_I. Historical Writing on the Four Revolutions_
The first part of this bibliography aims to introduce the reader to some of the best-known historical writing about the four revolutions with which we are here concerned. Some of the later and not yet tested writing on these periods will also be included. But here least of all could anything like completeness be attempted. A full bibliography of French history alone from 1750 to 1815 would list books enough to fill a library; at a guess, including pamphlets and articles in periodicals, there would be well over three hundred thousand titles. Writings on the Russian revolution are already almost as numerous, and even more varied. The reader will simply find in these books an opportunity to check the supply of facts from which we have attempted to discover uniformities in the course of our revolutions.
A. ENGLAND
Eduard Bernstein, _Cromwell and Communism_. London, 1930. A belated but useful translation of the famous revisionist’s _Sozialismus und Demokratie in der grossen englischen Revolution_ which appeared in German before the war. This is a necessary correction to the purely political and conventional interests of Gardiner, and even of Firth.
L. F. Brown, _The Political Activities of the Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men in England during the Interregnum_. Washington, 1912.
C. H. Firth, _Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England_. 3rd edition. London, 1924. The great work of our generation on Cromwell.
S. R. Gardiner, _A History of England, 1603-1642_; _A History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649_; _A History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1656_. Various editions and volumes. The whole work is usually in some 17 volumes. This is the “classic” history of the period, written in the last half of the nineteenth century. It is a sound but rather dull political history, but it does not touch at all on much that would interest us in the fields of economic, social, and intellectual history.
G. P. Gooch, _English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century_. 2nd edition with notes and appendices by H. J. Laski. Cambridge, England, 1927. Indispensable.
H. J. C. Grierson, _Cross Currents in English Literature of the Seventeenth Century_. London, 1929. Excellent intellectual history.
T. C. Pease, _The Leveller Movement_. Washington, 1916. A very useful monograph, especially as a corrective to Bernstein’s socialistic view of Lilburne and the Levelers.
L. von Ranke, _A History of England principally in the Seventeenth Century_. English translation, London, 1875. Another classic of narrative history.
G. M. Trevelyan, _England under the Stuarts_. New York, 1930. Perhaps the best of our modern manuals, though distinctly in the traditions of pleasant British liberalism, which are always a bit shocked by the facts of revolution. This book has a convenient bibliography.
B. AMERICA
C. W. Alvord, _The Mississippi Valley in British Politics_. 2 vols. Cleveland, 1917. An important monograph opening up an important field neglected in earlier studies of the American revolution.
C. M. Andrews, _Colonial Background of the American Revolution_. New Haven, 1924.
C. L. Becker, _The Eve of the Revolution_ (Vol. 11 of the _Chronicles of America_). New Haven, 1921. _The Declaration of Independence._ New York, 1922. Both these books bring to the study of political change a rare and thorough knowledge of how men think and feel.
G. L. Beer, _British Colonial Policy, 1754-1756_. New York, 1907. The last volume of a thorough monographic treatment of the old British Empire, especially with respect to matters of trade and taxation.
B. Faÿ, _The Revolutionary Spirit in France and in the United States_. English translation, New York, 1927. Extremely valuable for the study of ideas.
J. F. Jameson, _The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement_. Princeton, 1926. Suggestive, and in many ways a pioneer essay. But a long and thorough monograph with the same title would be useful. Recent Marxist attempts to do something of the sort have not amounted to much.
J. C. Miller, _Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda_. Boston, 1936. One of the best studies of revolutionary propaganda and technique available for any revolution.
A. M. Schlesinger, _Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution_. New York, 1918. This monograph brought the realistic study of the American revolution a tremendous leap forward.
G. O. Trevelyan, _The American Revolution. George III and Charles James Fox_, the concluding part of _The American Revolution_. Bound with the above in a uniform edition of 6 vols., New York, 1920-1922. This is a “classic” with the overtones of being dated which the word often carries. Written by a distinguished Whig historian, it is more favorable to American “rights” in the War of Independence than most of the foregoing American books. It seems to our generation to omit very important economic and social considerations.
