HIST 228: The French Revolution (HC)

Zalkind Hourwitz lived during one of the most pivotal periods in history. A Polish Jew born in 1752, Hourwitz moved to France in 1774 and entered the intellectual and political life of ancien regime Paris. Frances Malino provides a vivid description of this compelling and exotic figure who fits none of the traditional portraits of eighteenth-century Jews.

This major work follows the reshaping of Franco-Jewish identity from legal emancipation after the French revolution through the creation in 1860 of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the first international Jewish organization devoted to the struggle for Jewish rights throughout the world.

This book proposes, for the first time, an in-depth analysis of the Philosophie sociale, published in Paris in 1793 by Moses Dobruska (1753-1794). From Dobruska's ideas, which were widely used between the late eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century without attribution to their author, emerge some of the key concepts of the social sciences as we know them today.

From the beginning, French revolutionaries imagined their transformation as a universal one that must include Muslims, Europe's most immediate neighbors. They believed in a world in which Muslims could and would be French citizens, but they disagreed violently about how to implement their visions of universalism and accommodate religious and social difference.

This book demonstrates the central place of religion in the intellectual life of post-revolutionary France. Idéologues viewed religion as error and sought to eradicate it. Catholic Traditionalists understood it as a body of revealed truths that was authoritative. Liberals sought to replace Christian orthodoxy with a new public faith. But these blocs were not monolithic, and McCalla reveals their complexities.