HI 31272

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THOUGHT

COURSE HANDBOOK 2009-10

Tutor:
Stuart

Professor
Jones
stuart.jones@manchester.ac.uk

CONTENTS
Basic Information about the Course
Aims and Learning Outcomes .............................................................................................. 3
Assessment .............................................................................................................................. 3
Office Hours ............................................................................................................................. 4
Workload .................................................................................................................................. 4
Resources ................................................................................................................................. 4
General Reading ...................................................................................................................... 4
Syllabus
1. The Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (5 Feb) .................................... 6
2. What kind of Revolution? Sieyes and What is the Third Estate? (12 Feb, 19 Feb)
8
3. Rights of Man (26 Feb) ................................................................................................ 10
4. The Limits of Citizenship (5 March) .......................................................................... 12
5. Constitutional Debates (12 March) ........................................................................... 13
6. Jacobinism and the Origins of the Terror (19 March) ........................................... 14
7. Conservatism and Counterrevolution (26 March, 23 April) ................................. 16
8. Postrevolutionary Liberalism: Benjamin Constant and Germaine de Stal (30
April, 7 May) .................................................................................................................. 18

BASIC INFORMATION ABOUT THE COURSE

Level 3 course unit, 20 credits, semester 2.
Tutor: Professor Stuart Jones (Samuel Alexander Building, S 2.23). I may be contacted
during office hours (see Blackboard or office door for details), or by e-mail:
stuart.jones@manchester.ac.uk
Timetable: Weekly seminar, Friday 9-11 in Samuel Alexander A202.
AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES
The course unit aims to examine the reorientation of social and political thought in the
era of the French Revolution through a close reading of key texts by major French
thinkers of the period and some attention to broader European debates.
On completion of the course, you should be able to demonstrate a broad understanding
of the main issues in French Revolutionary political thought and its legacy; a close
knowledge of selected major texts; and an ability to place these texts in their historical
and intellectual contexts.
ASSESSMENT
One essay (2000 words) is to be submitted for formative assessment, week 5
One essay (3000 words) is to be submitted for summative assessment, week 11 (50% of
the course assessment). Deadline: Wednesday 5th May.
A two-hour examination paper (50% of the course assessment). This will consist of two
parts. Section A will consist of three questions, one each on Sieyes, Constant, and
Maistre; Section B will consist of about six broader questions. You must answer one
question from each section.
Essay 1 will be closely based on one or more of the texts studied up to that point in the
course. Questions will be designed to be capable of being answered on the basis of
close reading of the texts with relatively limited secondary reading. Essay 2, by contrast,
will require more research and wider reading on your part: questions will typically require
you to go beyond the scope of the seminar topics. The documentary analysis is designed
to give you practice in advance of the gobbet question in the exam. In the exam the
essay questions will be framed so as to enable you to think comparatively (i.e. see links
between different thinkers, or between different topics).
Essay questions will be published on Blackboard.
Formatively assessed work (Essay 1) should be submitted through Blackboard (tbc).
Summatively assessed work (Essay 2) should be submitted in hard copy (2 copies) to the
School Undergraduate Office.
3

OFFICE HOURS
I am normally available to see students without appointment at the following times:
Thursdays 2-3
Fridays 11-12
Appointments at other times can be easily arranged by email.
WORKLOAD
This is a 20-credit course unit, which should therefore represent 200 hours work, along
these lines:
Seminar attendance and participation: 22 hours
Seminar preparation: 81 hours (roughly a full days work per seminar)
Essay 1: 25 hours
Essay 2: 35 hours
Revision: 35 hours
Exam: 2 hours
RESOURCES
It is essential that you should make yourself familiar with the following resources:
1. The Main Library collection ... obviously!
2. Electronic resources available via the library. The great majority of the journal articles
that appear on the course bibliography are available electronically, and the library
catalogue will take you there straightforwardly. These articles are marked [E] on this list.
A small but growing number of books are available electronically via the librarys
electronic resources. These are also marked [E]. Usually, the library catalogue links
directly to the E-book; but in some cases (e.g. the Cambridge Companions Online) you
need to access the book via Electronic Resources/Databases.
3. Blackboard site. This will be used to supply (a) core reading, where possible; (a) course
information, including updates; (b) background guidance to aid seminar preparation; (c)
digitized texts and links to online materials. Digitized texts available through Blackboard
are marked [BB] in this course guide.
GENERAL READING
4

