most radical of mid-nineteenth century French politics. In addition, she utilized approximately fifty contemporary memoirs and numerous boxes of documents from three different French archives. Of course, she does not fail to root Barricades in the historiography of the July Monarchy and Second Republic. While this book can read as an intellectual history, it is far more about action than simply revolutionary ideas that circulated. As such, the book is best described as a social history of revolutionary action in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century.

While Harsin creates a vivid, exciting narrative, she fails to explain to us the deeper meaning of revolutionary republicanism. What does it mean that people were forced into assassination attempts out of desperation? What did the rise of other leftist ideologies mean, in a more profound sense? Harsin could have avoided these issues by adding a conclusion to each of her parts and/or a conclusion to the book. As it is, the reader must draw his or her own conclusions. While this is a reasonable expectation for those who are well-initiated into nineteenth-century French history, the general public will have difficulty tying Harsin’s narrative into larger history. Nevertheless, it is very much accessible to the general public. I would recommend Barricades for anyone interested in revolutionary history, nineteenth-century intellectual/cultural history, French social history, and other similar subjects.