Professor Alfred Cobban in these lectures is attacking quite specifically the
"interpretation" of the French Revolution which he attributes primarily to the
late Georges Lefebvre. Cobban holds that this interpretation, adopted by such
historians as Labrousse, Bouloiseau, Soboul, and their colleagues in the
French professorate, is now the "official" doctrine accepted by most historians
in the Western world. He pays tribute to the skill and honesty of these historians,
grants that he has learned much from them, but insists that they do
not interpret the Revolution correctly. They start, he maintains, from an erroneous
theory in general sociology - erroneous and worse for the purposes
of the historian simply because it is a general theory. At moments, one suspects
that Cobban's objection is at bottom to an historian's appealing to any
kind of theory.