Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805–59)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
L.A. Siedentop
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
State Power ◽  
Local Autonomy ◽  
Political Liberty ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Political Career ◽  
Passionate Commitment ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
The French Revolution

Tocqueville once observed that his temperament was the ‘least philosophical’ imaginable. He meant that his mind was governed by passionate commitment, a determination to defend civil and political liberty against threats resulting from social levelling and the growth of state power. Thus, Tocqueville’s most famous work, De la démocratie en Amérique (Democracy in America) (1835, 1840), did not spring from detached curiosity about US institutions. It was rather an attempt to draw lessons from US society and government which could be used to reform French institutions. His belief in local autonomy – he called the New England township a ‘school for citizens’ – led him to develop a distinctive conception of liberty that combined elements of ancient citizenship and modern autonomy. That conception also shaped his own political career and later writings. In L’Ancien régime et la révolution (The Old Regime and the French Revolution) (1856) Tocqueville traced bitter class conflicts in France to the destruction of local autonomy long before 1789.

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.

PROTESTANTISM AND PROGRESS IN THE YEAR XII: CHARLES VILLERS'SESSAY ON THE SPIRIT AND INFLUENCE OF LUTHER'S REFORMATION(1804)

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL PRINTY
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Social Struggle ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Broad Interest ◽  
The French Revolution

This article examines Charles Villers'sEssay on the Spirit and Influence of Luther's Reformation(1804) in its intellectual and historical context. Exiled from France after 1792, Villers intervened in important French and German debates about the relationship of religion, history, and philosophy. The article shows how he took up a German Protestant discussion on the meaning of the Reformation that had been underway from the 1770s through the end of the century, including efforts by Kantians to seize the mantle of Protestantism for themselves. Villers's essay capitalized on a broad interest in the question of Protestantism and its meaning for modern freedom around 1800. Revisiting the formation of the narrative of Protestantism and progress reveals that it was not a logical progression from Protestant theology or religion but rather part of a specific ideological and social struggle in the wake of the French Revolution and the collapse of the Old Regime.

NOVEL NARRATIVES, NEW RESEARCH: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AFTER THE BICENTENNIAL

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-252
Author(s):  
GARY SAVAGE
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Family Romance ◽  
Duke University ◽  
New Research ◽  
The French Revolution

Revolution and political conflict in the French navy, 1789–1794. By William S. Cormack. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 343. £40.00.The family romance of the French revolution. By Lynn Hunt. London: Routledge, 1992. Pp. 213. £19.99.The French idea of freedom: the old regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789. Edited by Dale Van Kley. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. Pp. 436. £35.00.A rhetoric of bourgeois revolution: the Abbé Sieyes and What is the third estate ? By William H. Sewell, Jr. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994. Pp. 221. £10.95.The genesis of the French revolution: a global-historical interpretation. By Bailey Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 268. £12.95.The new regime: transformations of the French civic order, 1789–1820s. By Isser Woloch. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1994. Pp. 536. £27.50.

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.

A Fiction of the French Nation

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ashburn Miller
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
French Nation ◽  
Fictional Representations ◽  
The French Revolution

This article examines fictional representations of the emigration of the French Revolution. It focuses on the novels Eugénie et Mathilde, Les Petits émigrés, and Le Retour d’un émigré, which were published in France between 1797 and 1815 as émigrés were seeking to return to the nation they had fled. It argues that these novels should be interpreted as making claims about the ability of émigrés to reintegrate within the nation. The sentimental novels responded to two key anxieties about the émigrés’ return by demonstrating that émigrés had not been transformed into foreigners during their time abroad and that they were not seeking to reconstitute Old Regime France. These novelists redefined the émigré as an isolated and pitiable wanderer, and redefined France as a nation bound by common suffering and sentiment.

scholarly journals Early Free-Thinking Societies in America

1918 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-284
Author(s):  
Woodbridge Riley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The French Revolution

The rise and fall of early free-thinking societies in America offers a picture of considerable interest. The background is that of eighteenth-century deism—with the neutral tints of unbelief; the high lights are furnished by the fires of the French Revolution, the shadows by the dark fires of reaction. Across this canvas march many figures—rationalists like Franklin and Washington, ardent innovators like Jefferson, and a host of lesser characters—Frenchmen like Genêt and his Jacobins, Anglo-Americans like Paine and Houston, plain Americans like Elihu Palmer, with his Principles of Nature, English reformers like Robert Owen and his sons with their liberalizing communism; and ever opposing this army of radicals, the conservative elements—heads of colleges, leaders of the bar, and, as particular defenders of the faith, the clergy of New England.

The Jews, the Revolution, and the Old Regime in French Anti-Semitism and Durkheim's Sociology

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 248-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Alan Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
French Society ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Alternative Vision ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The French Revolution

The relationship between European sociology and European anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is investigated through a case study of one sociologist, Émile Durkheim, in a single country, France. Reactionary and radical forms of anti-Semitism are distinguished and contrasted to Durkheim's sociological perspective. Durkheim's remarks about the Jews directly addressed anti-Semitic claims about them, their role in French society, and their relationship to modernity. At the same time, Durkheim was engaged in a reinterpretation of the French Revolution and its legacies that indirectly challenged other tenets of French anti-Semitism. In sum, Durkheim's work contains direct and indirect responses to reactionary and radical forms of anti-Semitism, and together these responses form a coherent alternative vision of the relationship between modernity and the Jews.

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