Two Traditions of Radical Democracy from the 1830 Revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 118-146
Author(s):  
Karma Nabulsi
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Leadership And Organization ◽  
The French Revolution

This chapter discusses the contrasting radical republican visions of Filippo Buonarotti and Godefroy Cavaignac at the time of 1830 Revolution in France and in opposition to Lafayette’s accommodation with liberal monarchy. These two revolutionary models shared a common admiration for the egalitarian Jacobin tradition of the French Revolution, but diverged sharply on the role of leadership and organization in republican movements, as well as the tactics and strategies to be pursued. Cavaignac’s inclusive, broad-based, and optimistic vision contrasted with Buonarotti’s closed, hierarchical, and sombre view. These discussions highlighted the creativity and robustness of radical republican political culture, as well as the key role the virtues played in shaping its political mobilizations during this period.

FIVE RECENT WORKS ON FRENCH POLITICAL HISTORY FROM 1789 TO 1851 Radicals: politics and republicanism in the French Revolution. By Leigh Whaley. Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 2000. Pp. x+212. ISBN 0-7509-2238-9. £20.00. Massacre at the Champ de Mars: popular dissent and political culture in the French Revolution. By David Andress. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2000. Pp. x+239. ISBN 0-86193-247-1. £35.00. Napoleon and Europe. Edited by Philip G. Dwyer. London: Longman, 2001. Pp. xxi+328. ISBN 0-582-31837-8. £14.99. Politics and theater: the crisis of legitimacy in Restoration France, 1815–1830. By Sheryl Kroen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Pp. xiv+394. ISBN 0-520-22214-8. £35.00. Paris between empires, 1814–1852. By Philip Mansel. London: John Murray, 2001. Pp. xi+559. ISBN 0-7195-5627-9. £25.00.

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 765-773
Author(s):  
R. S. ALEXANDER
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political History ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The French Revolution

Study of French political history for the period of 1789 to 1851 is exceedingly complex. Not only must one possess knowledge of a succession of regimes (with their varying constitutions, institutions, laws, and conventions), one must also grasp the essentials of political traditions such as royalism, republicanism, and liberalism, all of which altered over time, and familiarize oneself with a plethora of groups or sub groups, such as Montagnards and Girondins, authoritarian and Revolutionary Bonapartists, moderate and ultra royalists, that often adjusted their beliefs and positions according to circumstance. Matters become further complicated when one takes foreign relations into account, assessing the impact of France abroad or the role of foreign relations in shaping French domestic politics.

scholarly journals Culture, Strategy, and State-Centered Explanations of Revolution, 1789 and 1989

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Sharman
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Culture Strategy ◽  
The Way ◽  
The French Revolution

Social scientists studying revolutions have increasingly argued that explanations of revolutions that do not include subjective factors, such as culture, are inadequate. The failure to explain the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989 is forceful testimony to this inadequacy. But the way in which cultural aspects are being added to existing approaches tends to undermine past advances in studying revolutions. Recent historiography of the French Revolution provides an example of a more thorough-going approach to political culture. A productive synthesis that both preserves past advances and better explains the revolutions of 1989 is achieved by analyzing the effects of cultural change on state elites.

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ambrogio Caiani
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Phase ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Passive Resistance ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Complex Question ◽  
The French Revolution

The important role played by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the radicalization of the early phase of the French Revolution has never been in doubt. Most histories continue to focus on the regal couple’s real, and supposed, role in fomenting counter-revolution at home and especially abroad. This chapter engages with the complex question of the dwindling fortunes of Louis XVI’s monarchy from a more domestic angle. It focuses on that neglected, though crucial, year of 1790 which witnessed the failure to erect a viable constitutional settlement. It became impossible to accommodate both Crown and assembly in a viable working relationship. Essentially, the king’s distrust for the deputies, who had little by little arrogated his remaining powers, proved insurmountable. The monarchy’s passive resistance to the revolution’s early reform programme and political culture became increasingly unpopular. This created a radicalized and tension-filled atmosphere which pushed the revolution into hitherto unexpected directions.

Taste

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Weir ◽  
Jane Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The French Revolution

This article examines the confluence of cuisine and the culture of decadence by first describing the difficulty of identifying any type of food as inherently “decadent” in physiological terms. After acknowledging that the meaning of “decadence” depends on moral, social, and aesthetic contexts, the article focuses on the dissemination of aristocratic tastes in food following the French Revolution, when chefs who had formerly cooked for nobility opened their own restaurants; on the development of the idea of the gourmand subsequent to the publication of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s Physiologie du Goût (The Physiology of Taste, 1825); on Charles Baudelaire’s decadent response to Brillat-Savarin in Les Paradis Artificiels (Artificial Paradises, 1860); on the role of Roman history in the development of popular conceptions of decadent cuisine; and on J.-K. Huysmans’s surprisingly limited interest in “decadent dining” in À rebours (Against Nature, 1884), despite his use of elaborate food metaphors to describe the literature of decadence.

Private Crime, Public Madness

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Étienne Balibar
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Penal Code ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Recent Version ◽  
The French Revolution

This chapter attempts to clarify the questions raised by the relations between madness and justice, with reference to the heritage of the French Revolution. It also assesses the distinction between crime and madness and their respective treatments in public and private spheres. Indeed, what prompts current discussions on the function of the psychiatrist in the courtroom or on the role of judgments of civil capacity in the treatment of mental illness, is yet again the perspective offered by the reframing of the Penal Code (including the famous Article 64, which makes “insanity”—or, in the more recent version, “psychic or neuro-psychic disturbance”—into the principal operator of the nullification of a crime or a delict, either in its juridical reality or in its penal consequences).

Freedom and the French Revolution

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-65
Author(s):  
John Skorupski
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Catholic Ethic ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Narrative Account ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Two great revolutions set the stage for late modern ethics: the French Revolution and the philosophical revolution of Kant. This chapter studies the events and conflicts of ideas in the French Revolution and its aftermath in France. It gives a narrative account of the Revolution from 1789 to 1804. Three broad ethical stances are distinguished: the feudal-Catholic ethic of the monarch and his allies, the impartial individualism of the Enlightenment, and the Rousseauian radical-democracy of the Jacobins. Under the violent political conflicts between these views lies a resilient philosophical conflict: between impartial individualism and a generic stance which this study identifies as ‘eudaimonistic holism’. The feudal-Catholic ethic and radical-democracy are two very different forms of it. Hegelian ethics will turn out to be a third.

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