Rebel Cities: Paris, London and New York in the Age of Revolution

Written by Mike Rapport
Review by Gordon O'Sullivan

In Rebel Cities, Mike Rapport ties together three of the great cities of the late 18^th-century world, London, Paris, and New York, in a narrative highlighting how their urban landscape influenced political changes in a revolutionary period. Using an impressive range of contemporary descriptions of both the city streets and the political events on them, Rapport attempts to explore a knotty question: how did physical surroundings determine revolutionary events?

While he deals with each city in separate chapters, strong links are drawn between each as Rapport questions whether political revolution was a struggle for the mastery of existing institutional buildings, how activists made use of such institutions to further revolution and how support was mobilised across the city down to local neighbourhoods. With a mastery of his sources, Rapport brings to life an authentic cityscape for each of his cities, describing both the smell of the streets and the sulphur of political upheaval. Thus, we see with real clarity how the French Revolution was shaped by local Parisian geography, how London’s Gordon Riots determined urban and political development and how the sway of street agitators in Revolutionary New York transformed the city’s initial inclinations from Loyalism to outright revolt.