Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Paul Rusnock ◽  
Jan Šebestík

Bolzano’s life coincides almost exactly with what has been called the Age of Revolutions. Born in 1781, he lived through the revolution from above launched by Joseph II in 1780, the French Revolution, the triumphs and defeats of Napoleon, the conservative reaction embodied in the Metternich System, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, the July revolution of 1830, and finally the uprisings of 1848, the last year of his life. It was a time of exaggerations, of great hopes and fears, sudden reversals, and crushing disappointments, a time of vast enthusiasms and general confusion, as unprecedented forces were let loose upon a world almost completely unprepared for them. The world of letters was not spared, as authors strove to make their voices count in an ever more crowded and noisy public forum. Novelty was everywhere sought, overreach and passion common on all sides....

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 51-76
Author(s):  
G. P. Gooch

During the years immediately preceding the French Revolution Germany presented a curious spectacle of political decrepitude and intellectual rejuvenescence. The Holy Roman Empire, of which Voltaire caustically remarked that it was neither holy nor Roman nor an Empire, was afflicted with creeping paralysis. Its wheels continued to revolve; but the machinery was rusty and the output was small. ‘No Curtius,’ remarked Justus Möser, ‘leaps into the abyss for the preservation of the Imperial system.’ The prolonged duel between Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa destroyed whatever shadowy sentiment of unity had survived the wars of religion, and the short but stormy reign of Joseph II revealed to the world that the Imperial dignity had sunk into the tool and plaything of the house of Hapsburg. The Fürstenbund formally registered the emergence of a rival claimant for the hegemony of central Europe. But the springtime of Prussian greatness was merely the reflection of her ruler's dazzling personality. Mirabeau, who knew them both, described Frederick as all mind and his nephew all body. His death left Germany without a leader or a hero. Among the countless rulers who owed a nominal allegiance to the Emperor a few men of capacity and conscience, such as Ferdinand of Brunswick, Karl August of Weimar and Karl Friedrich of Baden, could be found; but the general level of character and intellect was low, and the scandals of courts and courtiers provoked disgust and indignation. The most docile people in Europe watched with impotent despair the orgies of the last Elector of Bavaria, the capricious tyranny of Karl Eugen of Württemberg, the insanity of Duke Karl of Zweibrücken, and the Byzantine decadence of the ecclesiastical Electors on the Rhine. On the eve of the Revolution the larger part of Germany was poor, ignorant, ill-governed and discontented.


Author(s):  
Timothy Tackett

The book describes the life and the world of a small-time lawyer, Adrien-Joseph Colson, who lived in central Paris from the end of the Old Regime through the first eight years of the French Revolution. It is based on over a thousand letters written by Colson about twice a week to his best friend living in the French province of Berry. By means of this correspondence, and of a variety of other sources, the book examines what it was like for an “ordinary citizen” to live through extraordinary times, and how Colson, in his position as a “social and cultural intermediary,” can provide insight into the life of a whole neighborhood on the central Right Bank, both before and during the Revolution. It explores the day-to-day experience of the Revolution: not only the thrill, the joy, and the enthusiasm, but also the uncertainty, the confusion, the anxiety, the disappointments—often all mixed together. It also throws light on some of the questions long debated by historians concerning the origins, the radicalization, the growth of violence, and the end of that Revolution.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 05-06
Author(s):  
Raimundo Nonato Ribeiro dos Santos

The COVID-19 pandemic, which was established in the world in that year 2020, is one of those breaking points that mark the history of humanity, as well as the discovery of fire, the invention of the press, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, world wars, among other moments. In common, both allowed a leap in the evolution and survival of humanity, transforming its entire social organization and spheres such as Education, Science, the Environment, Politics and Labor relations.


Author(s):  
Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was the dominant political thinker of the last quarter of the eighteenth century in England. His reputation depends less on his role as a practising politician than on his ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context of political theory. Above all, he commented on change. He tried to teach lessons about how change should be managed, what limits should not be transgressed, and what should be reverently preserved. Burke’s generation was much in need of advice on these matters. The Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, and catastrophically, the French Revolution presented challenges of terrible proportions. They could promise paradise or threaten anarchy. Burke was acutely aware of how high the stakes were. The Reflections on the Revolution in France was a dire warning of the consequences that would follow the mismanagement of change.


Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer

In 1792, the French Revolution became a thing in itself, an uncontrollable force that might eventually spend itself but which no one could direct or guide. The governments set up in Paris in the following years all faced the problem of holding together against forces more revolutionary than themselves. This chapter distinguishes two such forces for analytical purposes. There was a popular upheaval, an upsurge from below, sans-culottisme, which occurred only in France. Second, there was the “international” revolutionary agitation, which was not international in any strict sense, but only concurrent within the boundaries of various states as then organized. From the French point of view these were the “foreign” revolutionaries or sympathizers. The most radical of the “foreign” revolutionaries were seldom more than advanced political democrats. Repeatedly, however, from 1792 to 1799, these two forces tended to converge into one force in opposition to the French government of the moment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (11) ◽  
pp. 533-541
Author(s):  
Dr. Premila Koppalakrishnan

The world stands on the precarious edge of an innovative transformation that will on a very basic level modify the manner in which we live, work, and identify with each other. In its scale, degree, and unpredictability, the change will be not normal for anything mankind has encountered previously. We don't yet know exactly how it will unfurl, however one thing is clear: the reaction to it should be incorporated and exhaustive, including all partners of the worldwide nation, from the general population and private segments to the scholarly community and common society. It is The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the digital revolution. The digital revolution has opened way for many impacts. All of the emirates are experiencing the effects of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” This revolution reflects the velocity, scope, and systems impact of a digital transformation that is changing economies, jobs, and work as it is currently known. Characteristics of the revolution include a fusion of technologies across the physical, digital, and biological spheres.


Author(s):  
Ruth Scurr

Thomas Carlyle claimed that his history of the French Revolution was ‘a wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution …’. This chapter considers his stylistic approaches to creating the illusion of immediacy: his presentation of seemingly unmediated fact through the transformation of memoir and other kinds of historical record into a compelling dramatic narrative. Closely examining the ways in which he worked biographical anecdote into the fabric of his text raises questions about Carlyle’s wider historical purposes. Pressing the question of what it means to think through style, or to distinguish expressive emotive writing from abstract understanding, is an opportunity to reconsider Carlyle’s relation to his predecessors and contemporaries writing on the Revolution in English.


1990 ◽  
Vol 10 (x) ◽  
pp. 287-307
Author(s):  
Richard Cicchillo

The seven colloquia held at New York University’s Institute of French Studies during the Fall 1989 semester offered some new perspectives on the French Revolution, and took stock of various elements of French Society and history two hundred years after the taking of the Bastille.


Author(s):  
James Livesey

This chapter focuses on the French Revolution as one of the most important moments in the entangled history of local cosmopolitanisms. Such ideas as rights, property, and democracy were consciously articulated during the Revolution as universals with cosmopolitan spheres of application, and those ideas had profound global consequences over the following two centuries. Alongside this impact on states and legal structures, the Revolution also had direct effects in every community in France and touched communities outside the hexagon, from India to Ireland. The Revolution transformed the most general contexts, putting the nation-state rather than empire as the organizing principle at the heart of the international order, but it also put the most intimate experiences, such as family and emotion, under new light. The drama of the Revolution exemplified the power of ideas and the ambition to create a rational political order.


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