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New Penguin History of France #1
The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon
There can be few more mesmerizing historical narratives than the story of how the confident monarchy left by Louis XIV in 1715 became the discredited failure toppled by revolution in 1789. This brilliant new book is the first in forty years to describe the whole period, from the last days of the “Sun King” to the wars of Napoleon. In a groundbreaking work of scholarship, Colin Jones argues that, contrary to popular belief, the house of Bourbon’s downfall was hardly a foregone conclusion. Producing an illuminating account of a society torn apart from within, he recounts the saga of how a dynamic French society—the heart of the Enlightenment—fell prey to the debt and humiliation of its wars against Britain.
688 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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326 people want to read
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Colin Jones
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 22, 2015
The Abbé Siéyès, when asked what exactly he had done during the Terror, famously replied, J'ai vécu (‘I survived’). Part of me wants to say something similar about getting through this book, which, despite being repeatedly interesting, turned into something of an endurance test for me.
The problem is one of density, both of style and of content. Dealing with an action-packed century full of artistic innovation, philosophical endeavours, war and revolution, I admit I was expecting a narrative generously larded with eye-catching historical anecdotes. But instead, Jones's approach is resolutely academic – and surprisingly dry. There are very few actual events in this book, and there is a reliance on economic evidence and statistics that – while undoubtedly historically sound – left me feeling increasingly distant from the real people purportedly being described.
This issue is compounded by a prose style which, at best, is compact and witty, but which far too often simply reads like a PhD thesis. Instead of adventure, we have adventurism, instead of voluntary, we have voluntaristic, instead of lax, laxist, instead of misery miserabilism. A priest is described as an ‘ambulatory and seemingly invulnerable oasis of redemptive sanctity’. At one point, when something is happening, Jones says it's ‘in the process of volitional actualization’.
On the level of the paragraph, this is absolutely representative:
On the one hand, there was a desire for change within the corporative framework, in ways which respected social hierarchy and vertical ties of dependence. [...] On the other hand, alongside this corporative discourse within the armed forces, there also developed a more overtly civic discourse of professionalism, which drew on both the equalizing rhetoric of enlightenment absolutism and the more democratic values of the public sphere and which stressed horizontal and egalitarian bonds of mutual interdependence between citizens.
I flipped to the back of the book, where a blurb from The Economist mentions ‘fast-paced and lucid prose’. Are we reading the same thing? This is efficiency at the cost of legibility – or of reading pleasure, at the very least. (The academic-paper feel is reinforced by Jones's grammatical bugbears – a horror of ending a clause with a participle leads to such ugly formations as, ‘Yet accepting advice on financial matters, even from his parlements, was something to which the king found it hard to warm.’)
This is not nit-picking for the sake of it – my feeling was increasingly that Jones was genuinely losing touch with the reality of what he was describing. I certainly was. It's all very well to go on about ‘evolving discourse’ and the ‘corporatist parameters of the state’, but I want to know what actual people were literally saying and doing. Give me fewer postmodern social theories and more diaries, journals, letters. When, eight chapters in, a page and a half is given over to a minor scandal involving a diamond necklace, I fell upon the action like it was a battle scene from Return of the King. Unfortunately, the approach more often is to make oblique mention of something potentially fascinating (‘the notorious bandit and highway robber Cartouche’), and then give no further details on it whatsoever.
This is connected to a more general feeling that Jones is often writing for those already in the know. Consider a sentence like this: ‘Napoleon Bonaparte's subsequent comment that the French Revolution dated not from the fall of the Bastille but from the first performance of The Marriage of Figaro was wrong.’ Most lay-readers, I maintain, will react much as I did: Napoleon said what?! But Jones angles things so as to argue his own case first, rather than establish some of the juicy facts which he apparently considers old-hat. This situation, writ large, is the problem with the whole book.
Having spent several paragraphs getting this off my chest, though, I have to say that The Great Nation grew on me. Unlike other reviewers, who found the book weakest when it reached the Revolution, I enjoyed that part the most. The assumption of a little knowledge here was something I could cope with, and Jones's usual obsession with agricultural statistics and legislative events this time seemed genuinely different and enlightening. Plus, even he couldn't stop a few beheadings creeping in at this point to enliven the narrative, though he certainly makes a point of not lingering on the details. I did find myself reconsidering my ideas about the Revolution in the light of such surprising statistics as the fact that a mere one percent of nobles were executed, and only a slightly larger number emigrated: the vast majority stayed in France and not just survived but often found ways to prosper. There was also a coherent overview of the 25-year period from 1789, after which, despite the Revolutionaries' hopes, France would not just have lost its lucrative colonial empire, but would have made no new territorial gains at all.
