The Afterlives of the Terror

Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France

By: Ronen Steinberg

Narrated by: Simon Barber

Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

The Afterlives of the Terror explores how those who experienced the mass violence of the French Revolution struggled to come to terms with it. Focusing on the Reign of Terror, Ronen Steinberg challenges the presumption that its aftermath was characterized by silence and enforced collective amnesia. Instead, he shows that there were painful, complex, and sometimes surprisingly honest debates about how to deal with its legacies.

As The Afterlives of the Terror shows, revolutionary leaders, victims' families, and ordinary citizens argued about accountability, retribution, redress, and commemoration. Drawing on the concept of transitional justice and the scholarship on the major traumas of the twentieth century, Steinberg explores how the French tried, but ultimately failed, to leave this difficult past behind. He argues that it was the same democratizing, radicalizing dynamic that led to the violence of the Terror, which also gave rise to an unprecedented interrogation of how society is affected by events of enormous brutality. In this sense, the modern question of what to do with difficult pasts is one of the unanticipated consequences of the 18th century's age of democratic revolutions.

The book is published by Cornell University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"Steinberg's excellent new book looks at the aftermath of the Reign of Terror in France through the modern lens of transitional justice." (Choice)

"Steinberg's engaging history will profitably engage French Revolutionists and scholars of trauma and mass violence." (American Historical Review)

"Steinberg's book imaginatively brings together different themes and sources, from property disputes to ghost stories, public trials to medical disputes." (Journal of Modern History)

©2019 Cornell University (P)2023 Redwood Audiobooks

A double revelation

This book opened a page of history I thought I knew about, the French Revolution. I knew about the Terror and Robespierre but had never even considered its aftermath. Steinberg tells how the French people processed what they went through -- brutal repression and mass executions -- and dealt with recovering from the Terror. Before the modern concepts of trauma and transitional justice, they sought recompense, healing (that never entirely came) and respect for the dead. Steinberg ends with an interesting and timely insight: In the aftermath of the Terror, while dealing with the recent past, the French looked forward, focusing on building a future freed from the Old Regime. In our days, we -- and this is certainly true of we Americans -- have instead been transfixed by claims and demands for paying for and atoning for injustices of the past. We no longer focus on constructing a more positive future. We look backwards and not forwards.

As usual, Mr. Barber does an excellent job voicing the book, bringing the text alive. Listening to him makes me wonder why I should ever read for myself again.