K atie J arvis . Politics in the Marketplace

Katie Jarvis has written a deeply researched monograph with big interpretive ambitions. Politics in the Marketplace traces the doings of a group of politically engaged working women, the market women of Les Halles and Paris’s other food markets, over the course of the French Revolution. Jarvis provides a thoughtful, imaginative, and extensively documented account of their multiple interventions in revolutionary events. The market women spoke before revolutionary assemblies, played a starring role in revolutionary ceremonies, and most famously marched to Versailles in October 1789, eventually bringing the king and his family back to Paris with them. On that occasion at least, their actions decisively changed the course of the Revolution. By transforming the king and his family into involuntary Parisians, the market women had brought the monarchy into a new relationship with the Paris crowd, subjecting it to constant popular scrutiny and to the threat—eventually realized—of violent action. That sequence...

Citizenship · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Scrutiny · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies