Description
Book SynopsisSituating the French Revolution in the context of early modern globalization for the first time, this book offers a new approach to understanding its international origins and worldwide effects. A distinguished group of contributors shows that the political culture of the Revolution emerged out of a long history of global commerce, imperial competition, and the movement of people and ideas in places as far flung as India, Egypt, Guiana, and the Caribbean. This international approach helps to explain how the Revolution fused immense idealism with territorial ambition and combined the drive for human rights with various forms of exclusion. The essays examine topics including the role of smuggling and free trade in the origins of the French Revolution, the entwined nature of feminism and abolitionism, and the influence of the French revolutionary wars on the shape of American empire.The French Revolution in Global Perspective illuminates the dense connections among the cultural,
Trade Review
The eleven contributions are clustered under the traditional headings of the origins, internal dynamics and consequences of the Revolution. Their analyses are far from traditional, however, consistently teasing out transnational connections and contrasts, and it is unusual to have a collection of such uniformly high quality which has such tightly linked concerns. The chapters are all closely documented, and the notes will be a treasure-trove for researchers as much as the text will engage students and teachers alike.
-- Peter McPhee * H-France Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
by Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt, and William Max NelsonPart I. Origins1. The Global Underground: Smuggling, Rebellion, and the Origins of the French Revolution
by Michael Kwass2. The Global Financial Origins of 1789
by Lynn Hunt3. The Fall from Eden: The Free-Trade Origins of the French Revolution
by Charles Walton4. 1685 and the French Revolution
by Andrew JainchillPart II. "Internal" Dynamics5. Colonizing France: Revolutionary Regeneration and the First French Empire
by William Max Nelson6 Foreigners, Cosmopolitanism, and French Revolutionary Universalism
by Suzanne Desan7. Feminism and Abolitionism: Transatlantic Trajectories
by Denise Z. DavidsonPart III. Consequences8. Egypt in the French Revolution
by Ian Coller9. Abolition and Reenslavement in the Caribbean: The Revolution in French Guiana
by Miranda Spieler10 The French Revolutionary Wars and the Making of American Empire, 1783–1796
by Rafe BlaufarbCoda11. Every Revolution Is a War of Independence
by Pierre Serna, translated by Alexis PernsteinerNotes
List of Contributors
Index