Here again I'm tempted to make a comparison with my week and a half with this book. That would be unfair – but while I did come out with a richer understanding of France's fascinating 18th century, I'd have to say that the fascination occasionally seemed to be gleaned in spite of, rather than because of, the work in question.
(June 2012)
The problem is one of density, both of style and of content. Dealing with an action-packed century full of artistic innovation, philosophical endeavours, war and revolution, I admit I was expecting a narrative generously larded with eye-catching historical anecdotes. But instead, Jones's approach is resolutely academic – and surprisingly dry. There are very few actual events in this book, and there is a reliance on economic evidence and statistics that – while undoubtedly historically sound – left me feeling increasingly distant from the real people purportedly being described.
This issue is compounded by a prose style which, at best, is compact and witty, but which far too often simply reads like a PhD thesis. Instead of adventure, we have adventurism, instead of voluntary, we have voluntaristic, instead of lax, laxist, instead of misery miserabilism. A priest is described as an ‘ambulatory and seemingly invulnerable oasis of redemptive sanctity’. At one point, when something is happening, Jones says it's ‘in the process of volitional actualization’.
On the level of the paragraph, this is absolutely representative:
On the one hand, there was a desire for change within the corporative framework, in ways which respected social hierarchy and vertical ties of dependence. [...] On the other hand, alongside this corporative discourse within the armed forces, there also developed a more overtly civic discourse of professionalism, which drew on both the equalizing rhetoric of enlightenment absolutism and the more democratic values of the public sphere and which stressed horizontal and egalitarian bonds of mutual interdependence between citizens.
I flipped to the back of the book, where a blurb from The Economist mentions ‘fast-paced and lucid prose’. Are we reading the same thing? This is efficiency at the cost of legibility – or of reading pleasure, at the very least. (The academic-paper feel is reinforced by Jones's grammatical bugbears – a horror of ending a clause with a participle leads to such ugly formations as, ‘Yet accepting advice on financial matters, even from his parlements, was something to which the king found it hard to warm.’)
This is not nit-picking for the sake of it – my feeling was increasingly that Jones was genuinely losing touch with the reality of what he was describing. I certainly was. It's all very well to go on about ‘evolving discourse’ and the ‘corporatist parameters of the state’, but I want to know what actual people were literally saying and doing. Give me fewer postmodern social theories and more diaries, journals, letters. When, eight chapters in, a page and a half is given over to a minor scandal involving a diamond necklace, I fell upon the action like it was a battle scene from Return of the King. Unfortunately, the approach more often is to make oblique mention of something potentially fascinating (‘the notorious bandit and highway robber Cartouche’), and then give no further details on it whatsoever.
This is connected to a more general feeling that Jones is often writing for those already in the know. Consider a sentence like this: ‘Napoleon Bonaparte's subsequent comment that the French Revolution dated not from the fall of the Bastille but from the first performance of The Marriage of Figaro was wrong.’ Most lay-readers, I maintain, will react much as I did: Napoleon said what?! But Jones angles things so as to argue his own case first, rather than establish some of the juicy facts which he apparently considers old-hat. This situation, writ large, is the problem with the whole book.
Having spent several paragraphs getting this off my chest, though, I have to say that The Great Nation grew on me. Unlike other reviewers, who found the book weakest when it reached the Revolution, I enjoyed that part the most. The assumption of a little knowledge here was something I could cope with, and Jones's usual obsession with agricultural statistics and legislative events this time seemed genuinely different and enlightening. Plus, even he couldn't stop a few beheadings creeping in at this point to enliven the narrative, though he certainly makes a point of not lingering on the details. I did find myself reconsidering my ideas about the Revolution in the light of such surprising statistics as the fact that a mere one percent of nobles were executed, and only a slightly larger number emigrated: the vast majority stayed in France and not just survived but often found ways to prosper. There was also a coherent overview of the 25-year period from 1789, after which, despite the Revolutionaries' hopes, France would not just have lost its lucrative colonial empire, but would have made no new territorial gains at all.
Here again I'm tempted to make a comparison with my week and a half with this book. That would be unfair – but while I did come out with a richer understanding of France's fascinating 18th century, I'd have to say that the fascination occasionally seemed to be gleaned in spite of, rather than because of, the work in question.
(June 2012)
April 29, 2018
Back in the 1950s, Alfred Cobban wrote the first of what became a three-volume "History of Modern France" for Penguin Press. Together these books provided a primarily political history of France from the death of Louis XIV to the withdrawal from Algeria in 1962 and survived for decades as a standard English-language introduction to modern French history, thanks in no small measure to the readability and insights contained within the trilogy.
As time went along, however, Cobban's books increasingly suffered from the their inability to incorporate the ever-growing body of research into French history and the changes in our understanding which this has brought about. As a result, Penguin Press commissioned a new three-volume series designed to supplant Cobban's volumes. As is increasingly the case the task once entrusted to one historian was now divided amongst three specialists, with Colin Jones writing the volume covering France in the 18th century. While generally emulating Cobban in focusing mainly on political history, Jones gives more attention than his predecessor to social and cultural developments during this period, creating a more well-rounded overview as a result. Because of this, the book is chock full of insights absent from Cobban's book, with Jones's integration of the Enlightenment and his explanation of its influence on political developments a particularly notable improvement over Cobban's work. It's easy to see why it has supplanted Cobban's earlier volume as a standard history of 18th century France, one that will likely maintain that title for as long as its predecessor did.
As time went along, however, Cobban's books increasingly suffered from the their inability to incorporate the ever-growing body of research into French history and the changes in our understanding which this has brought about. As a result, Penguin Press commissioned a new three-volume series designed to supplant Cobban's volumes. As is increasingly the case the task once entrusted to one historian was now divided amongst three specialists, with Colin Jones writing the volume covering France in the 18th century. While generally emulating Cobban in focusing mainly on political history, Jones gives more attention than his predecessor to social and cultural developments during this period, creating a more well-rounded overview as a result. Because of this, the book is chock full of insights absent from Cobban's book, with Jones's integration of the Enlightenment and his explanation of its influence on political developments a particularly notable improvement over Cobban's work. It's easy to see why it has supplanted Cobban's earlier volume as a standard history of 18th century France, one that will likely maintain that title for as long as its predecessor did.
December 23, 2010
Got this in class. Its NOT an easy read; Its not horrible, its just that he throws in all the facts of all the political intrigues, including things that ended in political dead ends.... and you find yourself getting bogged up in details that make it harder to follow the story line. When he's discussing scandals etc, the book gets much much easier to read and enjoyable.
Its pretty dense in other words, but as assigned books go, not bad. I learned a lot about pre-revolutionary France reading this, and I had no interest in the subject when I signed up for the course (I was just fulfilling a requirement).
Its pretty dense in other words, but as assigned books go, not bad. I learned a lot about pre-revolutionary France reading this, and I had no interest in the subject when I signed up for the course (I was just fulfilling a requirement).
July 12, 2023
Whilst high politics predominates in the narrative that deftly navigates intricacies of Ancien Régime and later the revolutionary power struggles, Colin Jones also skilfully incorporates the latest insights from cultural, social, and intellectual historians in this monumental study of the eighteenth century France.
May 17, 2010
This is rather dry, but well-organized and lucid. The first two-thirds are stronger than the last, which deals with the Revolution; here Jones becomes less detailed than I wanted, assuming a level of knowledge on the reader's part with such recaps as this: "The tale of 14 July 1789 has been painted into every storybook history of France, and the raw elements...need little recounting." Okay, yes, I do essentially know the story of the attack on the Bastille, but a recounting of longer than a paragraph would have been appreciated. Still, I found the first two-thirds excellent and the last certainly serviceable.
October 15, 2023
2022 52 Book Challenge - 27) Includes A Map
I love this author, I think he's fantastic, I've sat in his lectures and learnt a lot from him, I've read his other books and they were brilliant.
This book was incredibly difficult to get through. I don't know if it was the length, the density, the prose, or the fact that the book is incredibly academic and expects you to have at least a basic understanding of French history before reading it, and possibly some knowledge of the French economy. It was a very hard read.
