1789: The emergence of the French Revolution

A classic about the first great revolution to guarantee equality for all people.

Published in 1939, the year of the sesquicentennial of the French Revolution and weeks before the outbreak of World War II, 1789: The Emergence of the French Revolution presents the revolutionary movement from the point of view of the social and political groups that constituted it.

In an accessible format and supported by rigorous documentary research, Georges Lefebvre presents his respected theory of the four revolutions—the aristocratic, the bourgeois, the popular, and the peasant. Intertwined, they enabled the eradication of privileges and civil inequalities.

The final section of the book is dedicated to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen—the principal legacy of the French Revolution. As the author points out, "the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen remains the very embodiment of the Revolution." Thus, in 1948, its seed germinated into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Due to its content, 1789 was banned in France by the Vichy government – which ordered the destruction of eight thousand copies – and only returned to circulation in the 1970s. It was published in Brazil for the first time in 1989, and returns to bookstores and libraries as a reminder that the ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity have not yet been achieved, but there is always time to fight for them.