The bric-a-brac of the old regime: Collecting and cultural history in post-revolutionary France

Abstract

The French Revolution unleashed an earthquake not just in the world of governance and ideas but also in the world of things. It generated profound changes in both political and material culture. This paper discusses some of the legacies of the Revolution for the distribution and exhibition of historical artefacts, and also for how nineteenth-century historians approached and interpreted their sources. For in their iconoclastic fury, the revolutionaries undoubtedly gave an unanticipated boost to amateur historians, urban antiquarians and practitioners of cultural history. Exploring the close connections between the collector's passion and the historian's craft in the middle of the nineteenth century, the paper traces how the acquisition and scrutiny of objects displaced or produced by the French Revolution encouraged new forms of historical writing, and new possibilities for the historical imagination.