But it was also really fascinating. I felt like I had to keep going because the topics were so interesting, despite the academic verbiage and the fact that the author seems to detest full stops. I've read a lot of French history, but this book was on another level.
I love this author, I think he's fantastic, I've sat in his lectures and learnt a lot from him, I've read his other books and they were brilliant.
This book was incredibly difficult to get through. I don't know if it was the length, the density, the prose, or the fact that the book is incredibly academic and expects you to have at least a basic understanding of French history before reading it, and possibly some knowledge of the French economy. It was a very hard read.
But it was also really fascinating. I felt like I had to keep going because the topics were so interesting, despite the academic verbiage and the fact that the author seems to detest full stops. I've read a lot of French history, but this book was on another level.
November 8, 2025
This is the standard work on France in the 18th century, from the death of Louis XIV until the advent of Napoleon.
The author has a very academic style, indulging in obscure terminology and happily going into rabbit holes of his choice. He focuses primarily on political history, along with economic and financial perspectives. There are parts that are more accessible, in particular those dealing with e.g. the Enlightenment and various cultural aspects. Yet, what is foremost missing here is the everyday life of the common people. A more anecdotal approach would have made this book more accessible to non-historians as well.
The author has a very academic style, indulging in obscure terminology and happily going into rabbit holes of his choice. He focuses primarily on political history, along with economic and financial perspectives. There are parts that are more accessible, in particular those dealing with e.g. the Enlightenment and various cultural aspects. Yet, what is foremost missing here is the everyday life of the common people. A more anecdotal approach would have made this book more accessible to non-historians as well.
March 5, 2015
I felt like something was missing from this book. Maybe I have a stubborn list of 5 star books which is most likely the case. All that said, it was an amazing book and is a good representation of the financial and political difficulties of the time period for the French. I'm not sure I will be reading the next volumes, although I could most certainly see why someone would want to.
May 5, 2014
I read this for a class but it was well written and I didn't find it boring.
April 11, 2019
First things first—I am by training a political and social historian, with a couple of generous dashes of cultural and intellectual history sprinkled in there. Therefore, I read this as a refresher to pretty much my first couple of years in my PhD program (in fact, this was actually an assigned text my first semester in...but I only skimmed over it then). So if you are looking for juicy anecdotes about Louis XIV or Marie Antoinette, this is not the book for you. This is a work of political history that tracks the French monarchy from its apex in the 1680s to its complete downfall in 1792 in detail. Lots of names, lots of dates, and lots of concepts will be thrown about.
So. Now that that is out of the way!
Great narrative history of 18th c. France. I was especially interested in the Regency for Louis XV, and, of course, the Revolution and Brumaire coup at the end. I’d like to read more about the Regent; later, of course, after some of these book piles get a lot smaller (there are far, far too many books and not nearly enough time).
Also, last point on reflection—I agree with Jones that it is teleological to say that the Revolution was always going to happen, but honestly though, was there really another way out for France? The social stratification and privilege problem, the humongous debt, the inability of the Bourbons to truly innovate after Louis XIV died, as well as the influences of the Enlightenment plus the religious struggles....something had to give, and by 1789 the monarchy was the weakest link.
Moreover, both XV and XVI were both rather weak rulers (especially the latter, who couldn’t make up his damn mind or see anything more than the trees for the forest)... neither seemed to have a long term vision for France, other than to keep on keeping on. That doesn’t speak to me of dynamism, but points instead to the problem Paine calls out in Common Sense about hereditary monarchies—you might get a good king every once in a while, but mostly you are going to get a dunce (paraphrasing here). Because of the longevity of XIV and XV, the more groomed successors died out, leaving mere children behind instead. In the case of XV, his entire male family died out, making him the dauphin instead of his grandfather, father, or elder brother. He was 5. What kind of king are you going to get like that?
So. Now that that is out of the way!
Great narrative history of 18th c. France. I was especially interested in the Regency for Louis XV, and, of course, the Revolution and Brumaire coup at the end. I’d like to read more about the Regent; later, of course, after some of these book piles get a lot smaller (there are far, far too many books and not nearly enough time).
Also, last point on reflection—I agree with Jones that it is teleological to say that the Revolution was always going to happen, but honestly though, was there really another way out for France? The social stratification and privilege problem, the humongous debt, the inability of the Bourbons to truly innovate after Louis XIV died, as well as the influences of the Enlightenment plus the religious struggles....something had to give, and by 1789 the monarchy was the weakest link.
