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CITIZENS: A CHRONICLE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by Simon Schama...
...elephant was designed to make Parisians forget their revolutionary past and dream of an imperial future. Its real destiny -- like the question of what to remember -- proved quite different. "By 1830, when revolution revisited Paris, the elephant was in an advanced state of decomposition," writes Harvard historian Simon Schama. "One tusk had dropped off, and the other was reduced to a powdery stump. Its body was black from rain and soot and its eyes had sunk, beyond all natural resemblance, into the furrows and pockmarks of its large, eroded head...
Such a grand beginning inspires confidence that we are in the hands of a master storyteller, and Schama's epic history richly fulfills that promise. This saga of revolt and revenge may at first seem somewhat familiar, for it has long been one of the great narrative legends of modern time, told and retold by Burke, Tocqueville, Carlyle and others. We already know -- don't we? -- about the dim-witted King Louis XVI, about Queen Marie Antoinette's supposedly saying "Let them eat cake," and the ragged mobs cheering as the bloodied guillotine rises and falls in its awful rhythm...
...Although Schama discounts outside pressure, most students agree that the absence of South Asia courses is the result of a significant oversight in Harvard's curriculum. "I was really surprised at the lack of any real offerings in Indian studies, especially history and politcs," says Anupam Chander `89, an Economics concentrator who is minoring in government...
...Schama says he feels that courses on South Asia are more natural in the English university curriculum because of England's imperialist connections with that area of the world...