Michel Biard. Les lilliputiens de la centralisation: Des intendants aux préfets; Les hésitations d'un “modèle français.” (La Chose Publique.) Seyssel, France: Champ Vallon. 2007. Pp. 410. €28.00

Since the bicentennial of the French Revolution, which coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall, historians, particularly those whose politics lean to the left, have been looking for a new overarching interpretation of the meaning of the events of the revolutionary era. Michel Biard's new book can be understood as a thoughtful rumination about the democratic implications of the French Revolution in a post-Cold War world undergoing significant social and economic changes as the European Union and globalization transform the administrative roles of the centralized French nation-state. He traces the evolution of the relationships of center and periphery, state and society, and administrative efficiency and public order through the intendants of the Old Regime, the legislative representatives on mission of 1791–1795, the departmental commissaires of the Directory, and ultimately the prefects. For Biard, all these provincial agents of...