Recently Reading....

I am reading this book written in English on the French Revolution, and am enjoying it!  
The Event
It was an important event when the people of France stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and contrary to some analyses of the revolution, Popkin argues in the first chapter that the event was not simply a "revolt against a system of tyranny or depostism, in which all power was monopolized by a single man, the king, and by his arbitrarily chosen ministers" (p. 3).

Popkins Thesis
Instead, he argued that the situation was much more complex: "With the advantage of hindsight, however, we can see that there were many tensions in France's institutions, its social order, and its culture that made a revolution, if not inevitable, at least conceivable" (p. 1).  For example in the monarchy, the king was enslaved, in a sense, in what he did, since 100s of years of precedents were set for King Louis XVI. He had incredible pressure both internally (e.g. nobles not just requesting, but demanding things) and externally (e.g. a massive national debt to other nations).