The Camisard Uprising: War and Religion in the Cévennes

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

1-12-2016

Keywords

Huguenots, Political uprising, Church history, France, 18th century

Abstract

"While its interesting narrative will delight the general reader, this book will disappoint most historians of eighteenth-century France. Of the 70 works cited in the bibliography, only 16 (23 per cent) are primary (and rarely archival) sources, while 54 (77 per cent) are secondary books. Frequently the author forgets to footnote anything, including block quotations. The paucity of notes is reflected in the fact that chapters one, three and four average one note per page; chapters two, five and eight have one note for every two pages; and chapters six and seven contain only one note for every three pages. Nearly every time the author refers to an eighteenth-century document in the text, he cites a secondary source in the endnotes, indicating, perhaps, that he spent little time in the Archives Nationales, the Bibliothèque Nationale or in the provincial archives. Furthermore, in the first ninety pages (23 per cent of the book’s content), he covers many topics unrelated to the Camisard War."

Comments

Excerpted from the book review

Journal Title

French History

Volume

30

Issue

4

First Page

574

Last Page

575

DOI

10.1093/fh/crw066

First Department

History and Political Science

Link to Full Text

@ the James White Library

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