early in her book she posits that in its early stages the American Revolution was really a counter-revolution: what Franklin and the Adams cousins wanted was a restoration of their rights as Englishmen, which Parliament had ignored bit by bit.
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 14 July 2013 13:31 (ten years ago) link
I've always assumed that British royal power, compared to the French equivalent, was weakened since the Civil War and Cromwell, in a way that the French wasn't. So yeah, that quote makes sense.
But I still think the American and French revolutions are more different than they are similar, because one is a colony fighting for independence, that leaves the metropolis intact, whereas the other is a complete shake-up of the homeland. I don't think the Americans needed a terror because in that case the English King wasn't as bothered as the French King.
― cardamon, Sunday, 14 July 2013 13:35 (ten years ago) link
Also French revolutionary terror vs slave trade and treatment of native americans, that's another angle.
― cardamon, Sunday, 14 July 2013 13:38 (ten years ago) link
oh yeah the thesis of the book is explaining the uniqueness of the American revolution -- and why the French, Chinese, and Russian ones were bloody, protracted, and lead to various kinds of 18 Brumaires.
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 14 July 2013 13:47 (ten years ago) link
glorious revolution deserves some mention also, esp to the extent the american revolution is just an extension of that made more radical thru ideological bottleneck created by geography (mangling gordon wood there but whatever). there's also a post-revolution purge w/ loyalists losing property and effectively exiled iirc (and who knows maybe treaty of paris moved the goalposts to 'yeah fuck that we're taking their land' from 'yeah fuck that we're taking their heads'). you eventually even have effective one party rule from jefferson (or at the very latest hartford convention) to whenever the whigs arise (like one election before william henry harrison i think?). also obv big difference between american and french/russian revolutions: george washington.
― balls, Sunday, 14 July 2013 16:09 (ten years ago) link
and John Tyler came out of the closet as a Dem as soon as the old man pooped.
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 14 July 2013 17:46 (ten years ago) link
I don't think the Americans needed a terror because in that case the English King wasn't as bothered as the French King.
Tell that to the loyalists who were forced to emigrate
― Lectures of Pelé (Michael White), Monday, 15 July 2013 14:52 (ten years ago) link
The American revolution is hardly a revolution, though, is it? More like a fight for independence. More akin to India than France.
― Frederik B, Monday, 15 July 2013 15:08 (ten years ago) link
it could plausibly be argued that america had two revolutions -- the civil war being the second and much more radical one.
ironically the british 'terror' against british civilians under pitt the younger that happened during the french revolution era -- suspension of habeas corpus, mass arrests of radicals and dissidents -- was probably much worse than anything experienced by the american colonists under george iii.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 15 July 2013 20:42 (ten years ago) link
Obviously Danton was kind of a cool dude too, though I think he gets a bit of a bad rap bcz of depardieu.
― doctor, doctor, what's in my shirt (askance johnson), Tuesday, February 26, 2013 3:52 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Was thinking about watching this. Bad?
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Tuesday, 5 November 2013 23:26 (ten years ago) link
also some classic zizek here on Robespierre (taken from a BBC docu on the bro which is a solid little hour of fun)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orv1kmkiEpk
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Tuesday, 5 November 2013 23:29 (ten years ago) link
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/05/robespierre/?insrc=hpma
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 10:43 (ten years ago) link
hmm, can i enjoy that as poetry and hate it as history?
― coign of wantage (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 11:06 (ten years ago) link
You have my approval :)
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 11:46 (ten years ago) link
So Jonathan Israel has apparantly written a book about the revolution, in which he claims that Robbespierre and his cronies, rather than being thought of as left wing reformators run amok, should be thought of as proto-fascists, believing in mob rule and the ability of priviliged individuals to perceive and embody the will of the people. Then the girondists become the left wing intellectuals instead. And boy, do I want to believe in that, it makes so much sense, and put all the bloodshed on right-wing beliefs. But checking up on it, the girondists were the war-party, which really might be the central disaster of the period, as far as I can tell. So yeah, can't really get it to work out.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:05 (ten years ago) link
the ability of priviliged individuals to perceive and embody the will of the people
this is kind of the central aporia of The Social Contract tbf to the lads
― coign of wantage (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:07 (ten years ago) link
Yes, Robbespierre was supremely Roussauian. Apparantly, that's a no-go in Israel's world.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:08 (ten years ago) link
Know nothing about the French Revolution, but Israel's not an interpreter I trust, judging from the previous books – I've read good chunks of the first two Enlightenment ones (Radical/Contested), and they feel like a lot of evidence shoved together to fit a sympathetic but not particularly tenable thesis.
― woof, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:22 (ten years ago) link
Rousseau's been described as a proto-Fascist since Fascism happened, so Israel's stance here isn't uncommon
― coign of wantage (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:23 (ten years ago) link
unfair, but not uncommon, i meant to add
― coign of wantage (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:24 (ten years ago) link
dunno if Bertrand Russell originated this line of thought but he lays the tar and feathers onto Rousseau pretty severely in his History of Western Philosophy iirc
― coign of wantage (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:25 (ten years ago) link
feel like the Queen thread is appropriate
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:26 (ten years ago) link
so… in Israel's terms, would Robespierre be an inheritor of the 'moderate enlightenment' (which in his eyes is bad and wrong and not actually Enlightenment)? As opposed to the radical materialist/democratic/toleration package (which iirc, for israel, is monolithic & the actual only Enlightenment) coming down through Spinoza etc?
