Making Terrorism Thinkable: The Philosophy of the Act and Its European Reception

This chapter challenges the widespread assumption that terrorist ideology was invented in the mid-nineteenth century by such figures as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin. Instead, the chapter argues, the foundations of terrorism were laid at the end of the eighteenth century by the Enlightenment philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte and his disciples, who in turn exerted a strong influence on later radical thinkers. In showing how the intellectual reverberations of the French Revolution gave rise to anarchist ideology as well as acts of terrorism in Germany, the chapter traces a link between the state terror of the French Revolution and the emergence of insurgent terrorism.

The Theological Revival in The French Reformed Church, 1830–1852

Church History ◽

10.2307/3163184 ◽

1968 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

pp. 36-49

Author(s):

J. Lynn Osen

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

July Monarchy ◽

Second Republic ◽

Financial Position ◽

Reformed Church ◽

The French Reformed Church merged from the period of the French Revolution and Napoleon stengthened by government recognition and support but weakened by the ideological offensive of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Although it enjoyed a secure official and financial position, it had yet to reconcile itself intellectually with the contrasting currents of eighteenth-century rationalism and nineteenth-century romanticism. This process of assimilation and reconciliation took place after 1815 and culminated, during the July Monarchy and the Second Republic, in a theological awakening and renewal.

George's Hive and the Georgian Hinge

Browning Institute Studies ◽

10.1017/s009247250000345x ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 14 ◽

pp. 37-69

Author(s):

Robert L. Patten

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

Social Thought ◽

The State ◽

The People ◽

Stable Class ◽

Parliamentary Reform ◽

Class Hierarchies ◽

Second Wave ◽

Victorian political and social thought was shaped to some extent in response to the French Revolution and the Regency. One widely circulated mid-nineteenth-century emblem of the State is George Cruikshank's The British Bee Hive, which he designed in 1840 during a second wave of Chartist agitation whose origins and program extend backward into the first decades of the century (Fig. I). The Bee Hive was not published, however, until twenty-seven years later, on the eve of the second Reform Bill, when Cruikshank's “Penny Political Picture for the People” gave him an opportunity to address his public one more time “with a few words upon Parliamentary Reform” and the constitutional subjects that had preoccupied him “for upwards of fifty years.” As an expression of populous enterprise and the stable class hierarchies of the British bourgeois monarchy, George Cruikshank's beehive embodies in its design and accompanying letterpress not only his notions about the second Reform Bill, but also ideas growing out of earlier political, social, and graphic controversies.

Preaching, a Ponytail, and an Enthusiast: Rethinking the Public Sphere's Subversiveness in Eighteenth-century Prussia

Central European History ◽

10.1163/1569161043419271 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 37 (4) ◽

pp. 544-567 ◽

Author(s):

Michael J. Sauter

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Public Sphere ◽

French Revolution ◽

The State ◽

Social Spaces ◽

The Public ◽

Reading Clubs ◽

Recent work on the eighteenth-century public sphere has recast the debate about the Enlightenment's responsibility for the French Revolution. Historians have argued that the print public sphere and its concomitant forms of sociability, such as salons, reading clubs, and coffee houses created social spaces from which criticism of the state emerged. This elite criticism corroded the Old Regime's foundations and the revolutionary crash of 1789, if it was not directly the intellectuals' fault, was sufficiently related to their mental labors to show that enlightened publicness had consequences.

The New Elites. Questions about Political, Social, and Cultural Reconstruction after the Terror

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199639748.013.032 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Jean-Luc Chappey

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

The State ◽

The Political ◽

Common People ◽

Cultural Reconstruction ◽

Nineteenth Century France ◽

The Common ◽

Changing Attitudes ◽

Was the French Revolution the victory of an all-conquering bourgeoisie that made up the foundation of the nineteenth-century France of the ‘notables’? How far did the older elites of the ancien régime succeed in taking part in the political, social and cultural reordering of the first decades of the new century? This chapter examines the significance of these questions in relation to the construction and legitimation of elite power after the fall of Robespierre. Exploring both political and intellectual developments, it reveals the dynamics which account for the major rupture between the dominance of a republican elite under the Directory, and the foundations of the power of the Empire’s so-called ‘Granite masses’. Study of the various components of elite domination involves not merely scrutiny of the role played by the state, but also of changing attitudes towards the common people, against whom the evolving position of the elite was constructed.

Hellenism in the Enlightenment

The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199286140.013.0014 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 165-172 ◽

Author(s):

Paul Cartledge

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

European History ◽

The Political ◽

The Enlightenment ◽

Political Traditions ◽

History Of ◽

This article moves past the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and, in particular, to the French Revolution, which crystallized an important, if not fully understood, moment in the history of Hellenism. It shows how the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the inspiration for so many of the French revolutionaries, were simultaneously proto-democratic and pro-Spartan. In this respect, Rousseau marks a complex breakthrough in the political traditions of Hellenism, which were, for much of European history until the eighteenth century, anti-democratic and pro-Spartan.

