Conception of History of the French Historians of the Restoration Period

The sum total of the fundamental views of French bourgeois historians represented by Thierry, Mignet and Guizot on historical development during the French Bourbon Restoration from 1814 to 1830.

The French historians of the Restoration period held that interests are the source and driving force of all social systems and undertakings, that economic interests are the foundation of the political institutions and their thoughts and theories, and that class struggle is the driving force of historical development. Among them, the theory of class struggle was the core idea in the conception of history of the French historians of the Restoration period.

The French historians of the Restoration period conducted a more systematic and in-depth study of class struggles and investigated the deep-seated economic roots of class struggles, holding that the root of class struggles lied in the contradictions and collisions between the real interests of various classes, which were irreconcilable, and that class struggle was a war between classes for their real economic interests. On the basis of their analysis of the economic roots of class struggle, the French historians of the Restoration period have analyzed the history of Europe since the Middle Ages, especially the history of the French Revolution with the point of view of class struggle, pointing out that class struggles determine the course of development of the history of society, changed the image of the social structure, and was an important driving force of the development of society. They held that the French history since the Middle Ages was a history of class struggles, that the French Revolution was a class struggle, a life-and-death struggle unfolded between the Third Estate and the feudal aristocracy, and proved the historical necessity of the replacement of feudalism by capitalism and of the replacement of the rule of the feudal landlord class by the rule of the bourgeoisie. However, they failed to break away from the old path of the 18th-century French materialism that “the world is governed by opinions,” and failed to escape the cage of historical idealism.

The theory of class struggle of the French historians of the Restoration period has made an indelible theoretical contribution to the founding of Marxism, and was an important ideological-theoretical source for the emergence of the Marxist materialist conception of history and the scientific theory of class struggle.

In his letter to Weydemeyer of March 5, 1852, Marx demonstrated the interconnection and the fundamental difference between the Marxist theory of class struggle and the theory of class struggle of the French historians of the Restoration period. Marx pointed out: “And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic economy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society...” In his letter to W. Borgius of January 25, 1894, Engels pointed out: “While Marx discovered the materialist conception of history, Thierry, Mignet, Guizot, and all the English historians up to 1850 are the proof that it was being striven for.”