M. C. Tyler, _The Literary History of the American Revolution_. 2 vols. New York, 1897. Also a “classic” but not by any means dated.
C. H. Van Tyne, _A History of the Founding of the American Republic_. 2 vols. Boston, 1922, 1929. A standard work of professional historical scholarship.
C. FRANCE
A. Aulard, _The French Revolution: A Political History_. English translation. 4 vols., New York, 1910. The best example of official Republican history of the great revolution, by one who was in some ways a spiritual descendant of the Girondins. Leftist and anti-clerical bias.
C. Brinton, _A Decade of Revolution, 1789-1799_. New York, 1934.
G. Bruun, _Europe and the French Imperium, 1799-1814_. New York, 1938. This book and the preceding one, volumes 12 and 13 of _The Rise of Modern Europe_, edited by W. L. Langer, provide a critical bibliographical guide to the period of the French revolution, and incorporate the important modern research in the field.
A. Cochin, _Les sociétés de pensée et la démocratie_. Paris, 1921. Essential to the study of the work of pressure groups in the preparation of the revolution. Conservative bias.
P. Gaxotte, _The French Revolution_. English translation, New York, 1932. Perhaps the most sensible of modern works written avowedly from a point of view far to the Right--Royalist, in fact. But since almost all Americans get their knowledge of the French revolution from conventional anti-clerical Republican professors of the Third Republic, Gaxotte’s work is recommended as an antidote.
A. Lichtenberger, _Le socialisme et la révolution française_. Paris, 1899.
A. Mathiez, _The French Revolution_. English translation, New York, 1928. _La vie chère et le mouvement social sous la Terreur._ Paris, 1927. Mathiez was the heir of the Mountain as Aulard was of the Gironde. Mathiez is a reliable investigator of facts, and he was interested in the kind of facts we are now interested in. His generalizations are ruled by an extremely innocent version of the doctrine of economic interpretation of history. Although he indignantly denied he was partisan, he clearly belongs rather far to the Left.
D. Mornet, _Les origines intellectuelles de la révolution française_. Paris, 1933. Most of the necessary material implied in the title, conveniently assembled. Mornet has conventional French Republican notions about the role of the _philosophes_ in the preparation of the revolution. Excellent bibliography.
F. Rocquain, _The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution_. English translation, abridged, London, 1894. An attempt to lessen attention on the writings of the _philosophes_ and turn it to concrete quarrels and grievances in the last years of the old regime.
H. A. Taine, _The Origins of Contemporary France_. English translation, 6 vols., New York, 1876-1894. The classic attack on the revolution and all its works, written by a disappointed liberal and French patriot after the War of 1870. Still a mine of information, though its particular bias is no longer shared by many in the modern world.
D. RUSSIA
The total output of books on Russia since 1917 is enormous, and little of it measures up to the more rigorous standards academic historians like to impose. It is suggested that an intelligent reader of the following would not, however, be hopelessly misinformed about the movement, and could attempt to integrate his knowledge of what has been going on in Russia with what has gone on in other modern revolutions.
W. R. Batsell, _Soviet Rule in Russia_. New York, 1929. A clear, factual analysis of the machinery of government. The recent constitutional changes do not seriously alter Batsell’s picture.
W. H. Chamberlin, _The Russian Revolution_. 2 vols., New York, 1935. A careful piece of work, written by an American with a command of Russian sources. Chamberlin is not a Communist, but save to more rigid Marxists, his work will appear reasonably detached. Good bibliography.
Eugene Lyons, _Assignment in Utopia_. New York, 1937. Lyons is an American radical whose long residence as a newspaper correspondent in Russia turned him against Stalin’s rule. When allowance is made for this bias, the book remains the best account in English of “Thermidor in Russia”--though see under Trotsky below.