Confiscating the common good: Small towns and religious politics in the French Revolution

Comprising five microhistories, this book proposes that the French Revolution’s religious politics in small towns weakened democratic society to such an extent that it precluded political democracy. It details two revolutionary dynamics that damaged the civic life of small towns: social polarisation and the loss of local institutions that had been a source of social capital as well as a common good. Detailed narratives about Pont-à-Mousson, Gournay-en-Bray, Vienne, Haguenau and Is-sur-Tille...