Georges Lefebvre

Georges Lefebvre (born Aug. 6, 1874, Lille, Fr.—died Aug. 28, 1959, Boulogne-Billancourt) was a French historian noted for his studies of various aspects of the French Revolution.

Lefebvre’s major work, Les Paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française (1924; “The Peasants of the North During the French Revolution”), was the result of 20 years of research into the role of the peasantry during the Revolution, during which time he supported himself as a secondary school teacher. This four-volume study deals with what might be called the rural sociology of a single département, that of Nord, before and during the Revolution. Obtaining a doctoral degree, Lefebvre began university teaching, and in 1935 he was made a professor at the Sorbonne. Among his other books are Napoléon (1935) and Quatre-vingt-neuf (1939; The Coming of the French Revolution), which was written for the nonspecialist and is perhaps the best general picture of the ancien régime available in English. Lefebvre’s exhaustive knowledge of the French peasantry of the 18th century was his sure guide in analyzing the society of the time, since four-fifths of the people were peasants and the social positions of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the town labouring classes were defined largely by their relation to the rural population.