― woof, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:29 (ten years ago) link
i have always considered Robespierre to be the pragmatist overcome by contingencies, i.e. Israel's "moderate enlightenment" backed up against a wall, i guess, whereas Saint-Just wd be yr hardcore rationalist. feel like Rousseau wants to be the latter but enjoyed the finer things too much to fully follow thru?
― coign of wantage (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:34 (ten years ago) link
Yeah, woof, that would be my guess. Haven't read any of his books, just the articles written by the commentator in my newspaper, who is a big Israel-fan, and writes big articles on his thougts every couple of months. It sounds to me a lot like you described it: 'like a lot of evidence shoved together to fit a sympathetic but not particularly tenable thesis.'
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:36 (ten years ago) link
Reading Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution last summer, I thought the only coherent parallel between Robespierre and Hitler was his abstemiousness. Otherwise his vision for France was closer to totalitarian necrocracy: "If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue,” Robespierre wrote, “its basis in a time of revolution is both virtue and terror — virtue, without which terror is disastrous, and terror, without which virtue has no power."
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:36 (ten years ago) link
not a very good book btw. I wrote at the time that it boasted the stupidest sentence I've ever seen in a preface: "“I have tried to be his friend and to see things from his point of view."
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:37 (ten years ago) link
that quote itself is wracked with desperation/maybe despair, i think
― coign of wantage (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:38 (ten years ago) link
Robespierre = what a monster, killing people left right and centre, paranoid that they were agents of the monarchy! They were agents of the monarchy
― cardamon, Saturday, 13 July 2013 02:32 (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i think this is closest to the truth, and beautifully put
― coign of wantage (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:39 (ten years ago) link
wtf with these results
― Treeship, Tuesday, 10 November 2015 02:10 (eight years ago) link
robespierre and marat over condorcet and madame roland? we should just do a poll that is like, the girondins vs. the montagne.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 10 November 2015 02:12 (eight years ago) link
babeuf was pretty interesting if you prefer a more radical figure.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 10 November 2015 02:17 (eight years ago) link
well, I don't know a great deal about these particulars, but if there's any truth to the Georg Buchner play then I'd put Georges Danton miles ahead of Robespierre
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Tuesday, 10 November 2015 17:50 (eight years ago) link
Idk about the play but there is a lot of truth to the proposition that robespierre was infinitely shittier than danton
― Treeship, Wednesday, 18 November 2015 00:12 (eight years ago) link
I'm listening to the Simon Schama Citizens audiobook at the moment. What fun!
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Wednesday, 18 November 2015 02:29 (eight years ago) link
Danton? Overrated. Robespierre deserves this little victory. Some important omissions though: Saint-André, Hérault de Séchelles, both Prieurs.
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Tuesday, 15 November 2016 19:19 (seven years ago) link
The Buchner was made into a Play for Today (dir by Alan Clarke btw). The speeches and detail are accurate.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 November 2016 19:24 (seven years ago) link
LOL wiki calls it "documentary theatre"
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 November 2016 19:25 (seven years ago) link
That's because Buchner nicked them verbatim, naughty boy.
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Tuesday, 15 November 2016 19:26 (seven years ago) link
Yeah couldn't recall whether it was nicked or not.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 November 2016 21:31 (seven years ago) link
Can't blame him for that, it's dynamite material.
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Wednesday, 16 November 2016 00:47 (seven years ago) link
Maximilien Robespierre, "On the Voting Rights of Actors and Jews",
"Things have been said to you about the Jews that are infinitely exaggerated and often contrary to history. How can the persecutions they have suffered at the hands of different people be held against them? These on the contrary are national crimes that we ought to expiate, by granting them imprescriptible human rights of which no human power could despoil them. Faults are still imputed to them, prejudices, exaggerated by the sectarian spirit and by interests. But to what can we really impute them but our own injustices? [...]?"
By the way, don't try googling Robespierre and Jews, that way lies madness.
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Saturday, 17 December 2016 19:04 (seven years ago) link
What is the best book French Revolution book apart from Scurr or Schama?
― calzino, Saturday, 17 December 2016 19:09 (seven years ago) link
Revolutionary Ideas by Jonathan Israel
― Treeship, Saturday, 17 December 2016 19:11 (seven years ago) link
Scurr, Schama and Israel? Filthy anti-Robespierrists!!!! I don't know about the entire revolution but I recently read "Twelve Who Ruled" by R.R. Palmer, about the Committee of Public Safety, and it ruled. I'd also recommend Peter McPhee's "Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life", 'I am the unhappiest man alive'.
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Saturday, 17 December 2016 19:17 (seven years ago) link
I liked Scurr's Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution: the mass murderer as a bore.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 17 December 2016 19:19 (seven years ago) link
However, three yeas later I'm still embarrassed that a scholar wrote, “I have tried to be his friend and to see things from his point of view” in a preface.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 17 December 2016 19:20 (seven years ago) link
Also reading (some of) Robespierre's speeches: full citizenship for Jews and Protestants (and, er, actors); abolition of slavery; abolition of capital punishment (irony); universal suffrage; progressive taxation; opposition to wars of conquest. Hello, Western democracy!
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Saturday, 17 December 2016 19:29 (seven years ago) link
... though they get progessively more wild-eyed and paranoid as they go on.
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Saturday, 17 December 2016 19:31 (seven years ago) link
I'm pretty sure the French revolution had more than enough implacable enemies, both foreign and domestic, to justify the revolutionaries' fears.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Saturday, 17 December 2016 19:36 (seven years ago) link