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In early 1799 French authorities issued orders to identify and register Ottoman Muslims within the territory of the Republic, followed by orders to arrest Algerian subjects and sequester their property. The immediate context of the policing operation was France's unprovoked July 1798 invasion of Egypt, leading to the Ottoman declaration of war in September. But the aims of this botched and almost entirely fruitless operation are harder to discern. Presented as a way of ensuring the safety of French subjects who had been detained in Istanbul and Algiers, it only exacerbated tensions. It was less a proportionate diplomatic action than a Machiavellian tactic by the foreign minister, Talleyrand. In the interests of ending the Revolution in France, Talleyrand sought to aggravate the war and drive the Ottoman Empire into the arms of the anti‐French coalition. The new anti‐Muslim rhetoric that emerged in this process outlasted Talleyrand's ministry and contributed to the fragmentation of republican universalism in the lead‐up to Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état at the end of 1799. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anglo-German drama, which comes to proliferate in London's patent theatres at the turn of the nineteenth century, renders ubiquitous an arms-bearing heroine whose foreign character and perceived ideological inferences render her a chief object of attack among British Europhobic commentators. Redressing the limited scholarship devoted to this pervasive Anglo-German figure, this essay foregrounds the remarkable extent to which she is implicated in the perceived social and political threats with which the German drama is freighted. The essay uses theatrical commentaries to spotlight three recurring, though not quite harmonious flaws, for which the violent German heroine is contemporaneously berated. Then, analysing performances of Joseph George Holman's The Red-Cross Knights (Haymarket, 1799) and Richard Cumberland's Joanna of Montfaucon (Covent Garden, 1800), the essay illustrates the meticulous methods employed by dramatists to mollify the subversive implications embodied by the Anglo-German Amazon and to uphold supposedly inherent distinctions between male and female conduct, and British and European females, at a moment when the blurring of such gendered and national boundaries portends the social anarchy witnessed across the Channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burke was possibly the first person to use the term “political theologian” in English. He used it as a term of opprobrium against dissenting preacher Richard Price and his enthusiasm for the French Revolution. This article seeks to explicate the meaning of the term “political theologians” in Burke’s Reflections, and why Burke regarded the conjunction of politics and theology as a pejorative. The article further seeks to explain how Burke could see such an integral and positive role for Christianity in relation to the English state, while using the term “political theologian” as a slur. It concludes that it was partisan politics in the pulpit that Burke opposed, something he regarded as a violation of the distinct characters and functions of politics and church in society. Finally, the article seeks to locate Burke within the genealogy of the terms “political theology” and “political theologian.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-2010s, interest in Olympe de Gouges as a pioneer of feminism has consistently grown in the wake of fourth-wave feminism and international social movements such as #MeToo. After almost two centuries of oversight or representations of de Gouges as illiterate and a victim of her time, a number of historians and authors have been working to reinstate her legacy as a writer and actor of the French Revolution. In conjunction with this newfound interest in feminist figures like Olympe de Gouges, the literary field experienced a metamorphosis with the growing popularity of graphic novels, from both popular/mainstream and scholarly perspectives. This article proposes to analyze how the depiction of Olympe de Gouges in the eponymous graphic novel by Catel and José-Louis Bocquet in 2012 contributed to the mainstream recognition of de Gouges as well as subsequent feminist figures, and enabled the development of graphic biographies as a literary sub-genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2022 Canal+/PBS/BBC series Marie Antoinette not only comes as evidence of the enduring mystique around the eighteenth-century queen of France, but illustrates her appropriation by contemporary creators who want to deal with twenty-first century issues. Under the guise of delivering a biopic, the writing team explores the condition of women through a Marie Antoinette who is neither a historical figure nor a fictional character, but someone with whom younger viewers can empathize. Paradoxically, however, this updated Marie Antoinette appears both as a model of female resilience and necessary self-care in a persistently misogynistic and patriarchal society, and as the ultimate exemplar of the pampered, self-indulgent one-percenter. Setting aside obvious anachronism, we have to wonder what the series' creators aim to accomplish by revisiting history in such an ambiguous manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an analysis of the French Revolution, which profoundly influenced political and social structures from the 18th century in the world, alongside the social class structures in pre-revolutionary France. The analysis employs a historical and methodological framework to examine the definitions, positions, ideologies, and political stances associated with these structures. The first focus addresses the pre-revolutionary social class structures, while the second investigates the ideological and political manifestations of these classes. Key concepts from economic, social, and political theory will be utilized to inform this examination. Furthermore, the article discusses the reasons the French Revolution is regarded as distinct compared to other revolutions within Europe's political history. By comparing the perspectives of Anglo-Saxon and French historians, the article analyzes the fundamental theses underlying these contrasting approaches. Additionally, it examines the political and ideological representations of social classes during the Revolution and explores how class tensions evolved into a revolutionary movement. The main finding of the article is that ideological and imagined assumptions regarding the French Revolution lead to a paradigm shift in the history of the French Revolution as empirical and monographic research is conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the Indo-European principle of trifunctionality and on the medieval Three Estates imagery provide researchers with precious resources for investigating the ways and means through which social representations become loaded with sacredness, and sacredness progressively transferred from one set of social representations to another. This article focuses on the transformations undergone by the Three Estates religious substratum, first at the time of the birth of Absolutism, and second during and after the French Revolution. In the case of France (and with openings towards other contexts), it shows how trifunctionality has been attributed, alternatively or conjointly, to the bourgeoisie and to the nation. Triune imagery has thus contributed to shape rituals and symbols proper to civil religion in France. Additionally, this contribution draws lessons from our case study for assessing both the resilience and the power of metamorphosis proper to symbolic references once the latter are organized into patterns that nurture a community's cohesiveness by the putting into motion of images, narratives and ritual practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When he first heard in May of 1804 that Bonaparte intended to declare himself emperor, Beethoven famously tore off the dedication page of his third ('Eroica') symphony. In roughly the same time-frame during 1804–05 Wordsworth was coming to the conclusion of his first full version of The Prelude (completed May 20, 1805), with similar attention to Napoleon. I want to use this compositional coincidence as a lead-in to a concentrated reading of Book X of The Prelude which can lead to a stronger connection between Wordsworth and not just Beethoven, but the whole of nineteenth-century European literature, especially the great tradition of novels in France. By following carefully his intricate structuring of the stages of his crisis and its resolution we can arrive at a new way of seeing Wordsworth's links to the broad landscape of nineteenth-century European literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Academic Journal of Philosophy / Felsefi Düşün is the property of Pinhan Yayincilik and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Of all the images generated by the French Revolution it is the guillotine that is the most notorious. From the beginning the apparatus constituted an elaborate visual spectacle, one that not only efficiently dispensed justice but also offered up a form of popular entertainment and ritualised collective vengeance. The paper seeks to shed fresh light on one of the most perplexing mysteries of the revolutionary era. How did enlightened individuals who had helped create the most democratic and egalitarian society yet seen in the world, descend into a totalitarian regime in which many thousands were arrested, tried without appeal and executed? Why did revolutionaries begin to kill one another, and how did the guillotine come to represent an ideal of Revolution? To answer these questions, the paper begins by looking more closely at the relationships between popular violence and state violence in the Revolution, before describing the invention of the guillotine and how audiences had to adjust to a new kind of spectacle, where terror emerges as a principle of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The break in intelligibility caused by exceptional events encourages interpretation, attempts at explanation, the search for causes, and the projection of consequences, thus creating relevant literature. Newspaper references to the vast textual space dealing with the French Revolution, through bookshop or library announcements, book reviews, and significant quotations, guided their readersâ choices. Thus, the selection of readings illustrated the characteristics of local reception. This study examines the information published in the newspaper of the Duchy of Courland, Mitauische Zeitung, about print matter that reflects and interprets revolutionary events and their analysis, in order to diagnose the specificities of this cultural transfer.

In 1790 Fabre d'Eglantine published Le Philinte de Molière ou la suite du Misanthrope as a salvo in a war against Ancien Régime cultural values as represented by Louis XIV's favorite dramatist, Molière.

