The Historian as Apostle

Between 1849 and 185 1, amidst the turbulence of the 1848 Revolution in France, Agricol Perdiguier (1805-75), artisan menuisier (woodworker) and Representative of the People, published seven volumes of his Histoire democratique des peuples anciens et modernes. It was the first socialist history of the world-that is, the first book to see the history of the world as a class struggle in which the working class was both the hero and the certain victor. Perdiguier, after long days in his shop, wrote the book in hours stolen from his sleep. He believed he was doing God's work, and he was certain that he could change the future by changing the way in which people saw the past. He had three goals. First, he wanted to show the past as a theater in which God's laws were at work, rewarding the nations that followed them and punishing the others. Second, God's laws demanded that French society change radically: it must become egalitarian and democratic, and it must create a new humanism to replace the anti-egalitarian, authoritarian ethos taught in the universities and secondary schools, where teachers extolled the ideas of Aristotle and Plato without question. Finally, Perdiguier hoped to give to the working classes the pride in their past that they lacked. 1 The book did not achieve its goals. Only the popularity of its author and the power of its ideas earned it any attention, and that was limited: only one newspaper reviewed it. It involved no research; its seven volumes were composed of long, deadly quotations from other books strung together with editorial comments by the author. It is Perdiguier's comments that make this

Apostle · Art · Literature · Romanticism · Theology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Philosophy · Religious studies

• Metempsychosis and Social Reform

  Lynn L Sharp, Lynn Sharp•French Historical Studies•2004

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