Hey, I'm not totally sure if this is the place for this kind of question, but I thought I'd give it a go. My best TLDR at the end.
So, I'm writing a double honours (combined honours?) thesis in the Fall in History and Poli Sci, because of this I've had to nail down a topic/time period in advance of the semester with my profs as it's being co-sponsored (etc etc). To give some background; the time period I wish to explore is flexibly the French Revolution into the early Napoleonic Era (Roughly 1789-1805). The French Revolution itself is likely to be the period explored for cohesion between the two departments as the prof adviser from the Poli Sci department has some background in Gender Politics during the revolution, so the only foray into the Napoleonic Era I could foresee would be more in reference to the demise of the Revolutionary government into a new absolute government, and exploring the historical and political context in this transition. At a macro level, I somewhat want to explore the idea of the revolution in the sense that the word itself has a conflicted definition as it both refers to a complete rotation of an object back to its original position (when referring to planetary revolution), and also a sudden radical and complete change. I find interest in how the French Revolution specifically matches both definitions as it both went full circle (an absolute government to an absolute government) but also saw real and lasting societal change to France, Europe, and the world at large. This is, obviously, way too broad a topic and won't be the true focus of my honours, but I felt I should mention that, that is the macro aspect of the topic I'm to explore.
At a more interment level, I plan to explore the change in thought and values of the period (e.g. people seeing themselves as citizens of a community rather than just subjects of a king), and how these changes are both remembered as a period in history and the context that this shift in values had in forming political identity and governance going forward within France, Europe, or globally. This could be explored in the identity, both political and personal, women found in the period and the gender issues that came to the forefront of discussion at the time. Or, it could be explored even in the development of individual rights as a concept to the people; a concept leading, in part, to what are now regarded as human rights. The aspect of Napoleon that I think would factor into this, if at all, would be two-fold 1) he was the completion of the 'full-circle' reinstating an absolute government, 2) he also provided an example of the 'common man' being able to become the ruler of a nation without the need for a hereditary title. While not a wholly new concept in history by any means I find it does add something to the topic (though it may be ultimately pointless and so I may refocus away from that if needed). Roughly speaking, I want to explore the historical memory of the period and what it means for history beyond the bloodshed that consumed the revolution; I also want to explore the politicized individual that arose in Europe from this revolution as it spread very liberal ideology for its day in Europe. In summary, the core themes I want to explore are Change, Identity, Class structure, Memory, and Political Movements.
All this to say, as my University will be online in the Fall there is concern about resources. I don't want anyone to do research for me (that's half the fun), my reason for this post is rather to ask any who may know of some reputable online resources or archives open to the public (or are simply an e-mail away) that I may want to look into; as interlibrary loaning will be suspended due to covid and much of my Universities sources on the revolutionary period are physical (and therefore unavailable to me) anyway. I'm currently picking up works by Dr. Lynn Hunt that seem useful, but I welcome any and all suggestions or leads anyone here might have.
Also, if this is the wrong place to post this, I'm sorry I can def take it down, and I'd welcome being pointed to a sub this would be better posted to.
TLDR: Due to covid affecting the resources and research I can access through my university, I'm looking to find resources about themes of Change, Identity, Class structure, Memory, and Political Movements during the French Revolution online. (open-access online archives, pdfs, scanned treasure troves of documents, etc)
This is just general stuff about the Revolution, and not specifically about your themes, since they seem pretty broad and could probably be found in most types of sources.
Retronews.fr has a ton of newspapers from the period. They're searchable with a subscription, but readable without one.
This website has lists of newspapers, including links to some that retronews doesn't have scanned.
The French Revolution digital archive has searchable scans of the Archives Parlementaires with debates from the various legislative assemblies from 1789 to 1793 as well as digitised images.
Hathitrust.com is a bit difficult to search, but there are digitised volumes of the Archives Parlementaires that go at least a bit into 1794, as well as other files.
Gallica is the digitisation project of the French National Library, and it has a lot of interesting material. There's stuff from the Revolution, but also later books that include collections of source texts that can be useful. The search function and metadata is not good; especially the years and dates are almost never correct, so don't try to filter your searches by date of publication. The files themselves are often searchable, but the machine reading is often wonky. So if you don't find something you want, it can be worth it to try a few times with different key words and be prepared to scroll a lot.
Archive.org has both books and pamphlets from the period, and later books containing material from the Revolution. The same goes for google books, but the image quality of archive.org is generally much better than with Gallica or google books.
The Annales historiques de la Révolution française is a journal focused on the period, and bits of it are available in various places around the internet. This link has links to some of those places.
Some examples of freely available books that reproduce sources:
Adolphe Schmidt, Tableaux de la Révolution française publiés sur les papiers inédits de département et de la police secrète de Paris. This is three volumes of police reports, and documents related to the work of the police up until the restoration.
F.-A. Aulard, Recueil des actes du comité de salut public. This is 27 volumes of documents from the Committee of Public Safety, and contains information about all of the topics that they were involved with. The information about the authorship of unsigned letters is incorrect in at least one case that I know of.
F.-A. Aulard, La société des jacobins. Six volumes of documents from the Jacobin club in Paris.
A. Aulard, Paris pendant la réaction thermidorienne et sous le directoire. Five volumes of newspaper articles and police reports documenting events and public attitudes in Paris. Obviously this and the two above only cover some of the period that you are interested in.
P. J. B. Buchez & P. C. Roux, Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française. 40 volumes, from 1789 to 1815. Mostly information about the legislative assemblies.
M. J. Guillaume, Procès-verbaux du comité d'instruction publique de la convention nationale. At least 7 volumes with records from the committee of education of the national convention, with much broader content than the name of the committee might imply. Since it's the convention, this series also only covers a couple of years.
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