CONFESSIONAL MODERNITY: NICOLA SPEDALIERI, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, C.1775–1800

Modern Intellectual History ◽

10.1017/s1479244318000549 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 17 (3) ◽

pp. 677-705

Author(s):

GLAUCO SCHETTINI

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Public Opinion ◽

Political Culture ◽

French Revolution ◽

Catholic Church ◽

Decisive Role ◽

The State ◽

Modern Culture ◽

Revolutionary Politics ◽

This article reconsiders the Catholic reaction to the French Revolution, focusing on Nicola Spedalieri's On the Rights of Man (1791) and on the debate that its publication sparked in Italy and beyond. The outbreak of the Revolution and the polarization of public opinion between the supporters of the new regime and its relentless opponents convinced Spedalieri, a well-reputed Catholic theologian, of the need to find a via media between these two extremes. Assuming the re-Christianization of the postrevolutionary world as his goal, Spedalieri argued that some aspects of revolutionary political culture were acceptable from a Catholic standpoint as long as the revolutionaries, in turn, agreed to abandon secularization and to uphold the traditional confessional organization of the state. It was not modernity itself, he claimed, that should be rejected, but secularization, for a different modernity from that conceived by the revolutionaries—a confessional modernity, combining revolutionary politics and confessional states—was possible. Far from gaining immediate acceptance, Spedalieri's ideas were harshly criticized during the 1790s and then set aside by the triumph of reactionary Catholicism during the Restoration. However, they resurfaced later in the nineteenth century and ultimately played a decisive role in the development of the church's attitudes toward modern culture, for they carved a path for Catholics to fight secularization from within and to reshape modernity accordingly.

Iceland in the Eighteenth Century: An Island Outpost of Europe?

Sjuttonhundratal ◽

10.7557/4.2619 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

pp. 11 ◽

Author(s):

Anna Agnarsdóttir

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

Government Policy ◽

Western Europe ◽

The State ◽

The Other ◽

Early Nineteenth Century ◽

European Continent ◽

European Languages ◽

The Enlightenment

The aim is to define Iceland’s relationship with Europe during the eighteenth century. Though Iceland, an island in the mid-Atlantic, was geographically isolated from the European continent, it was in most respects an integral part of Europe. Iceland was not much different from western Europe except for the notable lack of towns and a European-style nobility. However, there was a clearly – defined elite and by the end of the eighteenth century urbanisation had become government policy. Iceland was also remote in the sense that the state of knowledge among the Europeans was slight and unreliable. However, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, Danish and French expeditions were sent to Iceland while British scientists began exploring the island with the result that by the early nineteenth century an excellent choice of books was available in the major European languages giving up-to-date accounts of Iceland. On the other hand the Icelanders were growing ever closer to Europe, by the end of the century for instance adopting fashionable European dress. Iceland’s history always followed western trends, its history more or less mirroring that of western Europe.

Early-Nineteenth-Century Reactions to Benthamism

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ◽

10.2307/3679125 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 34 ◽

pp. 47-69 ◽

Author(s):

J. R. Dinwiddy

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

House Of Commons ◽

Early Nineteenth Century ◽

Controversial Subject ◽

IN 1965 a very distinguished Bentham scholar read a paper to this society on Bentham and the French Revolution. During the period dealt with by that paper Bentham became an honorary citizen of France (largely through his friendship with Brissot), but he remained little known either in Britain or on the Continent. Thirty years later, he was world-famous. In 1825 members of the Colombian Congress in Bogot were quoting Bentham at each other much as eighteenth-century Englishmen had quoted Cicero in the House of Commons; and among the leaders of the Decembrist mutiny of the same year in St Petersburg were men who confessed to having been influenced by Bentham's works. In 1829 a weekly newspaper was appearing at Boston, Massachusetts, which carried his phrase the greatest happiness of the greatest number as its motto, while a journal called L'Utilitaire was being published at Geneva to propagate his ideas. This paper will not tackle the large and controversial subject of the extent and significance of Bentham's influence. It will address itself to questions that are more limited, though they have some bearing on the larger topic. These questions are: how did those outside the circle of his followers react to his ideas, and what attempts were made to challenge or refute them?

Two Neoclassical Monuments in Modern France: The Panthéon and Arc de Triomphe

Cultures of Commemoration ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197264669.003.0005 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

AVNER BEN-AMOS

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

The Other ◽

Close Reading ◽

Fifth Republic ◽

Modern France ◽

The Right ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Panthéon and Arc de Triomphe are two neoclassical Parisian monuments that were created in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, respectively, and which have ever since been main sites of French official memory. However, they never had the same share of the stage: when one was prominent, the other was marginal, and vice versa. This chapter delineates the parallel histories of these monuments and analyses the relationship between them, from the French Revolution to the Fifth Republic. Although they are usually ascribed to different political camps – the Pantheon to the left and the Arc de Triomphe to the right – a close reading of the context of various commemorative acts that were performed inside and around these monuments shows that their identity was more complex.

Sans-Culottes

10.23943/princeton/9780691180809.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Michael Sonenscher

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

Historical Narrative ◽

Popular Politics ◽

Urban Violence ◽

The Enlightenment ◽

History Of ◽

First Time ◽

Revolutionary Period ◽

This is a bold new history of the sans-culottes and the part they played in the French Revolution. It tells for the first time the real story of the name now usually associated with urban violence and popular politics during the revolutionary period. By doing so, it also shows how the politics and economics of the revolution can be combined to form a genuinely historical narrative of its content and course. To explain how an early eighteenth-century salon society joke about breeches and urbanity was transformed into a republican emblem, this book examines contemporary debates about Ciceronian, Cynic, and Cartesian moral philosophy, as well as subjects ranging from music and the origins of government to property and the nature of the human soul. By piecing together this now forgotten story, the book opens up new perspectives on the Enlightenment, eighteenth-century moral and political philosophy, the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the political history of the French Revolution itself.