Republicanism and the French Revolution

Republicanism and the French Revolution

Author: Lecturer in Intellectual History School of English and American Studies Richard Whatmore

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780199241156

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Republicanism and the French Revolution reassesses Jean-Baptiste Say's political economy by locating the author's ideas amidst the intellectual upheavals of Old Regime and revolutionary France. Traditionally Say has been portrayed as a rather staid figure, the archetypal liberal and classicalpolitical economist devoted to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. This study reveals the historic Say to have been altogether different; a passionate and committed republican intellectual and French patriot, he was as opposed to Britain's constitution, commerce, and political culture as he was toBonaparte's First Empire. The relationship between Say's political thought and political economy, evinced in the full range of his writings from 1789 to 1832, is scrutinized for the first time, elucidating the true origins of his republicanism. This derived from a rich seam of political speculation among French and Genevanradicals concerning the possibility of transforming large and corrupt monarchies into modern republics whose political culture was characterized by commerce and virtue. By the 1790s such ideas had come to define the French Revolution itself, at once promising to restore French greatness and replaceBritain as the leading cultural force in Europe. Say looked back to such luminaries as Diderot, Gibbon, and Franklin as members of the modern republican Pantheon and dedicated his life to formulating a political economy that would persuade legislators and ordinary citizens to embrace the republicancreed.


The Terror of Natural Right

The Terror of Natural Right

Author: Dan Edelstein

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-10-15

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0226184404

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Natural right—the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are “natural” in origin—is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom. In The Terror of Natural Right, Dan Edelstein argues that the revolutionaries used the natural right concept of the “enemy of the human race”—an individual who has transgressed the laws of nature and must be executed without judicial formalities—to authorize three-quarters of the deaths during the Terror. Edelstein further contends that the Jacobins shared a political philosophy that he calls “natural republicanism,” which assumed that the natural state of society was a republic and that natural right provided its only acceptable laws. Ultimately, he proves that what we call the Terror was in fact only one facet of the republican theory that prevailed from Louis’s trial until the fall of Robespierre. A highly original work of historical analysis, political theory, literary criticism, and intellectual history, The Terror of Natural Right challenges prevailing assumptions of the Terror to offer a new perspective on the Revolutionary period.


Jacobin Republic Under Fire

Jacobin Republic Under Fire

Author: Paul R. Hanson

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780271047928

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It is time for a major work of synthetic interpretation, and this is what The Jacobin Republic Under Fire offers.".


Time and the French Revolution

Time and the French Revolution

Author: Matthew John Shaw

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0861933117

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A history of the innovation and effects of the French Republican Calendar. The French Republican Calendar was perhaps the boldest of all the reforms undertaken in Revolutionary France. Introduced in 1793 and used until 1806, the Calendar not only reformed the weeks and months of the year, but decimalisedthe hours of the day and dated the year from the beginning of the French Republic. This book not only provides a history of the calendar, but places it in the context of eighteenth-century time-consciousness, arguing that the French were adept at working within several systems of time-keeping, whether that of the Church, civil society, or the rhythms of the seasons. Developments in time-keeping technology and changes in working patterns challenged early-modern temporalities, and the new calendar can also be viewed as a step on the path toward a more modern conception of time. In this context, the creation of the calendar is viewed not just as an aspect of the broader 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. Matthew Shaw is a curatorat the British Library, London.


The French Republic

The French Republic

Author: Edward G. Berenson

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-10-15

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 0801460646

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In this invaluable reference work, the world’s foremost authorities on France’s political, social, cultural, and intellectual history explore the history and meaning of the French Republic and the challenges it has faced. Founded in 1792, the French Republic has been defined and redefined by a succession of regimes and institutions, a multiplicity of symbols, and a plurality of meanings, ideas, and values. Although constantly in flux, the Republic has nonetheless produced a set of core ideals and practices fundamental to modern France's political culture and democratic life. Based on the influential Dictionnaire critique de la république, published in France in 2002, The French Republic provides an encyclopedic survey of French republicanism since the Enlightenment. Divided into three sections—Time and History, Principles and Values, and Dilemmas and Debates—The French Republic begins by examining each of France’s five Republics and its two authoritarian interludes, the Second Empire and Vichy. It then offers thematic essays on such topics as Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; laicity; citizenship; the press; immigration; decolonization; anti-Semitism; gender; the family; cultural policy; and the Muslim headscarf debates. Each essay includes a brief guide to further reading. This volume features updated translations of some of the most important essays from the French edition, as well as twenty-two newly commissioned English-language essays, for a total of forty entries. Taken together, they provide a state-of-the art appraisal of French republicanism and its role in shaping contemporary France’s public and private life.


Modern France

Modern France

Author: Vanessa R. Schwartz

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2011-10-10

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 0195389417

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The French Revolution, politics and the modern nation -- French and the civilizing mission -- Paris and magnetic appeal -- France stirs up the melting pot -- France hurtles into the future.


A Classical Republican in Eighteenth-Century France

A Classical Republican in Eighteenth-Century France

Author: Johnson Kent Wright

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1997-06-01

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0804764972

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This is an intellectual biography of Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709-85), who emerges as a central figure in the history of republican thought in the era of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. This book has two related aims. The first is to fill an important gap in historical scholarship. Although Mably, whose career as a historian and political theorist stretched from 1740 to the eve of the French Revolution, clearly played a major role in the intellectual history of his era, there has been no study of his life and thought in English for nearly seventy years. At the same time, the book seeks to advance a novel interpretation of Mably's thought. He has most often been portrayed in two sharply contrasted ways, either as one of a handful of utopian communists and a precursor of nineteenth-century socialism, or as a deeply conservative enemy of the Enlightenment. This study sets forth a different reading of Mably's thought, one that shows him to be a classical republican, in the sense this term has acquired in recent years for students of early modern political thought. Mably was the author of the most comprehensive and influential body of republican thought produced in eighteenth-century France—a claim with implications that go beyond the merely biographical. These are explored in a final chapter, which draws some conclusions about the character of classical republicanism in France and about the French contribution to the republican tradition in Europe.


Radicals

Radicals

Author: Leigh Ann Whaley

Publisher: Sutton Publishing

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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This book rewrites the history of the revolution from the viewpoint of the men who lay at its core. The radicals-- these men campaigned for ever more far-reaching reforms both in the legislative assemblies and without.


Making Democracy in the French Revolution

Making Democracy in the French Revolution

Author: James Livesey

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780674006249

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This book reasserts the importance of the French Revolution to an understanding of the nature of modern European politics and social life. Livesey argues that the European model of democracy was created in the Revolution, a model with very specific commitments that differentiate it from Anglo-American liberal democracy.