Abstract

What motivated the food rioters who sparked off the French Revolution? Who took part in the widespread disturbances that periodically shook eighteenth-century London? How did the Captain Swing movement of agricultural labourers destroying new machinery spread from one village to another in the English countryside? How did the sans-culottes organise in revolutionary Paris?
George Rudé was the first historian to ask such questions, and in doing so he identified 'the faces in the crowd' in some of the key episodes in modern European history. A classic work of 'history from below', The Crowd in History is remarkable above all for the clarity with which it deals with complex historical events. Whether in Cairo or Kiev, crowds continue to make history, and George Rudé's work retains all its freshness and relevance for both the general reader and the student of history and politics.
'He put the mind back into history and restored the dignity of man.' 
A.J.P. Taylor
'Like all his work, this book is concentrated, simple and clear, and admirably suited to the non-specialist reader.' 
Eric Hobsbawm, New York Review of Books
'Rudé pioneered the writing of "history from below" and the recovery of the experience and struggles of the "common people" in the making of modern England.'
The Independent