{"id":313,"date":"2012-07-14T17:23:30","date_gmt":"2012-07-14T17:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=313"},"modified":"2025-06-10T13:32:38","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T13:32:38","slug":"happy-bastille-day-a-brief-history-of-the-holiday-and-french-revolution-resources-from-berghahn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/happy-bastille-day-a-brief-history-of-the-holiday-and-french-revolution-resources-from-berghahn","title":{"rendered":"Happy Bastille Day- A Brief History of the Holiday and French Revolution Resources from Berghahn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Most national days celebrate about what you would expect a national day to celebrate. Some, like the national days of the United States, Albania, and Haiti mark the signing of a declaration of independence from a colonial power.\u00a0Other countries, like much of Africa, choose to remember the day the colonial power actually left. Countries like Germany and Italy celebrate unification. Others are a little quirkier, like Austria which celebrates its declaration of neutrality and Luxembourg which honors the Grand Duke’s birthday. A handful of countries such as the United Kingdom and Denmark have no national holiday. But few countries can top France for the sheer coolness of their national day which commemorates the day an angry mob stormed a prison.<\/p>\n

A crowd of Parisians stormed the Bastille, which was not only a prison holding political prisoners but also a fortress and armory, hoping to take its cache of gunpowder, ammunition, and weapons on July 14, 1789. The following year, the\u00a0F\u00eate de la F\u00e9d\u00e9ration <\/em>was held in Paris and across the nation by a populace that largely believed the French Revolution was over. As it turned out, they were mistaken and by 1791 there was little in the way of national unity to celebrate. The holiday wasn’t picked up again until 1878 when it was a one-time official feast to honor the French Republic, which was followed by an unofficial, popular celebration of the day in 1879, which in turn led to a call to make it an official holiday in 1880 complete with a military parade which has been an annual fixture ever since, even during the German occupation in the 1940s when German troops paraded on the date.<\/p>\n

If July 14 has turned your mind to French Revolutionary topics like it has mine, be sure to check out our offerings on the subject.<\/p>\n

Offerings on the French Revolution and the Revolutionary Era from Berghahn Books
\n<\/strong>Austria in the Age of the French Revolution, 1789-1815<\/a>– Explores the Revolution’s impact on Austrian\u00a0art, literature, music, drama, and journalism.
\nThe Bourgeois Revolution in France<\/a>– A lively defense of the view that the French Revolution was a capitalist and bourgeois revolution.
\nJacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 1793-1795<\/a>– A study of the role of Jacobin Clubs in the Reign of Terror and their subsequent decline, based on 30 years of archival research in Paris and seventy departments throughout France.
\nHuman Nature and the French Revolution: From Enlightenment to the Napoleonic Code<\/a>– Examines the often divergent views of human nature in the Revolutionary era and the implications of these view on the Revolution and the legal system that grew out of it.
\nFrance and America in the Revolutionary Era:\u00a0The Life of Jacques-Donatien Leray de Chaumont, 1725-1803<\/a>– An account of the life and career of the French businessman\u00a0Jacques-Donatien Leray de Chaumont who supported the American Revolution and hosted Benjamin Franklin during his stay in France, but later opposed the French Revolution.<\/p>\n

Articles from Berghahn Journals on the French Revolution
\n<\/strong>“History Written with a Little Spite”: Palmer, Brinton, and an American Debate on the French Revolution<\/a>,\u00a0Historical Reflections<\/em>, Volume 37, Number 3
\nUse and Role of the Concepts of Tyrrany and Tyrannicide During the French Revolution<\/a>,\u00a0Contributions to the History of Concepts<\/em>, Volume 2, Number 1
\n“La Politique Spectacle”: A Legacy of the French Revolution?<\/a>,\u00a0French Politics, Culture & Society<\/em>, Volume 27, Number 3
\n\u201cRed of Tooth and Claw\u201d The French Revolution and the Political Process\u2014Then and Now<\/a>,\u00a0French Politics, Culture & Society<\/em>, Volume 29, Number 1
\nDiscourse and Diffusion<\/a>,\u00a0Contributions to the History of Concepts<\/em>, Volume 1, Number 1
\nIn the Shadow of the Guillotine: The Question of Collective Memory in Post-Revolutionary France<\/a>,\u00a0Journal of Romance Studies<\/em>, Volume 3, Number 1<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0<\/em>Claude Monet, Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Festival of June 30, 1878<\/em>.
\n1878. Oil on canvas. Mus\u00e9e d’Orsay, Paris, France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most national days celebrate about what you would expect a national day to celebrate. Some, like the national days of the United States, Albania, and Haiti mark the signing of a declaration of independence from a colonial power.\u00a0Other countries, like much of Africa, choose to remember the day the colonial power actually left. Countries like… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,222],"tags":[656,176,173,135,1740,174,111,113,172,2010,100,901,159,110,175,550,1795],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}