Moreover, both XV and XVI were both rather weak rulers (especially the latter, who couldn’t make up his damn mind or see anything more than the trees for the forest)... neither seemed to have a long term vision for France, other than to keep on keeping on. That doesn’t speak to me of dynamism, but points instead to the problem Paine calls out in Common Sense about hereditary monarchies—you might get a good king every once in a while, but mostly you are going to get a dunce (paraphrasing here). Because of the longevity of XIV and XV, the more groomed successors died out, leaving mere children behind instead. In the case of XV, his entire male family died out, making him the dauphin instead of his grandfather, father, or elder brother. He was 5. What kind of king are you going to get like that?
June 6, 2018
So I was going to give this 3.5, maybe 4 stars. It's not exactly my kind of history book. I prefer to learn about the people who lived in these times, and less so the politics, economics, philosophical thinking, etc… I wanted to hear more about the lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI. About the people around them. But this book doesn't really get into personal matters. Which is fine, if you prefer a more political retelling of history. But on top of that the sentences were super drawn on. (I think Jones has a love affair with overusing punctuation.) And I noticed near the end that he couldn't even get the name of Louis XVI's daughter right, instead mistaking her for his sister. Which is something that could have honestly been googled. So with all of that, I can't give this any more than three stars. Good. But not an easy read, and I shouldn't be able to correct an author on his facts.
February 26, 2022
I have found myself enthralled by French history as of late - maybe it's the course I'm in or the books I decided to read in my spare time. Having read this for my course, I can honestly say I have learned more about Louis XV than most scholarship accounts for. His reign saw Versailles at its peak, feudalism at its lowest, and set France on the path it followed in 1789. However, Jones' language is dense and almost too literary for historiography. While this book was written for popular consumption, I would not recommend it unless you feel you have a strong degree of knowledge about Quatorzian France. I plan on reading Jones' text on Madame de Pompadour, so I don't have an unfavorable opinion of him. He did grow on me over time, so I look forward to learning as much as I can in the time I have left in my history course.
July 27, 2021
One of the dryest books I've ever read. There's almost negligible information of the foreign policy and too much focus on economy and court gossip, all mixed in a very difficult read.
November 12, 2022
Really nice survey of the period that draws out thematic continuities from Louis XIV to Bonaparte quite well.
September 23, 2023
Read Chapter 5: An Enlightening Age, p171-225
January 16, 2025
The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon
This history of eighteenth-century France takes a slightly different tack from other such analyses insofar as it doesn’t treat the whole period before 1789 as leading teleologically up to the Revolution, which instead grows organically — and unexpectedly — out of the developments that preceded it; and this is certainly refreshing.
Most readers will probably have some difficulty, though, with the academic density of the author’s approach and of his writing, and will find it pretty hard to get through. His erudition is mind-boggling, and his knowledge of the period and the players is vast; though this of course contributes to the density issue. His vocabulary is also impressive, though at the same time he occasionally uses words awkwardly, and even incorrectly.
Impressive as it is, the book can’t really be termed popular history, and would perhaps be more useful as a research volume.
This history of eighteenth-century France takes a slightly different tack from other such analyses insofar as it doesn’t treat the whole period before 1789 as leading teleologically up to the Revolution, which instead grows organically — and unexpectedly — out of the developments that preceded it; and this is certainly refreshing.
Most readers will probably have some difficulty, though, with the academic density of the author’s approach and of his writing, and will find it pretty hard to get through. His erudition is mind-boggling, and his knowledge of the period and the players is vast; though this of course contributes to the density issue. His vocabulary is also impressive, though at the same time he occasionally uses words awkwardly, and even incorrectly.
Impressive as it is, the book can’t really be termed popular history, and would perhaps be more useful as a research volume.
October 16, 2009
Great for people suffering from insomnia.
Want to read
January 14, 2010MIT use this for their French History 1660-1815 readings:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/History/21H...
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/History/21H...
Want to read
February 25, 2012I wanna read this
April 3, 2015
Forced myself to read this book when i was 17 and fell in love with France. Beware, it will be a dry reading.
August 9, 2011
Meticulously researched
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews