Writing
a Thesis 'attached'
to HIST 31272, The French Revolution and
Political Thought
some frequently asked
questions
May 2009
I shall
be developing this document, so it is worth noting the date and
returning from
time to time.
Q.
When should I choose a topic?
A.
As soon as possible, and in any case by
the deadline for submitting the relevant form to the office (usually
late
October). I am happy to advise by email in
the course
of the summer, and if you want to produce a strong thesis I would
advise you to
start working towards your thesis before the beginning of your third
year.
Q.
What does 'attached' mean here?
A.
It means that the thesis subject should
be approved by me and that I supervise it. The thesis does not have to
be on a
subject directly covered in the
course, and on the whole such subjects do not make the best thesis
topics. You
might, for example, explore some of the debates examined in the course
but with
reference to thinker(s) not studied in depth in the course. You might
want to draw
on the methods and approaches used in the course but apply them in a
different
historical context. In principle I am happy to supervise theses on a
wide range
of topics in modern political thought and intellectual history,
especially on
Q.
What makes a good thesis topic?
A.
As a rule, a good thesis has (a) a broad
research question and (b) a specific way of addressing that question.
So: don't
define your question so broadly that there's no way of addressing it
satisfactorily, but on the other hand be aware of how the specific
events/people/debates your studying fit
into a broader
picture. Have an answer to the question: why does this matter? That's
the main
reason why we require you to 'attach' a thesis to a course: it ensures,
in principle,
that you have an appropriate historical and historiographical context.
Q.
Can you suggest possible subjects?
A.
Yes. I'm happy to do this, and some are
listed at the end of this document. I do this on the basis that these
are
suggestions to get you started on a piece of research - and it will
help if you
can indicate the kind of subject that would interest you. You may very
well
find, once you are embarked on your research, that you become
interested
chiefly in what you originally thought was a minor aspect, or indeed in
a theme
you encountered serendipitously in the course of pursuing your original
idea.
That's very often how historical research progresses.
Q.
I don't read French. Will this be a
problem?
A.
It rules out many subjects. French
history happens in French, and the only sources that have been
translated are
those which someone has bothered to translate – i.e. by
definition they are
well known. Hence reliance on translated texts gives you little scope
for real originality.
It would be possible to tackle a major thinker – Montesquieu or
Rousseau,
Condorcet or Comte or Tocqueville – on the basis of translated
texts, but in
that case you need to have a new take on the subject. What would be
more or
less impossible to do on the basis of translated sources would be to
‘rediscover’ some neglected revolutionary thinkers: if they
were neglected,
they wouldn’t have been translated.
Q.
So what’s the solution?
A.
i.
Don’t underestimate your
French. If you
have A level French, you should certainly
be capable
of some real research on French sources; and if you have anything above
GCSE I
would think it’s worth a go. If you are able to do this, the John
Rylands
University Library has some exceptional French Revolutionary
collections,
mostly in the Special Collections held at Deansgate. See: http://rylibweb.man.ac.uk/specialcollections/collections/guide/atoz/frenchrevolution/
for a brief introduction - but if you are going to use these
collections I can
arrange for the staff of the Deansgate library to help you get started.
ii.
Take up the
invitation above and do something on British political thought instead.
This
could be more or less connected with the course itself - you might,
e.g., want
to explore British political thought in the French revolutionary era,
which is something
we shall study to some extent in the course, but I'm equally willing to
suggest
topics where the connection is more remote.
Suggested Areas for
Investigation
1.
Influence of British political thought on
the French Revolution. Until recently, this was a neglected subject.
But it has
been opened up recently, especially by Rachel Hammersley. Have a look
at some
of her work to see how this can be done.
R.
Hammersley, ‘English Republicanism in Revolutionary France: the
case of the
Cordelier Club’, Jnl of British Studies
43 (2004), 464-81.
R.
Hammersley, ‘Camille Desmoulins’s Le
Vieux Cordelier: a link between English and French
republicanism’, History of European Ideas 27
(2001),
115-32.
And, on
Anglo-French intellectual contacts:
R.
Hammersley, ‘Jean-Paul Marat’s The Chains of Slavery in
If you
want to pursue this further, there’s also her book, not yet in
the library:
R.
Hammersley, French Revolutionaries and
English Republicans: The Cordeliers Club, 1790-1794 (
Other
relevant work:
R.
Whatmore, ‘Adam Smith's role in
the French Revolution',
Past & Present no. 175 (2002), 65-89.
If you
don’t read French, you will need to think carefully about
how you strike the balance between French and English thinkers.
2. The impact of the
French Revolution on British political thought. This is a much studied
field,
but by no means exhausted, and there are abundant materials. If you
want to tackle
a major thinker – Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, to take the
obvious examples –
you will need the imagination to find a fresh angle. But there are a
whole
range of lesser (but still important) thinkers who suggest themselves
for
further work. To get into this subject, see the book by Claeys and the
anthology edited by Hampsher-Monk, both on the course preliminary
reading list
on the Faculty database. Mark Philp (NB spelling) has also written
quite
extensively on this field – try searching for his articles in
JSTOR, or in the
Royal Historical Society’s Bibliography of British History.
3. A rather less
systematically studied field is the representation of the French
Revolution in
nineteenth-century
For some
examples:
Colin
Jones, Josephine McDonagh and Jon Mee (eds), Charles Dickens, A Tale
of Two Cities and the French Revolution (2009) – e.g.
essays by Mark
Philp, Gareth Stedman Jones, Keith Baker.
Or
Gareth
Stedman Jones, ‘The redemptive power of violence? Carlyle, Marx
and Dickens’, History Workshop Journal 65
(2008), 1-22
4.
Conceptual histories
This is a
promising field because of the vast range of primary source materials
that have
recently become available electronically – 19c British political
pamphlets,
newspapers, etc. Since these are easily searchable, it has become
vastly easier
to trace, e.g. how terms such as ‘Jacobin’,
‘terrorist’, ‘republican’ etc were
used in 18th- or 19th-century Britain (or indeed
in
France, although the range of electronic material isn’t quite as
good). I’ve
selected concepts which have a definite revolutionary resonance, but
there are
a whole range of possibilities which have connections with the course:
liberty,
citizenship, democracy, socialism, social science, patriotism,
nationalism etc.
Preliminary
reading to orientate you in this field:
Terence
Ball, James Farr and Russell L. Hanson (eds),
Political Innovation and Conceptual Change
(1989)
Melvin Richter, The History of
Political and Social Concepts: A
Critical Introduction (1995)
Melvin Richter,
'Begriffsgeschichte and the history of ideas', Journal of
the History of Ideas 48
(1987), 247-63 (conceptual history, or 'Begriffsgeschichte',
was pioneered in
Electronic
Resources
Except
where indicated, you can access these via 'Electronic
Resources' and 'Databases' on the library's website.
British
Periodicals -
includes a wealth
of 18th- and 19th-century periodicals. Some are particularly relevant
to the
response to the French Revolution, e.g. The
Anti-Jacobin, The Anti-Gallican
Eighteenth
Century
Collections Online
Making of
Modern Law. British
and American
legal treatises, 1800-1926 - but 'law' is interpreted very broadly, and
the
collection includes many important works of political theory.
Making of
the Modern
World: Goldsmiths'-Kress
Library of
Economic Literature 1450-1850. Self-explanatory: a
vast
collection in early economic thought. Again, 'economic' is interpreted
broadly.
Newspapers
- The Times (1785 onwards), the
French-language
electronic resources are fewer, but the Gallica collection at the
Bibliothèque
Nationale is excellent on the nineteenth century. See: http://gallica.bnf.fr
Stuart
Jones
13 May
2009