Clausewitz and the Revolution

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-199
Author(s):  
Daniel Moran
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
First World War ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Object ◽  
Decisive Influence ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

From the appearance of On War in 1832 until the end of the First World War, Carl von Clausewitz was known chiefly as the most profound, but also the most enigmatic member of a generation of strategists whose common object had been to discover and explain the secrets of Napoleonic warfare. This interpretation, although not entirely wrong, has lately come to seem one-sided, initially as the result of the work of Hans Rothfels in the 1920s, and most decidedly so in light of the more recent, comprehensive analysis of Clausewitz's life and ideas by Peter Paret. Today, most students of the man and his work would agree that the French Revolution itself, and not simply its Napoleonic aftermath, was the decisive influence on the development of Clausewitz's ideas about war.

The French Revolution, the Union of Avignon, and the Challenges of National Self-Determination

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 717-747
Author(s):  
Edward James Kolla
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Domestic Affairs ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World ◽  
The French Revolution

National self-determination was one of the most important and controversial concepts in twentieth century international relations and law. The principle has had a remarkable history, from Woodrow Wilson's assertion that the peoples of Eastern Europe ought to form their own national states in place of ruined multiethnic and multilinguistic empires after the First World War; to decolonization after the Second World War, when populations worldwide invoked a right to throw off the yoke of imperialism; to the breakup of and war in the former Yugoslavia at century's end in precisely the same area in which a nation's self-determination was first intended to be a panacea for the region's diverse peoples. And yet, national self-determination, if not always called that, has a much longer lineage. Some note its earliest appearance in 1581, when the Dutch claimed independence from Hapsburg Spain. However, it was not until the French Revolution when, as Alfred Cobban remarks, “the nation state ceased to be a simple historical fact and became the subject of a theory,” that a people's right to determine its destiny in international as in domestic affairs was first articulated and applied. The clearest instance of this articulation and application during the Revolution was the union of Avignon and France.

State and Church

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Tregenza
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Church And State ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Spiritual Embodiment ◽  
First World ◽  
The Church

Much nineteenth-century political theory was preoccupied with relations between state and Church. This chapter examines some of the leading European theories of Church and state many of which influenced and reflected broader public debates and institutional developments. In response to the French Revolution and to a series of liberal and democratic reforms various attempts were made to renew the Church by emphasizing its role as the spiritual embodiment of the nation. While in some contexts such as France this would provoke a secular reaction and ultimately a separation of Church and state, elsewhere increasing religious pluralization would generate pluralist state forms and corresponding theories of the plural state. The central themes covered include: ultramontanism to liberal Catholicism in France; the Hegelian theory of the state; liberal Anglicanism and the Broad Church movement; and theories of the plural state from the 1890s to the First World War.

Stray Dogs and the Making of Modern Paris*

2017 ◽  
Vol 234 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Pearson
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Stray Dogs ◽  
The Public ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Stray Dog ◽  
The City ◽  
First World

Abstract This article traces the policing of stray dogs in Paris from the French Revolution to the outbreak of the First World War. It argues that long-standing rabies anxieties dovetailed with the emergence of the public hygiene movement, fears of rapid urbanization, vagrancy and crime, modernization projects, and the veneration of the pedigree pet dog to cast the stray dog as an unwelcome presence on the city’s streets. Parisian public hygienists and authorities turned strays into a problem that they would solve to make the city safe, clean and modern. Combating strays became a matter of social defence and medical police.

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