Intellectual historians have tended to focus on the most radical intellectuals of the counter-revolution such as Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald, but the counter-revolution was an intellectually composite movement with many intellectual currents and ideas. In this article, I shed light on the composite character of the counter-revolution by focusing on one of its most moderate members, the comte de Montlosier. The article presents contextualised analysis of Montlosier's conception of moderation, his theory of politics, his critique of fellow counter-revolutionaries, and his ideas for a new aristocratic order build on public opinion and separation of powers. I argue that Montlosier's moderate politics reflected a moderate enlightenment approach to politics, which was neither wholly rationalist nor wholly traditionalist. Rather, it was an attempt to find a middle ground between the two integrating a conservative view of history with a sociological approach to power and politics. I furthermore argue that even if Montlosier was unsuccessful in his endeavours to moderate the counter-revolution, he nonetheless provided a moderate response to it that would become integral to nineteenth-century conservative and liberal ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moderation and liberalism are different and in some cases antagonistic concepts. In recent years, the view that Sieyès's idea of constituent power is a moderate and liberal rendering of sovereignty has gained acceptance in intellectual history and constitutional theory literature. This claim is based on the premise that radical and illiberal readers of Rousseau's idea of sovereignty, such as Robespierre and the Jacobins, were opposed to representing the general will (volonté générale). Thus, constituent power as the exercise of power by extraordinary representatives to draft a constitution would be a liberal attempt at political moderation in the French revolution. In contrast to this liberal reading, my analysis shows that Sieyès's idea of constituent power is an illiberal attempt at political moderation. Against moderate liberal theories, constituent power demands that the extraordinary representatives of the constituent assembly must will, deliberate, and act as if they were the people themselves. These representatives have absolute powers and the mandate to create a constitution but also the imperative to perceive and mirror the sovereign will. From a political theory approach, I conclude that constituent power is not a liberal idea but a key notion of moderate illiberalism that prevailed during the French Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the first-hand sources of Kemalism to understand how and to what extent the French Revolution inspired the Kemalist elite and influenced Kemalism during the early republican period. In the literature, there is a general perception that the French Revolution and Jacobinism were highly influential on the Kemalists, but this perception mainly depends on broad interpretations without systematic empirical research. This study shows that there was really an influence, but not necessarily on the secular/Westernist reforms as proposed in the literature. Moreover, the alleged impact of Jacobinism on Kemalism was limited to only a few regime elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits Burns's reactions to the French Revolution and its implications for British domestic reform through review of three crucial contexts which shaped his responses: the character and trajectory of Scottish reform politics in the early 1790s; loyalist volunteering in the mid-1790s; and the town of Dumfries where Burns came to live in late 1791. It re-examines and sheds new light on the tricky political balancing act in which Burns was compelled to engage in order to keep his post in the Excise service and avert potential local hostility to someone who clearly privately stood well outside the prevailing political consensus in Dumfries after late 1792. Closer attention to these contexts and the character of political rhetoric and discourses in the 1790s brings into sharper focus Burns's likely political views at this moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship between the coalitional structure of revolutionary movements and revolutionary outcomes. Noting the chimerical nature of revolutionary coalitions, it introduces readers to the concept of 'movement split': the moment in a revolutionary process when, once a regime is overthrown, the revolutionary coalition fractures into 'radicals', who seek further, social revolution; and 'conservatives' who are satisfied with a limited, political revolution. By means of a comparative historical analysis of the 1789 French Revolution and 2011 Egyptian Revolution, it analyses the role of coalition structure in determining revolutionary outcomes after movement split. In both cases, the distribution of mobilizing capacity between radicals and conservatives was the key factor determining whether each revolutionary movement came to pursue a 'political' or 'social' revolutionary' program. Where conservatives retained control over mobilization, advancement of the revolutionary process ended once political revolution was achieved, while when radicals retained control, a process of social revolution was undertaken. Thus, when seeking to anticipate the trajectory of change an emergent revolutionary movement is liable to undertake, it is fruitful to examine whether it is radicals or conservatives who control its principal mobilizing structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genuine revolutions often use violence not only against their enemies but also against their friends. This paper argues that using violence against the proponents of a revolution functions as a way to boost collective action. A weakest-link punishment against the revolutionaries contributing the least to the revolutionary cause can be a way to solve Tullock's paradox of revolutions. Further implications are developed. First, we show that those benefiting the most from the revolution and facing the lowest cost of punishing will self-select into the group using punishment to boost contributions to the revolutionary cause. Second, we explain that weakest-link punishment can be over-provided when its provision is decentralized, in which case centralizing punishment may be an efficient response. We use the French Revolution as a case study to illustrate our theory. While the proximate cause of the Terror during the French Revolution was to avoid free-riding, its underlying cause may not have been the "blank-slate" mindset of the revolutionaries but the reactionary and inflexible nature of the Ancien Régime's institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1797 and 1798, Germaine de Staël argued that France needed a reformation to end the Revolution, proposing the adoption Protestantism as a religion of state. This proposal has been explained away as an obvious and uninteresting consequence of her Calvinist upbringing. While obviously relevant, Staël’s religious background is not a sufficient explanation for a proposal that would have upended the constitutional principles of the Directorial republic as well as centuries of tradition in France. I argue instead that Staël’s proposal is better understood in framework of the Directory’s plans to breach the state’s neutrality in religious matters, established in the 1795 Constitution, in order to promote love of the republic via a new religion, theophilanthropy. Thus, Staël identified a political opportunity for constitutional change in