Moderation and the “Intertwining of Powers”

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelian Craiutu
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Arbitrary Power ◽  
Special Place ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Monarchy ◽  
The French Revolution

This chapter examines political moderation in the writings of Jacques Necker, with particular emphasis on his views on constitutionalism. Necker occupies a special place in the history of political moderation. He defended the principles of constitutional monarchy successively against the king, the nobility, and the representatives of the people. Necker's works, composed at different stages of the French Revolution, articulated a political agenda revolving around the idea of moderation in opposition to arbitrary power and violence. The chapter first provides an overview of Necker's ideas before discussing his theoretical statements on reforming the Old Regime. It then explains Necker's trimming agenda and the consequences of immoderation before turning to the French constitution of 1791 and Necker's critique of the constitutions of 1795 and 1799. It also explores Necker's arguments regarding complex sovereignty, equality, and separation of powers.

Contravention and Creation of Law during the French Revolution

2021 ◽  
pp. 481-495
Author(s):  
Edward Kolla
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
The French Revolution

Moments of infraction of international law can generate new law. These can also be important examples of contingency in the history of international law, if the process occurs as an unintended consequence of actors’ aims. The French Revolution was just such an instance. The transmission of sovereignty from the person of the king to the collective populace of France was a central feature of the Revolution. Unplanned by revolutionaries, the principle of popular sovereignty bled into international law and became a new justification for claims to territory—a precept which, by the twentieth century, came to be called national self-determination. This chapter explores how the will of the people became a force in international law, inadvertently from the perspective of revolutionaries, as a result of changing public opinion, claims of jurisprudential and moral legitimacy, and military force.

Ancient Revolutions in the Literature of Polish Romanticism

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Maciej Junkiert
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
European Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Traditions ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
Literary Reception

This article aims to examine the Polish literary reception of the French Revolution during the period of Romanticism. Its main focus is on how Polish writers displaced their more immediate experiences of revolutionary events onto a backdrop of ‘ancient revolutions’, in which revolution was described indirectly by drawing on classical traditions, particularly the history of ancient Greeks and Romans. As this classical tradition was mediated by key works of German and French thinkers, this European context is crucial for understanding the literary strategies adopted by Polish authors. Three main approaches are visible in the Polish reception, and I will illustrate them using the works of Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859), Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849) and Cyprian Norwid (1821–1883). My comparative study will be restricted to four works: Krasiński's Irydion and Przedświt (Predawn), Słowacki's Agezylausz (Agesilaus) and Norwid's Quidam.

‘The greatest irregular’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Scurr
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

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.

The Glut of Doctors in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France

1977 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
George D. Sussman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Professional Services ◽  
Success Story ◽  
The West ◽  
Professional Careers ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Attraction ◽  
The French Revolution

The history of the professions in the West since the French Revolution is a success story, a triumph, but not always an easy one. From the beginning of the nineteenth century in continental Europe the professions had a great attraction as careers presumably open to talent, but the demand for professional services developed more slowly than interest in professional careers and more slowly than the schools that supplied the market. Lenore O'Boyle has drawn attention to this discrepancy and the revolutionary potential of the frustrated careerists produced by it.

The Glory and the Sorrow

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Tackett
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Small Time ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Ordinary Citizen ◽  
Best Friend ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Intermediary ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

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.

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