This book is a history of the French republic's efforts to create a new division of time in the form of the republican calendar. It draws on extensive archival research to examine reactions to the republican calendar, its relationship to republican cultural reforms and to the longer-term context of early modern time-consciousness. It argues that the experience of time in the late eighteenth century was complex, and that the French were adept at working with several systems of timekeeping, whether that of the Church, civil society, or the rhythms of the seasons. This relationship was not unchanging. Developments in timekeeping technology, the spread of almanacs, clocks and watches, and changes in working patterns challenged early modern temporalities, and the new calendar may be viewed as a step on the path towards a more modern conception of time. In this context, the creation of the calendar should be seen not just as an aspect of the republican programme of social, political and cultural reform, but as a reflection of a broader interest in time and the culmination of several generations' concern with how society should be policed.

Time and the French Revolution not only examines the effects the new calendar had on French society, but also seeks to widen historical understanding of the calendar from that which sees it simply through the lens of dechristianisation. The layering of eighteenth-century temporalities means that the calendar should not be examined using just the language of counterrevolution, Jacobinism or dechristianisation, but as an aspect of the state's wider involvement in everyday life and of the interplay between local politics and centralising processes.