What really motivated the food rioters who sparked off the French Revolution? Who took part in the widespread disturbances that periodically shook eighteenth-century London? How did the Captain Swing movement of agricultural labourers destroying new machinery spread from one village to another in the English countryside? How did the sans-culottes organise in revolutionary Paris?

George Rude was the first historian to ask such questions, and in doing so he identified 'the faces in the crowd' in some of the key episodes in modern European history. A classic work of 'history from below', this book is remarkable above all for the clarity with which it deals with complex historical events. Whether on the streets of Berlin, Beijing or Soweto, crowds continue to make history, and Rude's work retains all its freshness and relevance for both the general reader and students of history and politics.