Professor Stewart-McDougall stresses the continuity of this extraordinarily successful and persistent movement from its beginnings under the July Monarchy through the revolutionary period to the advent of the Second Empire. She shows how, following the silk workers' insurrection of 1834, an indigenous radical leadership emerged and developed a flexible clandestine network which facilitated the creation of durable political machinery under the republic. Lyonnais radicals are shown to have been more successful than their Parisian counterparts in electing candidates, disseminating democratic-socialist ideas in the provinces, and resisting the successive blows of the repression of 1849-51.

The Artisan Republic uses the techniques and approaches of local, labour, and social history to test some of the recent theories about the dynamics of revolution, repression, and resistance. It is an important addition to the growing number of studies which are giving a new direction to the formerly Paris-oriented historiography of the Second Republic.