This truly transnational history reveals the important role of Americans abroad in the Age of Revolution, as well as providing an early example of the limits of American influence on other nations. ...From the beginning of the French Revolution to its end at the hands of Napoleon, American cosmopolitans like Thomas Jefferson, Gouverneur Morris, Thomas Paine, Joel Barlow, and James Monroe drafted constitutions, argued over violent means and noble ends, confronted sudden regime changes, and negotiated diplomatic crises such as the XYZ Affair and the Louisiana Purchase. Eager to report on what they regarded as universal political ideals and practices, Americans again and again confronted the particular circumstances of a foreign nation in turmoil. In turn, what they witnessed in Paris caused these prominent Americans to reflect on the condition and prospects of their own republic. Thus, their individual stories highlight overlooked parallels between the nation-building process in both France and America, and the two countries' common struggle to reconcile the rights of man with their own national identities.
Beloved as the city of light, Paris in the nineteenth century sparked the acclaim of poets and the odium of the bourgeois with its distinctive sounds. Street vendors bellowed songs known as the Cris ...de Paris that had been associated with their trades since the Middle Ages; musicians itinerant and otherwise played for change; and flâneurs-writers, fascinated with the city's underside, listened and recorded much about what they heard. Aimée Boutin tours the sonic space that orchestrated the different, often conflicting sound cultures that defined the street ambience of Paris. Mining accounts that range from guidebooks to verse, Boutin braids literary, cultural, and social history to reconstruct a lost auditory environment. Throughout, impressions of street noise shape writers' sense of place and perception of modern social relations. As Boutin shows, the din of the Cris contrasted economic abundance with the disparities of the capital, old and new traditions, and the vibrancy of street commerce with an increasing bourgeois demand for quiet. In time, peddlers who provided the soundtrack for Paris's narrow streets yielded to modernity, with its taciturn shopkeepers and wide-open boulevards, and the fading songs of the Cris became a dirge for the passing of old ways.
This book examines the leaders of the French Revolution — Robespierre and his fellow Jacobins — and particularly the gradual process whereby many of them came to ‘choose terror’. These men led the ...Jacobin Club between 1789 and 1794, and were attempting to establish new democratic politics in France. Exploring revolutionary politics through the eyes of these leaders, and against a political backdrop of a series of traumatic events, wars, and betrayals, this book portrays the Jacobins as complex human beings who were influenced by emotions and personal loyalties, as well as by their revolutionary ideology. The Jacobin leaders' entire political careers were constrained by their need to be seen by their supporters as ‘men of virtue’, free from corruption and ambition, and concerned only with the public good. In the early stages of the Revolution, being seen as ‘men of virtue’ empowered the Jacobin leaders, and aided them in their efforts to forge their political careers. However, with the onset of war, there was a growing conviction that political leaders who feigned virtue were ‘the enemy within’, secretly conspiring with France's external enemies. By Year Two, the year of the Terror, the Jacobin identity had become a destructive force: in order to demonstrate their own authenticity, they had to be seen to act virtuously, and be prepared, if the public good demanded it, to denounce and destroy their friends, and even to sacrifice their own lives. This desperate thinking resulted in the politicians' terror, one of the most ruthless of all forms of terror during the Revolution. The book seeks neither to cast blame, nor to exonerate, but to understand the process whereby such things can happen.
From revolution to ethics Bourg, Julian
From revolution to ethics,
c2007, 20070514, 2007, 2007-05-14, 20070101
eBook
Challenging the prevalent view that the 1960s did not have any lasting effect, From Revolution to Ethics demonstrates that intellectuals and activists turned to ethics as the touchstone for ...understanding interpersonal, institutional, and political dilemmas. In absorbing and scrupulously researched detail Bourg explores the developing ethical fascination as it emerged among student Maoists courting terrorism, anti-psychiatric celebrations of madness, feminists mobilizing against rape, and pundits and philosophers championing human rights.
How did the French Revolution’s ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity descend into violence and terror? Timothy Tackett offers a new interpretation of this turning point in world history. ...Penetrating the mentality of Revolutionary elites on the eve of the Terror, he reveals how suspicion and mistrust escalated and helped propel their actions.
How did the French Revolutionaries explain, justify, and understand the extraordinary violence of their revolution? In debating this question, historians have looked to a variety of ...eighteenth-century sources, from Rousseau's writings to Old Regime protest tactics.A Natural History of Revolutionsuggests that it is perhaps on a different shelf of the Enlightenment library that we might find the best clues for understanding the French Revolution: namely, in studies of the natural world. In their attempts to portray and explain the events of the Revolution, political figures, playwrights, and journalists often turned to the book of nature: phenomena such as hailstorms and thunderbolts found their way into festivals, plays, and political speeches as descriptors of revolutionary activity. The particular way that revolutionaries deployed these metaphors drew on notions derived from the natural science of the day about regeneration, purgation, and balance.
In examining a series of tropes (earthquakes, lightning, mountains, swamps, and volcanoes) that played an important role in the public language of the Revolution,A Natural History of Revolutionreveals that understanding the use of this natural imagery is fundamental to our understanding of the Terror. Eighteenth-century natural histories had demonstrated that in the natural world, apparent disorder could lead to a restored equilibrium, or even regeneration. This logic drawn from the natural world offered the revolutionaries a crucial means of explaining and justifying revolutionary transformation. If thunder could restore balance in the atmosphere, and if volcanic eruptions could create more fertile soil, then so too could episodes of violence and disruption in the political realm be portrayed as necessary for forging a new order in revolutionary France.
Paris in 1871 was a shambles following military defeat, siege, and a bloody uprising, and the question loomed, could this extraordinary city even survive? By 1900, the Belle Epoque was in full ...flower, but the decades between were marked by tension and conflict, as the new challenged the old in everything from politics to art, literature, music, science, and engineering. With the addition of an evocative new preface, Mary McAuliffe takes the reader back to these perilous years following the abrupt collapse of the Second Empire and France's uncertain venture into the Third Republic--examining this era through the eyes of Monet, Zola, Debussy, Eiffel, Marie Curie, and others as they struggled with the forces of tradition. Through rich illustrations and vivid narrative, McAuliffe brings this vibrant and seminal era to life.
Epicentre of the Revolution of 1789, erstwhile bastion of the skilled working-class and centre of radical agitation, along with Pigalle and Montmartre a focus for popular and raffish night-life in ...the early twentieth century, the Bastille area of Eastern Paris (also known as the Faubourg Saint-Antoine) is now an ethnically and socially mixed quartier which still bears the traces of its previous avatars. In a fascinating tour, Keith Reader charts the history and cultural geography of this unique area of Paris, from the fortress and prison that gave the area its name to the building of the largest and costliest opera house in the world.
Louis XVI was a gentle and unassuming man who did not want to be king but attempted to work for the welfare of his people--until his government was engulfed by the violent upheavals of the French ...Revolution. Facing the rapidly changing desires of his subjects, he gradually gave way to the policies they demanded. Few rulers have acquiesced to such startling changes of government within such a brief span of time. Louis XVI lacked the charisma of Marie Antoinette, but he is remarkable for the courage he exhibited when facing violent armed men only a few feet away. The quiet dignity and courage with which he approached his execution has been praised by countless people, including Albert Camus and Victor Hugo. This biography traces the painfully exciting events involving Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and their two children. The royal family was first taken by a violent mob from Versailles to Paris. They attempted an escape but it failed when they had almost reached safety. A year later the king and queen were guillotined.
