Ending the French Revolution. Violence, Justice and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon

 
From the publishers:
For two centuries, the early years of the French Revolution have inspired countless democratic movements around the world. Yet little attention has been paid to the problems of violence, justice, and repression between the Reign of Terror and the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte. In Ending the French Revolution, Howard Brown analyzes these years to reveal the true difficulty of founding a liberal democracy in the midst of continual warfare, repeated coups d'état, and endemic civil strife.

Brown argues that despite the ringing slogans of 1789, liberal democracy was not the most significant outcome of the French Revolution. Rather, after years of politicized violence and perverted justice, attempts to impose the republic helped to forge a modern “security state” in its place. The performance of elected magistrates and citizen jurors, especially in the face of widespread banditry and regional revolt, led to emergency measures such as martial law and military justice. Brown explores these developments by combining extensive archival research with a wide array of conceptual strategies ranging from political theory to microhistory. By highlighting the role played by violence and fear in generating illiberal politics, Ending the French Revolution speaks to the struggles facing democracy in our own age. The result is a fundamentally new understanding of the French Revolution's disappointing outcome.
 
The book was the winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies.
 
Praise for the book:
David Bell, Johns Hopkins University
'This is one of the most important pieces of scholarship on the French Revolution since the 1989 bicentennial. Howard Brown's book provides a new, compelling, and thought-provoking interpretation of the events, linking them to broader historical and social scientific problems in a fresh and challenging manner. The book will be of remarkable and unusual interest to scholars in a wide variety of fields'
 
Howard Brown is Professor of History at Binghampton University, State University of New York. He is the author of War, Revolution, and Bureaucratic State: Politics and Army Administration in France, 1791-1799.