Robert Roswell Palmer

Robert Roswell Palmer (January 11, 1909 – June 11, 2002) was an American historian at Princeton and Yale universities, who specialized in eighteenth-century France.

He was dean of arts and sciences (1963–1966) at Washington University in St. Louis, then returned to teaching and writing at Yale, where he retired as professor emeritus.

Palmer's death in 2002 at Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a memorial service was held at Princeton Chapel.

The main body of the text covers events from the Black Death to the Fall of the Soviet Union in European history.

Palmer's most important work of historical scholarship is The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800.

[7] The book is a fusion of history and collective biography, focusing on the members of the Committee of Public Safety and their efforts to guide France during the Terror following their Revolution.

Columbia University history professor Isser Woloch, a specialist in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, has stated that Twelve Who Ruled "may be the best book on the French Revolution written by an American.