A Walk on the Rebellious Side - 18th Century Style
3/5
Historical Spoilers
For my birthday this year, two very dear friends bought me quite an interesting gift. An online booksellers, The Willoughby Book Club, provide a gift subscription whereby they will send you a book once a month. Aside from making me sound like an elderly man who has only just begun to 'log on' and 'surf the digital waves', the whole concept is quite fun. When subscribing, you have to suggest genres or similar works that the company can base their choices around. My gift subscription was selected as non-fiction with my interests being given as history and politics. Sounded about right!
Quite often I trawl through Waterstones, searching for new historical non-fiction to purchase. It always seems that, in the moment, I don't have anything on the topic I want at home, so much go searching for something new. Or perhaps, I don't have quite the right book on said topic. I may have owned several books on Winston Churchill, but I was not fully convinced that they were not jingoistic or biased, leading me to track down Roy Jenkins excellent, if thorough, biography of the former Prime Minister. Sometimes, as with the Churchill bio, this can be successful; other times, as with the rather too detailed Volume Three of the 'Oxford History of America' series, it is a bit of a disaster. On several occasions I have bought books whilst on holiday which have never been touched once back in Brum. Sorry Mary Beard, apparently my interest in Rome was more of a passing fancy than a true commitment.
This gift subscription has made the "What topic to read up on?" decision part a little easier. It has also timed well with a personal endeavour to read books as they appear, rather than file them away for that mythical 'later date'. Thus, when my first Willoughby Book Club book arrived in the mail, it hopped to the top of my 'to read' pile. As a first experiment in this recommended reads subscription it appeared on the tin to be quite fitting. The book's full title is Rebel Cities: Paris, London and New York in the Age of Revolution. It sets itself up at an exploration of these three great Western metropolises at a point where revolution crackled in the air. A historical book exploring the late 18th Century, especially with some detail on New York and London, was quite a good start.
Following the introduction, I found myself with a slight uncertainty of how the book would hold together. When briefly scanning the title, 'Paris, London, and New York' do seem like a perfectly natural fit, yet when I began to consider the openings of the book I was uncertain as to how much of a fit they actually were. Typically, with a historical exploration of a topic one hopes for a single unified theory, or some form of theory of which comparisons could hang. As basic cities to compare, I found that Mike Rapport, the author, did not entirely set up what was quite so similar between them and, for the first few chapters, could not entirely see how they linked.
London and New York are clearly linked at this time - London is the old world, the headquarters of the Empire, whilst New York is the commercial heart of the new world, the breakaway state. New York and Paris share a link - both are cities where revolutions directly occurred during this time period (although, really, Boston does seem more important for the revolutionary story than New York). And London and Paris often make a good comparison when looking at the French Revolution - two of Europe's oldest monarchies, one in collapse and one driving forward. But I still couldn't see what that unifying notion was the actually linked all three. Each idea of a link I could think of, or see in the early parts of the text, ultimately excluded one of them.
The lack of initial clarity, more perhaps brought on through my own historical arrogance than any true issues within the book, cleared as Rapport continued. The three cities, over the period of 1760-1795, travel through similar stirrings of political restlessness. The citizens found injustices with their democratic rights and began to question their place in society. In London, these stirrings found their greatest outburst in a particularly damaging riot of 1780. Yet Parliamentary democracy, for several reasons detailed over the four London chapters stood firm. New York, when shaken by the stirrings of the populace, saw war with its government, the British Crown, declared. Yet, whence the dust settled, democracy was re-established and a calm wind prevailed. In Paris, the overhaul was more dramatic and the waters remained fairly choppy, all puns intended. In many ways, the Rebel Cities narrative is the Enlightenment version of the three little pigs, if one allows for 'the populace seeking greater democratic rights' to be the big bad wolf.
Rapport's thesis also centred on the concept of 'city spaces'. Throughout the book he was keen to promote the concept of history being written in a city's architecture, parks, and topography, particularly in the social uses of any such areas. Having read the acknowledgements at the end, it appears he is married to an urban historian and seemingly wanted to dip his toes into her pool, as it were. Unlike the choices of cities, which Rapport sold me on as his neatly presented historical account continued, I was less taken with this architectural premise. Quite often, his commentaries on the use of space seemed shallow, obvious, or an after-thought. An early chapter hammers home the use of the 'Common' in New York to erect the 'Liberty Pole'. In his narration he tells an engaging story of loyalists and revolutionaries pettily trying to either take it down or put it up, but the setting ultimately seemed almost inconsequential to his telling, aside from instructing his reader to understand that the 'Common' is a place. In the London chapters, the use of wide public spaces to hold rallies is mentioned repeatedly - but surely that is more to do with the necessity that a crowd uses a field to meet in than in some innate sense of location. Perhaps I just didn't 'get it'.
As a guide to these three cities over the time period, contrasting a sliding scale of societal collapse, the book is fairly interesting. There were several London events of which I had simply not come across before. It was of no surprise to discover that Rapport specialises in the French revolution, as these chapters probably show the greatest depth of true understanding. Perhaps these are the chapters where the commentaries on urban history really make a solid point. As a book presenting one argument, I did find the conclusions at the end of each chapter rather dry and academic; they were somewhat unnecessary following thirty pages of well constructed ideas. But overall, a welcome wander along the streets of three great cities in a time so close to our own yet ultimately quite so societally detached. And very definitely, a most excellent, appropriate, and enjoyable start to a year of surprise books!
Rebel Cities: Paris, London and New York in the Age of Revolution
by Mike Rapport
Published by Abacus
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