David Thomson

David Thomson (13 January 1912 – 24 February 1970) was an English historian who wrote several books about British and European history.

Education Thomson was born in Edinburgh, the son of a printer.

Approach In his preface to the Pelican edition (1966) of Europe Since Napoleon, Thomson wrote that he had attempted to present "the history of the last 150 years of European civilisation in a new way". Beginning with the situation in France in 1789, Thomson wrote of the paradox that no significant group wanted revolution, but it happened because of the other things that they wanted. Much had been made by previous historians of an assumed "revolutionary spirit" abroad in France that had been generated by philosophes such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Thomson argued that a connection between their ideas and the revolution was remote and indirect. They did not preach revolution and were happy to be patronised by any aristocrat so willing. It was only later that their ideas and doctrines were used to justify revolutionary events. Instead, Thomson argued, what mattered in 1789 was a "revolutionary situation" that turned people into revolutionaries in spite of themselves. The philosophes played no part in the creation of this situation which came about essentially because the King, and thereby the entire French State, was in dire financial straits. The state of the economy, not philosophical belief, caused the French Revolution.