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A riveting exploration of the relationship between art and telegraphy, and its implications for understanding time and history in nineteenth-century France. In Time Machines Richard Taws examines the relationship between art and telegraphy in the decades following the French Revolution. The optical telegraph was a novel form of visual communication developed in the 1790s that remained in use until the mid-1850s. This pre-electric telegraph, based on a semaphore code, irrevocably changed the media landscape of nineteenth-century France. Although now largely forgotten, in its day it covered vast distances and changed the way people thought about time. It also shaped, and was shaped by, a proli...
Antoine-Chrysosthôme Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849) was the most distinguished writer on art and architecture at the end of the enlightenment. However, as David Gilks shows in Quatremère de Quincy: Art and Politics during the French Revolution, he was never simply an esoteric antiquarian and theoretician; he was also a zealous functionary and skilled publicist whose writings on the arts often served political purposes. Quatremère de Quincy: Art and Politics during the French Revolution demonstrates how Quatremère's early writings on art and antiquity formed the foundation for a politics grounded in faith, authority, and hierarchy that favoured gradual social and political evolution ov...
Over fifty years ago sociologist T. H. Marshall first opened the modern debate about the evolution of full citizenship in modern nation-states, arguing that it proceeded in three stages: from civil rights, to political rights, and finally to social rights. The shortcomings of this model were clear to feminist scholars. As political theorist Carol Pateman argued, the modern social contract undergirding nation-states was from the start premised on an implicit "sexual contract." According to Pateman, the birth of modern democracy necessarily resulted in the political erasure of women. Since the 1990s feminist historians have realized that Marshall's typology failed to describe adequately develo...
This book explores the creation and career of the French Constitution of 1795, operative from the start of the Directory until Napoleon’s takeover in 1799. It explores the composition, history and replacement of the French Revolution’s third Constitution through a focus on the speeches and writings of four sets of political voices discernible in late 1790s France. The four main chapters present these voices as Thermidorians, Conservatives, Republicans and Brumairiens. They reveal the intensity and breadth of the debates generated by the permanent tension between the Constitution and the many ongoing conflicts of the Revolution. Set within and beyond the government and the two legislative chambers, the debates feature numerous conflicts central to the French Revolution including the composition and functions of the public powers, the legitimacy of exceptional laws, the regulation of the press and freedom of religion. This sustained focus on the relationship between the political nation and the Constitution provides a fresh reading of the political culture of the Directory.
The Afterlives of the Terror explores how those who experienced the mass violence of the French Revolution struggled to come to terms with it. Focusing on the Reign of Terror, Ronen Steinberg challenges the presumption that its aftermath was characterized by silence and enforced collective amnesia. Instead, he shows that there were painful, complex, and sometimes surprisingly honest debates about how to deal with its legacies. As The Afterlives of the Terror shows, revolutionary leaders, victims' families, and ordinary citizens argued about accountability, retribution, redress, and commemoration. Drawing on the concept of transitional justice and the scholarship on the major traumas of the t...
This book invites scholars and students alike to reconsider the transition from the French Revolution to Napoleon. This period is often described in terms of social chaos, ineffectual government, and democratic disappointment. Rather than simply trying to efface this image, this collection explores the ambiguities and continuities of the period from 1794 to 1814. Such an approach offers numerous insights into the problems of a post-revolutionary order where high ideals confronted harsh realities.
Challenging scholarly emphasis on French Revolutionary violence, this book instead examines the prevalence of peaceful, democratic methods in Parisian protest.
Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, A Virtue for Courageous Minds examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. Aurelian Craiutu begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. He then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectua...
This book provides a new perspective on the historical importance of a series of provincial rebellions in France after the Revolution of 1830. It demonstrates their crucial role in the development of popular ideas about liberty and democracy in modern France. Hobbs shows how the Duchesse de Berry’s rebellion in 1832 and the Lyon insurrections of 1831 and 1834 inspired competing visions of liberty defined through discourses about gender and emotion. In particular, he illustrates how political groups, including liberals, legitimists, and republicans, used representations of gender and emotion to justify their roles in rebellions and to contest the meaning of liberty. Rather than being direct...
A Companion to the French Revolution comprises twenty-nine newly-written essays reassessing the origins, development, and impact of this great turning-point in modern history. Examines the origins, development and impact of the French Revolution Features original contributions from leading historians, including six essays translated from French. Presents a wide-ranging overview of current historical debates on the revolution and future directions in scholarship Gives equally thorough treatment to both causes and outcomes of the French Revolution