If you have not previously studied French history in the period of the Revolution and its
aftermath, you need to acquire a familiarity with the broad chronological outlines and
enough knowledge of the detail to enable to recognize allusions in the texts we shall be
studying. There are a vast number of suitable books. Good places to start include:
CROOK, Malcolm (ed). Revolutionary France (2002), chs 1 & 2.
DOYLE, William. The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (2001).
JONES, Colin. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (2003) especially chs
5 and 8-11.
For more detail on particular themes and episodes:
DOYLE, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution (1990).
SUTHERLAND, D.M.G.. France 1789-1815: Revolution and Counterrevolution (1985)
For an interpretation which dovetails well with the themes of the course:
FURET, Franois. Revolutionary France 1770-1880 (1992).
The closest thing to a textbook for the coure is:
*NEIDLEMAN, Jason Andrew. The General Will is Citizenship. Inquiries into French Political
Thought (2001): a stimulating work which covers many of the thinkers and themes to be
studied in the course. Worth buying (at the time of writing it can be bought used for
under 6+pp via Amazon).
The following give broad coverage of French (and other) political ideas in this period:
GOLDSTEIN, Marc A. (ed). Social and Political Thought of the French Revolution: an
anthology of original texts (1997).
HAYWARD, Jack. After the French Revolution: six critics of democracy and nationalism
(1991), esp chs 1-3, 5.
Note also the following important works of reference. I have not as a rule included them
in the weekly bibliographies, but the three of them taken together contain useful
material on practically all the topics we shall cover.
FURET, Franois, and OZOUF, Mona (eds). Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution
(1989). Interpretative essays rather than mere dictionary entries on a wealth of topics
covering the aftermath of the Revolution as well as the Revolutionary period itself.
KORS, Alan Charles, (ed). Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (4 vols, 2003). This is
available both in hard copy and electronically via Oxford Reference Online (access this
through Electronic Books on the library website). Includes entries on many of the thinkers
and issues covered in the first half of the course.
MILLER, David (ed). The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought (1987), which is
available electronically through the library, contains useful short introductions to all the
major thinkers dealt with in the course.

SYLLABUS
5ththFebruary
12th February
19 February

Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution

Sieyes and What is the Third Estate?
Sieyes and What is the Third Estate?
5

26thth February
Rights of Man
5 thMarch
Limits of Citizenship
12th March
Constitutional Debates
19th March
Jacobinism and the Origins of the Terror
26rd March
Conservatism and Counter-Revolution
23th April
Conservatism and Counter-Revolution
30th April
Post-Revolutionary Liberalism: Constant and Stal
7 thMay
Post-Revolutionary Liberalism: Constant and Stal
14 May
Revision
The numbers below refer to the topics, not the week, since we shall spend two weeks
each on topics 2, 7 and 8 (i.e. those examined in Section A of the exam paper).
1. THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (5 FEB)
Well start with an introduction to the course what its about, how it works.
Well then explore the question of the intellectual origins of the Revolution. You are not
expected to acquire a detailed knowledge of pre-1789 ideas for this course but you will
need to understand the differences between the main strands of pre-revolutionary
political thought so as to be able to identify what happens to them in the revolutionary
period.
Preparation for the seminar
Read Rousseaus Social Contract (substantial extracts); also find out about the political
thought of Montesquieu and Voltaire (from encyclopaedia articles) and read Baker and/or
Linton. Consider the following questions:
Do you see any/all of these thinkers as revolutionary?
What kind of political programme, if any, can be derived from their thought?
How did their definitions of freedom differ?

KEY READING
ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract. Available in many different editions, and
online. I assume that many of you will have studied this text previously, e.g. on HIST
20182; if so, refresh your knowledge.
Plus the chapters by Baker and Linton below.
FURTHER READING
BAKER, Keith Michael. Inventing the French Revolution (1990), ch 1, pp. 12-27 [BB]
CHARTIER, Roger. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (1991).
6

COBBAN, Alfred. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution, in his Aspects of the
French Revolution (1968).
COBBAN, Alfred. Rousseau and the Modern State, 2nd edn (1964). See notably the
appendix on the Comte dAntraigues, a royalist who also claimed to be a disciple of
Rousseau.
DIJN, Annelien de. French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville (2008), ch
1.
DOYLE, William. Origins of the French Revolution (3rd edn 1999). Part 1 surveys the
historiography.
ECHEVERRIA, Durand. The pre-revolutionary influence of Rousseaus Contrat Social,
Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972), pp. 343-60 [E]
HAMPSON, Norman. The Heavenly City of the French Revolutionaries, in Colin Lucas
(ed), Rewriting the French Revolution (1991), pp. 46-68.
HAMPSON, Norman. Will and Circumstance: Montesquieu, Rousseau and the French
Revolution (1983).
JENNINGS, Jeremy. Rousseau, social contract and the modern Leviathan, in David
Boucher and Paul Kelly (eds), The Social Contract from Hobbes to Rawls (1994), pp. 115131 (relevant also for later topics)
JONES, Colin. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (2002), ch 5.
LEIGH, R.A. Rousseau, his publishers and the Contrat social, Bulletin of John Rylands
University Library of Manchester 66 (1984), 204-227.
LINTON, Marisa. The intellectual origins of the French Revolution, in Peter R. Campbell
(ed), The Origins of the French Revolution (2006), 139-159. [BB]
MANIN, Bernard. Rousseau, in F Furet and M Ozouf (eds), Critical Dictionary of the
French Revolution
McDONALD, Joan. Rousseau and the French Revolution 1762-1791 (1965)
McNEIL, G. The anti-revolutionary Rousseau, American Historical Review 58 (1953) [E]
McNEIL, G. The cult of Rousseau and the French Revolution, Journal of the History of
Ideas 6 (1945), pp. 197-212 [E]
NEIDLEMAN. Jason Andrew, The General Will is Citizenship, chs 4-5.
SONENSCHER, Michael. Enlightenment and revolution, Journal of Modern History 70
(1998), 371-383. [E]
SWENSON, James. On Jean-Jacques Rousseau considered as one of the first authors of
the Revolution (2000), esp ch 4. [BB]
TAYLOR, S.S.B. Rousseaus contemporary reputation in France, Studies on Voltaire and
the Eighteenth Century 27 (1963), pp. 1545-74.
WHATMORE, Richard. Rousseaus readers, History of European Ideas 27 (2001), 323-331
(review article) [E]

