"The frank recognition of the dominance of power politics in international relations has not been without its effect on the writing of domestic French history. One consequence is that the traditional admiration for Napoleon, and the effort to present him as something other than a military conqueror and dictator, has become difficult even for French historians. Emphasis on the ideological element in the policy of revolutionary governments has also diminished and the desire for territorial aggrandizement, and even more for economic change, come to be seen as a dominant influence over their foreign policies."
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Aspects of the French Revolution (1971), p. 10
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred_Cobban
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Alfred Cobban
Alfred Bert Carter Cobban (24 May 1901 – 1 April 1968) was an English historian and Professor of French History at University College, London, who along with prominent French historian François Furet advocated a classical liberal view of the French Revolution.
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