The Ideology of the Great Fear - The Soissonnais in 1789 by Ramsay, Clay - 1991

Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1991. A Fine unmarked copy with VG dustjacket which has a very small closed tear to back and some light creasing. xxxi + 311 pages. In the summer of 1789, immediately following the fall of the Bastille, an ominous rumour swept through almost two-thirds of the towns in France. Varying somewhat from locale to locale, the substance of the message was the same: 'Thousands of brigands are advancing on your village. They have come to burn the crops in your fields. They have already destroyed a village near you on their line of march. They are only an hour or two away...'. This dramatic event, its chilling impact, and the mental world that made the fear possible are the topics of investigation in the book, the first study from original sources since George Lefebvre's classic 1932 work. This multi disciplinary account draws on rural economics, law, geography, administrative history, and semantic theory to produce a vivid rendering of the common attitudes held by a wide range of social calsses on the eve of the French Revolution. C3B. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.