2. WHAT KIND OF REVOLUTION? SIEYES AND WHAT IS THE THIRD ESTATE? (12
FEB, 19 FEB)
The Abb Sieyess What is the Third Estate? was the most famous of the numerous
pamphlets published in the political crisis of 1788-9, and the only one that is still read.
Indeed it is increasingly viewed as a work of theoretical importance, as well as an
important polemical intervention.
Issues for discussion:
What was the texts polemical importance in the context of the political crisis of
1788-9 i.e. how did it address the urgent questions of the day? How did Sieyess
approach differ from other approaches? (e.g. Mounier see extract in Beik)
Why should be regard it as a work of enduring theoretical importance, rather than
simply a tract for its time? How radical was it?
How should we classify Sieyes as a political thinker? Was he a liberal? A nationalist?
When reading the text, pay particular attention to the following:
Sieyess opposition to the Anglophiles who wanted France to imitate the English
constitution (pp. 127-33 in the Sonenscher edition)
Sieyess understanding of the relationship between the nation and the constitution
(pp. 133-44). What kind of argument is he trying to refute?
The importance of the concept of representation to Sieyes, and its connection with
the division of labour.
How did a national assembly, as Sieyes understood it, differ from the Estates
General as traditionally conceived?
PRIMARY SOURCES
*SIEYES, E-J. Political Writings, ed. M. Sonenscher (2003). This contains What is the Third
Estate? and Sieyess two other key pamphlets from 1788, Views of the Executive Means
available to the Representatives of France in 1789 and An Essay on Privileges. All are
worth reading. The library has four copies of the Sonenscher volume. What is the Third
Estate is available on BB.
SIEYES, E-J. What is the Third Estate?, eds. Blondel and Finer (1963) is the only other
edition in English. This does not contain any ancillary texts, but is worth consulting if you
want a hard copy of the text and cannot obtain the Sonenscher volume. The library has
two copies, and a third is in Special Collections (i.e. Deansgate).
SIEYES, E-J. Essay on Privileges (1791 translation), which is in the Sonenscher edition, is
also available electronically as part of the ECCO collection search via the library
catalogue.
BEIK, Paul H. (ed). The French Revolution (1970), pp. 37-44, has an extract from a speech
on the Estates-General by the modr, J-J Mounier. This may usefully be contrasted with
Sieyess position.
8

SECONDARY SOURCES
BAKER, Keith Michael. Inventing the French Revolution (1990), ch 10 [also in Baker, ed,
The Political Culture of the Old Regime (1987), vol. 1 of The French Revolution and the
Creation of Modern Political Culture]. On the concept of representation: very important.
DOYLE, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution, (1990), chs 11 & 13, for the
political context.
DUNN, John. Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy (2005), ch 2, esp. pp. 92118.
FORSYTH, Murray. Reason and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abb Sieyes
(1987). This is the standard work, making full use of the rediscovered Sieyes archives.
HALVI, Ran. The constituent revolution and its ambiguities, in Jack R Censer (ed), The
French Revolution and Intellectual History (1989), pp. 139-51. A fundamental discussion
of the ideas of 1789. [BB]
HAMPSON, Norman. Prelude to Terror: the Constituent Assembly and the Failure of
Consensus, 1789-91, ch 2 (for the context of What is the Third Estate?).
JONES, Colin. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (2002), ch 9 (an
excellent sketch of the context in which Sieyes wrote).
MARGERISON, Kenneth. The movement for the creation of a Union of Orders in the
Estates General of 1789, French History 3 (1989), 48-70. [E]
MARGERISON, Kenneth. Political pamphlets, the Society of Thirty, and the failure to
create a discourse of national reform during the French PreRevolution, 17881789,
History of European Ideas 17 (1993), 215244. [E]
MARGERISON, Kenneth. The pamphlet debate over the organization of the Estates
General, in Peter Campbell (ed), Origins of the French Revolution (2006), pp. 219-38.
PASQUINO, Pasquale. The constitutional republicanism of Emmanuel Sieyes, in
Biancamaria Fontana (ed), The Invention of the Modern Republic (1994)
SA'DAH, Anne. The Shaping of Liberal Politics in Revolutionary France (1990). Part II is
good on the historical context of Sieyess writing.
SCURR, Ruth. Pierre-Louis Roederer and the debate on forms of government in
Revolutionary France, Political Studies 52 (2004), 251-68. Casts light on Sieyess polemic
with Paine in 1791, and on debates about how to establish effective executive power in a
republic. [E]
SEWELL, William H., Jr. A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Abb Sieyes and What Is
the Third Estate? (1994)
SINGER, Brian C.J.. Society, Theory and the French Revolution: Studies in the
Revolutionary Imaginary (1986), ch 8.
STUURMAN, Siep. Productive virtue: the language of citizenship and the idea of industrial
civilizaton, The European Legacy 1 (1996), 329-335. A brief contextualization of Sieyess
distinction between the productive and the non-productive classes. [E]
THOMPSON, Eric. Popular Sovereignty and the French Constituent Assembly 1789-91.
9

