Upheaval and continuity, 1814 –1880

Abstract The French are prisoners of the cascade of revolutions they have experienced since 1789. Nineteenth-century French revolutions are always interpreted as continuations of 1789. For French republican historians, most notably in recent years François Furet, repeated revolutions were stages in the emergence of a republican state. For socialists, revolutions were the consequence of the social and economic deprivation of the poor and would cease when, through reform or revolution, a more equal society was achieved.