Conclusion

Abstract

Far from being a bourgeois, Parisian and brief affair, the 1830 revolution emerges as one element in a multitude of popular disturbances which were conceptually diverse and geographically and chronologically broad in compass, and whose bourgeois dimensions were incompatible with Marxist theory, emphatically opportunist and anti-revolutionary. Let us lay to rest for ever that spectral and unconvincing species of an entrepreneurial middle-class revolutionary, but let us also question the existence of a dangerous and subversive species among artisans and peasants. Above all, we must dismiss the vision of insurrectionary artisans in alliance with the bourgeoisie to advance the cause of individual liberty and constitutional representative government.