WHATMORE, Richard. Adam Smiths role in the French Revolution, Past and Present no.
175 (May 2002), 65-89. [E]
For background on racial arguments, defence of noble rights etc:
BAKER, Keith Michael. French political thought at the accession of Louis XVI, Journal of
Modern History 50 (1978), 279-303. [E]
BRIGGS, Robin. From the German forest to civil society: the Frankish Myth and the
Ancient Constitution in France, in Peter Burke, Brian Harrison and Paul Slack (eds), Civil
Histories. Essays presented to Sir Keith Thomas (2000), pp. 231-249 [BB]
ELLIS, Harold A. Boulainvilliers and the French Monarchy (1988).
MARGERISON, Kenneth, History, representative institutions, and political rights in the
French Pre-Revolution (1787-1789), French Historical Studies 15 (1987), 68-98. [E]

3. RIGHTS OF MAN (26 FEB)

The focus here is on the origins, character and limitations of the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and Citizen of 1789.
For discussion:
Why did the revolutionaries of 1789 formulate their principles in terms of a
declaration of universal rights? Did the Declaration have a practical political
purpose?
What did the 1789 Declaration owe to the American model? (What was the
American model, and what other models were available?)
What was at issue in the revolutionaries debates about what sort of a declaration
of rights it should be? (There were many different drafts how did they differ?) Was
the end result a coherent document, or a patchwork composed from several
discrete ideological sources?
PRIMARY SOURCES
HUNT, Lynn (ed). The French Revolution and Human Rights: a brief documentary history
(1996). This includes the translated text of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and
extracts from a number of other important texts.
*The text of the Declaration of the Rights of Man is also available in translation on
various websites, e.g.:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/rightsof.htm or
http://www.barvennon.com/~liberty/Declaration_of_rights_of_man.html
SIEYES, E-J. A preliminary to the constitution, reprinted in Konrad Engelbert OELSNER,
An Account of the Life of Sieyes (1795), pp. 77-108 [available as an e-book in ECCO]
GOLDSTEIN, Marc Allan. Social and Political Thought of the French Revolution, 17881797, part 1, esp texts 4 (Sieyes), 9 (Sieyes), and 13 (Mounier).
10

British and other responses:

BENTHAM, Jeremy. Nonsense upon stilts, or Pandoras Box Opened, in Jeremy
Bentham, Rights, Representation, and Reform: Nonsense upon Stilts and other Writings
on the French Revolution, eds. Philip Schofield, Catherine Pease-Watkin and Cyprian
Blamires (2002), 319-75.
PAINE, Thomas. Rights of Man (Penguin 1985, and numerous other editions; also online at
OLL).
WALDRON, Jeremy (ed). 'Nonsense upon stilts': Bentham, Burke, and Marx on the rights
of man (1987).
SECONDARY SOURCES
APPLEBY, Joyce. America as a model for the radical French reformers of 1789, The
William and Mary Quarterly 28 (1971), 267-86. [E]
APPLEBY, Joyce. Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (1992), ch. 9
(on the American model in the French Revolution).
*BAKER, Keith. The idea of a declaration of rights, in Dale Van Kley (ed), The French Idea
of Freedom. This is reprinted in Gary Kates (ed), The French Revolution: Recent Debates
and New Controversies, pp. 91-140, and the Kates book is available electronically
through the library, via NetLibrary. This is fundamental.
BAKER, Keith Michael. Inventing the French Revolution (1990), ch 11.
BOSSENGA, G. Rights and citizens in the Old Regime, French Historical Studies 20 (1997),
pp. 217-43. A very useful review article. [E]
ECHEVERRIA, D. (ed). 'Condorcet's The Influence of the American Revolution on Europe',
William and Mary Quarterly 25 (1968), 85-108. [E]
FORSYTH, Murray. Reason and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abb Sieyes
(1987), ch 6.
GAUCHET, Michel. Rights of Man, in Franois Furet & Mona Ozouf (eds), Critical
Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989).
HAMPSON, Norman. The Enlightenment (1990), final chapter.
JENNINGS, Jeremy, The Dclaration des droits de lhomme et du citoyen and its critics
in France: reaction and idologie, Historical Journal 35 (1992), 839-859. [E]
MARIENSTRAS, E., and WULF, N. French Translations and Reception of the Declaration of
Independence, Journal of American History 85 (1999), 1299-1324. [E]
MINTZ, Max M. 'Condorcet's reconsideration of America as a model for Europe', Journal of
the Early Republic 11 (1991), 493-506. [E]
RAPPORT, Michael. Robespierre and the universal rights of man, 1789-1794, French
History 10 (1996), 303-333. [E]
SEWELL, William H., Jr. A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Abb Sieyes and What Is
the Third Estate? (1994)
THOMPSON, Eric. Popular Sovereignty and the French Constituent Assembly 1789-91
(1952), ch 1.
11

VAN KLEY, Dale (ed). The French Idea of Freedom: the Old Regime and the Declaration
of Rights of 1789 (1994), including the chapter by Baker listed separately above.
WALDINGER, Rene, DAWSON, Philip, and WOLOCH, Isser (eds). The French Revolution
and the Meaning of Citizenship (1993), esp M. Fitzsimmons on The National Assembly
and the invention of citizenship, pp. 29-43.
4. THE LIMITS OF CITIZENSHIP (5 MARCH)
The rights of man and citizen proclaimed in 1789 were not as universal as they seemed.
This seminar will address the limitations of the revolutionaries notion of universal rights
by looking at the arguments for and against the extension of rights of citizenship to
women and to Jews.
For discussion:
Consider the arguments for womens rights advanced by Olympe de Gouges and
Condorcet. Did they argue from similar or different premises? What do the extracts
reprinted in Lynn Hunts book tell you about the kinds of arguments revolutionaries
used in opposition to the political rights of women?
What were the arguments for and against the extension of citizenship rights to
Jews? Consider in particular the concept of regeneration what did it mean in this
context.
Do you see parallels between the ways in which these two issues were discussed?
PRIMARY SOURCES
CONDORCET, Jean-Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de. On the admission of women
to the rights of citizenship [1790], in Condorcets Selected Writings (ed Baker). Also
available online (see Online Library of Liberty).
GOUGES, Olympe de, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen [1790]. This may
be found in Lynn Hunt (ed), The French Revolution and Human Rights (1996); in Eleanor
S. Riemer & John C. Fout (eds), European Women: a documentary history (1980), pp 62-7
[BB]; or in Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite & Mary Durham Johnson (eds),
Women in Revolutionary Paris (1979).
HUNT, Lynn (ed), The French Revolution and Human Rights (1996).
MENDES-FLOHR, Paul & REINHARZ, Jehuda (eds). The Jew in the Modern World (1995) pp.
49-53 (Grgoire) & pp. 103-10 (Clermont-Tonnerre and Berr). These extracts are available
as a photocopy on short loan at CRes. 999/M629. The latter extract is on [BB].
SECONDARY SOURCES
ABRAY, J. Feminism in the French Revolution, American Historical Review 80 (1975), pp.
43-62. [E]
BROOKES, B. The feminism of Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy, Studies on Voltaire
and the Eighteenth Century 189 (1980), 297-361.
FRAISSE, Genevive. Reasons Muse: sexual difference and the birth of democracy (1994)
(difficult but rewarding).
12

HUFTON, Olwen. Women in the French Revolution, Past & Present 53 (1971), pp. 90108. [E]
HUFTON, Olwen. Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (1992).
Not as centrally relevant as it sounds, but good for background.
KATES, Gary. Jews into Frenchmen: nationality and representation in revolutionary
France, Social Research 56 (1989), pp. 213-32. [E]
LANDES, Joan B. Women and the Public Sphere in the French Revolution (1988), esp chs
3 (on Rousseau) and 4.
McMILLAN, James F. France and Women, chs 1-2. [E]
MOSES, C.G.. Equality and difference in historical perspective: a comparative
examination of the feminism of the French revolutionaries and utopian socialists, in Sara
E. Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine (eds), Rebel Daughters: women and the French
Revolution (1992).
SCOTT, Joan W. A woman who has only paradoxes to offer: Olympe de Gouges claims
rights for women, in Sara E. Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine (eds), Rebel Daughters: women
and the French Revolution (1992).
SCOTT, Joan W. French feminists and the rights of man: Olympe de Gouges
Declarations, History Workshop 28 (1989), pp. 1-21. [E]
SINGHAM, S.M. Betwixt cattle and men: Jews, blacks, and women, and the Declaration of
the Rights of Man, in D. Van Kley (ed), The French Idea of Freedom: the Old Regime and
the Declaration of Rights of 1789 (1994).
5. CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES (12 MARCH)
In this session we aim to reconstruct two key revolutionary debates: the debate on the
royal veto in 1789-91 and the debate on the suffrage in 1791.
For discussion:
Examine the theoretical significance of the debates on (a) the royal veto and (b) the
suffrage.
In the case of (a), consider what kinds of arguments were used for the absolute
veto, for the suspensive veto, and against any kind of veto. Where did Rousseauists
stand in this debate?
In the case of (b), consider Robespierre as an advocate of something like a
democratic position; while Sieyes and Barnave, for instance, appear as liberal critics
of democracy.
PRIMARY SOURCES
(a) On the Veto:
BEIK, Paul H. (ed). The French Revolution (1970): Mirabeau on royal authority, pp. 97-107;
Grgoire on the royal veto and bicameral legislature, pp. 107-112.
GOLDSTEIN, Marc Allan (ed). Social and Political Thought of the French Revolution, 17881797, text 13 (Mounier).
13

NECKER, Jacques. An Essay on the True Principles of Executive Power in Great States
(trans London, 1792), ch 5. Available electronically in ECCO.
SIEYES, E-J. Dire de lAbb Sieyes sur la question du veto royal, in Sieyes, Ecrits
Politiques, ed. Zapperi, pp. 231-44. [Only available in French but an extract in
translation is available on Blackboard.]
(b) On Democracy
BEIK, Paul H. (ed). French Revolution (1970): Robespierre on the suffrage, pp. 143-155;
Barnave pp. 168-76.
GOLDSTEIN, Marc Allan (ed). Social and Political Thought of the French Revolution, 17881797, text 9 [here Sieyes briefly discusses active and passive citizenship].
SECONDARY SOURCES
BAKER, Keith Michael. Inventing the French Revolution (1990), chs 10-11.
BRITO VIEIRA, Mnica and RUNCIMAN, David. Representation (2008), ch 1.
FITZSIMMONS, Michael P. The Remaking of France: the National Assembly and the
Constitution of 1791 (1994), especially ch 2. [BB]
FORSYTH, Murray. Reason and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abb Sieyes
(1987), ch 7, pp. 136 ff, for Sieyess views on the veto.
HALVI, Ran. The constituent revolution and its ambiguities, in Jack R Censer (ed), The
French Revolution and Intellectual History (1989), pp. 139-51. [BB]
HAMPSON, Norman. Prelude to Terror: the Constituent Assembly and the Failure of
Consensus, 1789-91 (1988).
NEIDLEMAN, Jason Andrew, The General Will is Citizenship, ch. 4, also touches on the
question of the veto.
SEWELL, William H., Jr. A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Abb Sieyes and What Is
the Third Estate? (1994), ch 5, for Sieyess views on the suffrage.
SWENSON, James. On Jean-Jacques Rousseau considered as one of the first authors of
the Revolution, pp. 194-201, is good on the veto. [BB]
THOMPSON, Eric. Popular Sovereignty and the French Constituent Assembly 1789-91

6. JACOBINISM AND THE ORIGINS OF THE TERROR (19 MARCH)

The experience of the Terror of 1793-4 shaped the way in which later generations
remembered the Revolution: liberals, notably, saw it as a betrayal of the liberal
14

principles of 1789. The focus will chiefly be on Jacobinism: was this an essentially
illiberal form of politics based on a distinct ideology? For discussion:
Did the Terror have ideological roots, or was it merely a pragmatic response to the
need to defend the Revolution against its enemies?
This seminar will take the form of a debate organized around these two alternative
points of view.
PRIMARY SOURCES
BEIK, Paul H. (ed). The French Revolution (1970), Robespierre on the suffrage, pp. 143-155
and on the principles of political morality, pp. 276-88.
GOLDSTEIN, Marc Allan (ed). Social and Political Thought of the French Revolution, 17881797 (1997), texts 17 (Robert), 20 (Robespierre), and 31 (Varlet).
*ROBESPIERRE, Maximilien. Report upon the Principles of Political Morality (1794) [E]
available through ECCO.
SECONDARY SOURCES
ANDRESS, David. The Terror: Civil War in the French Revolution (2005).
BAKER, Keith Michael (ed). The Terror, vol 4 of The French Revolution and the Creation
of Modern Political Culture (1994), especially Colin Lucas, Revolutionary violence, the
people and the Terror, pp. 57-79. [=BB]
BIEN, David. Franois Furet, the Terror, and 1789, French Historical Studies 16 (1990),
777-783, and Franois Furet, A commentary, same volume, 792-802. [E]
COBBAN, Alfred. The fundamental ideas of Robespierre, English Historical Review 63
(1948), 29-51. [E]
COBBAN, Alfred. The political ideas of Maximilien Robespierre during the period of the
Convention, English Historical Review 61 (1946), 45-80. [E]
FEHR, Ferenc. The Frozen Revolution: An Essay on Jacobinism (1987).
FURET, Franois. Terror, in Peter Jones (ed), The French Revolution in Social and
Political Perspective (1996), 450-465.
FURET, Franois. The French Revolution revisited, in Gary Kates (ed), The French
Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies (1998), pp. 71- 90. [E]
FURET, Franois. The French Revolution, or Pure Democracy, in Colin Lucas (ed),
Rewriting the French Revolution (1991), pp. 33-45.
GOUGH, Hugh. The Terror in the French Revolution (1998).
HIGONNET, Patrice. Goodness beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution
(1998).
KLAITS, J., and HALTZEL, M.H. (eds). Liberty/Libert: the American and French
experiences (1991), chs 8 (Rivero) and 9 (Kelly) on the relationship between Jacobinism
and Liberalism.
LEVINE, A. Robespierre: critic of Rousseau, Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1978), 54357.
15

LINTON, Marisa. Robespierres political principles, in Colin Haydon and William Doyle
(eds), Robespierre (1999), 37-53.
LUCAS, Colin (ed). The Political Culture of the French Revolution (1988), esp. chs 5-8.
LUCAS, Colin. The Theory and Practice of Denunciation in the French Revolution,
Journal of Modern History 68 (1996), 768-85. [E]
NEIDLEMAN, Jason Andrew. The General Will is Citizenship (2001), chs 4-5.
PARKER, Harold T. The Cult of Antiquity and the French Revolutionaries (1965).
RAPPORT, Michael. Robespierre and the universal rights of man, 1789-1794, French
History 10 (1996), 303-333. [E]
ROSANVALLON, Pierre. Democracy Past and Future (2006), ch 3 Revolutionary
democracy.
SCURR, Ruth. Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (2006). The best
biography, and written by a historian of political thought. Very readable but not for
seminar preparation.
SINGER, Brian C.J. Society, Theory and the French Revolution: Studies in the
Revolutionary Imaginary (1986), chs 8 & 9 (but chs 10-14 are also useful).
TALMON, J.L. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952).
7. CONSERVATISM AND COUNTERREVOLUTION (26 MARCH, 23 APRIL)
One of the intellectual consequences of the French Revolution was the formulation of
conservatism as a systematic doctrine, both in France and elsewhere (e.g. Burke in
Britain). In the French-speaking world the leading theorist of the counterrevolutionary or
theocratic school was the Savoyard nobleman Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821).
In the first of these two sessions our emphasis will be on his Considerations on France.
Themes to be explored will include:
the political context of Maistres work (see Doyle, Oxford History of the French
Revolution, ch 14)
the nature of his concept of counter-revolution
the importance of the religious dimension of his work.
The second seminar will compare Maistre with other theorists of conservatism and
counter-revolution in this period, notably Louis de Bonald and Edmund Burke. Works by
Roberts and Godechot are important here. See also Goldstein and Muller for extracts
from Bonald, and Sica for an extract from Burke.
PRIMARY SOURCES
*MAISTRE, Joseph de. Considerations on France edited by R Lebrun in the C.U.P. series,
Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (1994). There are four copies of this in
the library, plus another copy of an earlier edition of Lebruns translation.
LIVELY, Jack (ed). The Works of Joseph de Maistre (1965), contains selections from various
works by Maistre. The substantial extract from Considerations on France, pp. 47-91 [BB],
is recommended for seminar preparation, although you should aim read the full text for
essay work.
16

MAISTRE, Joseph de. Against Rousseau: On the state of nature and On the sovereignty
of the people (ed R. Lebrun) (1996).
GOLDSTEIN, Marc Allan. Social and Political Thought of the French Revolution, 1788-1797
(1997), texts 65 & 66 (Bonald).
MULLER, Jerry Z. (ed), Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from
David Hume to the Present (1997), pp. 123-45 (Bonald and Maistre).
SICA, Alan, Social Thought: from the Enlightenment to the Present (2005), short extracts
from Burke and Maistre.
SECONDARY SOURCES
For an overview:
BEIK, P.H. The French Revolution seen from the Right: social theories in motion, 178999, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1956), pp. 1-122. [E]
DAVIES, Peter. The Extreme Right in France, 1789 to the Present : From De Maistre to Le
Pen (2002), ch 2. A useful introduction which contextualizes Maistres thought. [E]
DOYLE, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution, (1990), ch 14 (on the Directory)
for the political context of Maistres work.
FEMIA, Joseph V. Against the Masses: Varieties of Anti-Democratic Thought since the
French Revolution (2001). Maistre is discussed at pp. 29-40. [E]
GODECHOT, Jacques. The Counter-Revolution: Doctrine and Action 1789-1804. (1972)
HIRSCHMAN, Albert O. The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (1991). A
stimulating typology of conservative arguments.
ROBERTS, J.M. The French origins of the right, Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society 5th series 23 (1973), 27-53. [E]
Joseph de Maistre:
BRADLEY, Owen. A Modern Maistre: The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de
Maistre (1999).
GARRARD, G. Joseph de Maistres civilization and its discontents, Journal of the History
of Ideas 57 (1996). [E]
GARRARD, G. Rousseau, Maistre and the Counter-Enlightenment, History of Political
Thought 15 (1994), 97-120. [E]
HOLMES, Stephen. The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (1991), ch 1 (Maistre and the
antiliberal tradition).
LEBRUN, Richard A. Joseph de Maistre and Rousseau, Studies on Voltaire and the
Eighteenth Century 88 (1972), 881-98.
LEBRUN, Richard A., Joseph de Maistre, an intellectual militant (1988).
REARDON, Bernard. Liberalism and Tradition: Aspects of Catholic thought in NineteenthCentury France (1975), ch 2 (on Maistre) and ch 3 (on Bonald and others).
Bonald:
17

BARCLAY, L. Louis de Bonald, prophet of the past, Studies on Voltaire and the
Eighteenth Century 4 (1967), 167-204.
COHEN, D.K. The Viscomte de Bonalds critique of industrialism, Journal of Modern
History 41 (1969), 475-84. [E]
KLINCK, D. The French Counterrevolutionary Theorist Louis de Bonald (1754-1840) (1996).
NISBET, Robert. De Bonald and the concept of the social group, Journal of the History
of Ideas 5 (1944), 315-31 [E]
REEDY, W.J. Burke and Bonald: paradigms of late eighteeenth-century conservatism,
Historical Reflections 8 (1981), 69-93.
REEDY, W.J. History, authority and the ideological representation of tradition in Louis de
Bonalds science of society, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 311 (1993),
143-177.
REEDY, W.J. Language, counterrevolution and the two cultures: Bonalds traditionalist
scientism, Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (1983), 579-97. [E]
REEDY, W.J. The traditionalist critique of individualism in post-revolutionary France: the
case of Louis de Bonald, History of Political Thought 16 (1995), 49-75. [E]
8. POSTREVOLUTIONARY LIBERALISM: BENJAMIN CONSTANT AND GERMAINE
DE STAL (30 APRIL, 7 MAY)
The focus here will be on Benjamin Constant, whom we shall study principally through
his lecture on ancient and modern liberty and other texts that appear in B Fontanas
edition of his Political Writings. For conceptual help in understanding Constants
distinction between ancient and modern liberty we shall be looking at some modern
political theorists writing on positive and negative liberty. We shall then go on to
examine wider aspects of Constants thought.
For discussion (30 April):
How does Constants distinction between ancient and modern liberty correspond
to modern political theorists distinction between positive and negative liberty?
What was the polemical point of the distinction? Who were Constants targets?
Was Constant a proponent of modern liberty?
How democratic was Constants liberalism?
7 May:
How far did liberalism emerge from a critique of the French Revolution?
Was post-revolutionary liberalism essentially anti-republican? (See work by Kalyvas
and Katznelson and Jainchill in particular)
What role did religion play in post-revolutionary liberalism? (See Garsten and
Rosenblatt; also chs 12-14 of the Cambridge Companion to Constant.)
PRIMARY SOURCES
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CONSTANT, Benjamin. Political Writings (ed Biancamaria Fontana) (Cambridge Texts in the
History of Political Thought, 1988) pp. 175-83, 274-89, & 309-328. The famous lecture on
ancient and modern liberty is prescribed for special study along with extracts from the
Principles of Politics, but the whole of this volume is worth reading.
The lecture on ancient and modern liberty is also available on-line via the Online Library
of Liberty (OLL):
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1467&Itemid=26
2
CONSTANT, Benjamin. Principles of Politics applicable to all Governments (ed. E.
Hofmann, trans D. O'Keeffe (available online: OLL)
STAL, Germaine de. Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution,
ed. A. Craiutu (available online: OLL)
SECONDARY SOURCES
BRINT, M.E. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Constant: a dialogue on freedom and
tyranny, Review of Politics 47 (1985), 323-46. [E]
CAPPADOCIA, E. The liberals and Mme de Stal in 1818, in Richard Herr and Harold T.
Parker (eds), Ideas in History (1965), pp. 182-197.
DODGE, Guy Howard. Benjamin Constants Philosophy of Liberalism: a study in politics
and religion (1980).
FAIRWEATHER, Maria. Madame de Stal (2005). A readable recent biography.
FINK, Beatrice. Benjamin Constant and the Enlightenment in H E Pagliaro (ed), Studies in
Eighteenth-Century Culture.
FINK, Beatrice. Benjamin Constant on Equality, Journal of the History of Ideas xxxiii
(1972), 307-14. [E]
FONTANA, Biancamaria. Benjamin Constant and the Post-Revolutionary Mind (1991).
GARSTEN, Bryan. Religion and the case against ancient liberty: Benjamin Constants other
lectures, Political Theory 38 (2010), 4-33. [E]
HOLMES, Stephen. Liberal uses of Bourbon legitimism, Journal of the History of Ideas
43 (1982), 229-48. [E]
HOLMES, Stephen. Two concepts of legitimacy: France after the Revolution, Political
Theory 10 (1982), 165-83 [E].
HOLMES, Stephen. Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (1984).
JAINCHILL, Andrew. Reimagining Politics after the Terror: The Republican Origins of French
Liberalism (2008).
JAINCHILL, Andrew. 'The constitution of the Year III and the persistence of classical
republicanism', French Historical Studies 26 (2003), 399-435.
JAINCHILL, Andrew. Liberal republicanism after the Terror: Charles-Guillaume Thremin
and Germaine de Stal, in H.S. Jones and Julian Wright (eds), Pluralism and the Idea of
the Republic in Modern France (forthcoming, c. 2011). Available as pdf in Blackboard.
KALYVAS, Andreas and KATZNELSON, Ina. We are modern men: Benjamin Constant
and the discovery of immanent liberalism, Constellations 5 (1999), 513-39. [E]
19

KALYVAS, Andreas and KATZNELSON, Ina. Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the
Moderns (2008), ch 5 (and ch 6, which reproduces the article above).
KELLY, George Armstrong. Constant commotion: avatars of a pure liberal, Journal of
Modern History 54 (1982), 497-518. [E]
KELLY, George Armstrong. Liberalism and aristocracy in the French Restoration, Journal
of the History of Ideas 26 (1965), pp 509-30. [E]
KELLY, George Armstrong. The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French
Liberalism (1992).
MANENT, Pierre. An Intellectual History of Liberalism (1995), ch 8.
MARTIN, Xavier. Human Nature and the French Revolution: From the Enlightenment to
the Napoleonic Code (2001), ch. 13.
NEIDLEMAN, Jason Andrew. The General Will is Citizenship, ch 6.
PITT, Alan. The religion of the moderns: freedom and authenticity in Constants De la
Religion, History of Political Thought 21 (2000), pp. 67-87. [E]
RAYNAUD, P. Constant, in M. Lilla (ed), New French Thought: political philosophy (1994),
pp. 82-90.
ROSENBLATT, Helena (ed). The Cambridge Companion to Constant (2009), esp chs 2-5.
You will need to search for this through Electronic Resources/Databases/Cambridge
Companions Online. [E]
ROSENBLATT, Helena. Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion
(2008).
ROSENBLATT, Helena. Re-evaluating Benjamin Constants liberalism: industrialism, SaintSimonianism and the Restoration years, History of European Ideas 30 (2004), pp. 23-37.
[E]
TODOROV, Tzvetan. A Passion for Democracy: Benjamin Constant (1999).
VINCENT, K. Steven. Benjamin Constant, the French revolution, and the problem of
modern character, History of European Ideas 30 (2004), 5-21. [E]
VINCENT, K. Steven. Benjamin Constant, the French Revolution, and the origins of French
romantic liberalism, French Historical Studies 23 (2000), 607-37. [E]
WHATMORE, Richard. Democrats and Republicans in Restoration France, European
Journal of Political Theory 3 (2004), 37-51. [E]
WOOD, Dennis. Benjamin Constant (1993). The best biography.
On positive and negative liberty:
BERLIN, Isaiah. Two concepts of freedom in his Four Essays on Liberty (1969): a classic
exposition of the distinction between positive and negative liberty. For an electronic
version, see Berlin, Liberty, incorporating Four Essays on Liberty. [E]
TAYLOR, Charles. Whats wrong with negative liberty, in Alan Ryan (ed), The Idea of
Freedom (1979). A sophisticated defence of the positive concept of liberty.

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