The Paris Commune: French Politics, Culture, and Society at the Crossroads of the Revolutionary Tradition and Revolutionary Socialism

At the end of the “Bloody Week” in May 1871, which saw the defeat of the Paris Commune, more people were killed at Paris than were executed throughout France during the French Revolution’s ten-month Reign of Terror. Situating the Commune within the political culture and traditions bequeathed to the nineteenth century by the French Revolution, this survey of the Commune is designed to familiarize students with its historical antecedents, its narrative history, and those topics which have rendered the Commune so critical to an understanding of revolutions.