snip the interesting discussion about the politics of revolution, it is far too late for that.
Il n'y a pas d'heure pour les braves.
Actually i think Vovelle have a far more interesting reading of the Revolution (and he is a quasi-marxist who don't read 1789 as a predecessor of 1917), he actually realize that their wasn't one revolution but several at the same time, that the revolution drifted in several directions due to diverging interest
Well, François Furet was one of the first contemporary historians to actually "cut" the French Revolution as such rather than distinct entities and events tied up by chronology.
Not to not give Vovelle his own merits, but at the difference of Furet (and searching in an interesting direction) he focus on the ideological and cultural revolutionnary history, when the first was about a social history (and really, there's a before/after Furet that is clearly distinguishable on this regard, whatever we agree on his views or not).
They're not talking of the exact same thing on this regard, even if I think Vovelle represent a newer breath that takes as much from IHRF than revisionist schools
would it be only by reaction.
and that while some "revolutions" succeeded and thus their supporters militancy died, other got stuck and never realized their objectives.
I would disagree with the radical end of these "revolutions". Especially in province, the supporters of Terror were the same than Directoire, Napoléon or Louis XVIII.
The complete mess, comparable to the collapse of Russia in WW1, allowed an explosion of political program (more or less half-assed), utopies or pragmatics.
The history of French Revolution could be seed as an history of political compromises in the name of revolutionnaries values (themselves changing depending on the context, thanks to a dialectic twist) between factions and individuals, pointing out the importance of center in revolutionnary policies and eventually the lack of stable institutions (being seen as far less relevant than the values they were based on).
And there are more than one school of historiography in French concerning the revolution, something that can't really be said about the anglo-saxon historiography which is overwhelmingly on the rightwing side of the debate).
That's actually untrue, for several reasons.
There's a tendency in France to call "anglo-saxon school" every thing that was more or less formalized in Britain or America, but really widely supported by french historians more than american or british.
And as there's more than one school of historiography in France, you have more (far more actually, Anglo-American studies being let stuck with school cloisonments and generally less conservative : French historiography basically lives on its reputation) in Anglo-American studies about French Revolution.
The big problem about Anglo-American studies are they're rarely translated, and that they're rarely read in original language. It's easy to depict an "anglo-saxon" school as right-wing led when there's little to none original material avaible, and when this expression is used as an accusation against right-winger (or seen as such) historians.
Who led the revisionist school in the late XXth weren't British or American historians, but Furet. Calling it "anglo-saxon" school is just a cheap attempt at criticism without really caring about studying and answering his position.
I fail to see the common point betwen Alfred Cobban, arguing that French Revolution was a political revolution and not a social one; and say Richard Cobb that was far more close to IHRF positions. Or between Shimon Schama and his half-assed works and Lynn Hunt.