Sans-Culottes
"Power within the Paris sections of 1792-94 - its social composition, dynamics, and ideology -."(1) That is what was explored in the book The Sans-Culotte. Albert Soboul describes and outlines the composition and activities of the different sections in Paris during Revolutionary France. Soboul describes the activities of these sections as a "popular movement" by the people of Paris. He explains how the people of Paris united to form different sectional assemblies with their main goal being to improve the lives of the middle and lower class individuals in not only Paris, but France in its entirety. In The Sans-Culottes, Soboul explains in great detail the different ways these sections influenced law making and tried to gain equal rights for all. In addition to describing the political activity of the sans-culottes and the other sections, Soboul also explains some of the military activities and movements of these sections during the revolution. Soboul's book has always been thought as the main authority on the sections in Paris, but in the early 1980's, a critique was written on The Sans-Culottes and many things were found to be wrong with the book. In the critical evaluation of Albert Soboul's The Sans-Culottes a full crit
The lack of description of the sections in Paris is a major blemish with the book. The critique points out that Soboul lumps all of the sections of Paris together when describing them. He fails to separate them into exactly what they are: sections. It is true that there were movements made to try and unite all the sections, but this never becomes a reality so distinction between sections should be shown. Soboul makes no distinctions "between 'quartiers' and sections," and "between socio-economic geographies and local politics."(2) "Soboul's history of the sections from June, 1793 to sid-July, 1794 described them horizontally, en masse...."(3) This lumping together of the sections leads one to the false conclusion that sections were all one entity, but they were not; they were very much seperate. The reason that one should more readily take what the critique says as truth has to do with the sources used in the writing of each essay. This point is explored quite in depth in the critique. Soboul wanted to look at the sections and the sans-culottes from a political and socio-economic view, "but his sources for this enterprise were political, and in a large part rhetorical. He attempted to overcome this problem of possibly grave disjunctions between political sources and socio-economic realities simply by grafting onto these sources putative class interpretations of personnel, their motives, and the content of their politics."(7) It is due to this factor that Soboul generalizes the trades and economic well-being of the members of each section. This quote shows that the lower class, or plebeians, were merely ponds for the sans-culottes. They were permitted to vote when the leaders felt the votes cast by the plebeians were necessary to achieve victory. The view one gets from the critique is totally contradictory to that of Soboul's book. ique of the book takes place and many problems with the book are pointed out. The problems or shortcomings discussed in the critical evaluation range from a lack of description of the sans-culottes and other section
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Approximate Word count = 1399
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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