Histoire de la Révolution Française

Louis Blanc (1811-82) was a French historian and politician whose writings had a considerable influence on the development of French socialism. In his famous Organisation du travail (1839) he called for social reform by action of the State, an unusual position at the time. As a member of the provisional government established after the 1848 Revolution, he campaigned for workers' rights, advocating the creation of cooperative workshops. His twelve-volume Histoire de la Révolution Française (1847-62), most of which he wrote while in exile in England, combines years of thorough research with Blanc's characteristic socialist and republican enthusiasm. Volume 11, first published in 1861, focuses on the Thermidorian Reaction, a movement against the excesses of the Reign of Terror, which took place in 1794 and led to the execution of Robespierre. It charts the beginnings of the counter-revolution and its consequences for the French political sphere.