Focusing on 1830 in France, this book explores the nature and scope of revolution. Recent developments in the study of history and in the world have done much to overturn established ideas, both of Marxists who believed all revolutions led to socialism and liberals who feared violence, but who assumed democracy would triumph. Taking place between the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, 1830 was a minor bourgeois Parisian event. It was politically avoidable but socially was part of a continuing struggle of peasants and artisans to preserve their way of life. Ironically, the wealthy liberals who gained control as a consequence of artisan violence in the "July days", were themselves modernisers.