matters of religion and sought to steer the course towards an existing religion that, as she argued, had all the benefits that the Directory saw in theophilanthropy, but none of the pitfalls, especially the theophilanthropists’ association with the Terror. This re-interpretation of Staël’s proposal, made in Circonstances actuelles, has implications for our broader understanding of this work, hailed as her ‘most substantial contribution to political and constitutional theory’, and the Thermidorian republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory is the use of abstraction in the pursuit of understanding. In the human sciences, theory is a talmudic process of reading and conceptual dispute that carries the colligation of evidentiary signs (minimal interpretation) towards riskier, but more insightful and widely relevant, interpretations of the meanings, causes, and significance of human events (maximal interpretation). Yet, in making possible such maximal interpretations of society, politics, literature, and so forth, theory also introduces the possibility of overinterpreting evidence. Judgments that overinterpretation has occurred are made collectively within communities of inquiry. After developing Umberto Eco's theory of overinterpretation as part of a hermeneutic-semiotic account of theory in the human sciences, this paper conducts a case study of the rise and partial fall of the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution. This reveals aspects of the process whereby patterns of maximal interpretation, carried through several academic generations, allow the development and refinement of knowledge and insight about an object of inquiry, on the one hand, and yet are subject to judgment as overinterpreted, on the other. Much more than a matter of falsification and/or the politics of intellectuals, the decline of the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution involved a complex series of judgments about the degree to which an abstract theoretical terminology could continue to produce new and deeper understandings. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the talmudic aspect of social theory has affinities with the universal human capacity for thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the French Revolution, obstetrics underwent substantial transformations in practice, teaching, and the physical spaces where it was conducted. The revolutionary authorities implemented reforms in French medical institutions that promoted an instrument-centred style and the dissemination of novel surgical techniques in obstetrics. The selection of professors for the obstetrics chair at the newly established École de santé and the appointment of chiefs for the new maternity ward in Paris favoured proponents of a mechanistic approach to labour assistance. This essay explores the theoretical principles and societal pressures that guided these transformative reforms and the remarkable changes they introduced in healthcare and in the practise of medicine and surgery. Furthermore, it examines the consolidation of new epistemological, ethical, and professional boundaries within the context of late eighteenth-century French obstetrics. A critical section of this study focuses on the debate ignited by the contemporaries who voiced concerns that the rise of surgical interventions on pregnant women's bodies might result in unwarranted violence, in a diminishing of midwives’ roles, and in a departure from the tradition of natural childbirth. These controversies among obstetricians highlight significant contradictions within the Revolutionary medical reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success of the Concordat of 1801 in establishing a modus vivendi between post-revolutionary France and the Catholic Church ought not be taken for granted. It owes in significant degree to the design and application of Napoleon's advisor on religious affairs, Jean-Etienne Marie Portalis. The Concordat is appreciated for having set the stage for the ultramontane Catholicism of nineteenth-century France, but as legislator and administrator, Portalis was looking back to the legal traditions of the liberties of the Gallican Church and the supremacy of the sovereign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goethe's first drama written in the wake of the French Revolution, Der Groß-Cophta, has garnered little favor from audiences and scholars since its first publication. This essay argues that Goethe's comedy inverts fundamental dramaturgical conventions of tragedy, revealing a social and political world in collapse. It shows that patterns of literary figuration first articulated in Der Groß-Cophta extend across several of Goethe's literary engagements with revolutionary tumult. Confidence men and narratives of lost innocence emerge as crucial elements in Goethe's diagnosis of the disintegration of ethical life responsible for the demise of the ancien régime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Historica Tallinnensia is the property of Teaduste Akadeemia Kirjastus and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Babylon Center for Humanities Studies is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This is a translation of selections from Part One, Chapter One of Rehberg's Investigations, which contains his critique of the philosophical principles animating the French Revolution. No English translation of the text currently exists. The Investigations was one of the most influential philosophical treatments of the Revolution in eighteenth-century Germany and remains an important specimen of ‘Kantian’ political theory from the 1790s. The Investigations had a clear impact on Kant's political philosophy and the work of the early Fichte. The translation is accompanied by an editorial introduction that introduces the reader to Rehberg and outlines his core arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Abbé Sieyès is usually portrayed as a thoroughly modern thinker and a critic of the nostalgic Classical Republicanism of some of his contemporaries, in favour of a "modern republicanism", founded upon the division of labour and commercial sociability in a nation composed of equal labourers and producers. But Sieyès's unpublished manuscripts suggest he, in fact, regarded modern labourers as unskilled "Machines du Travail", dulled by work and incapable of exercising the duties of citizenship, a critique grounded in a critical account of commercial society as compared to the ideal republican polity. Where most scholars regard this as either a simple contradiction or a passing juvenile nostalgia, this paper argues that, influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sieyès consistently sought to counteract the degrading effects of the inequalities generated by commercial society and the division of labour. It was on this basis that Sieyès sought to construct a new political system which would reconcile participatory politics with representative government, enabling all citizens to enjoy a life of Active Citizenship. Based on these insights, this paper reinterprets Sieyès's political project as an attempt to reconcile the classical conception of citizenship with the demands of a commercial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On May 28, 1794, a criminal investigation that had begun almost a month before concluded with the execution of sixty-three men and women, the imprisonment of fifteen more, and a few days later the destruction of an entire village. This article examines the burning of Bédoin, the crime that provoked it, and the judicial process that accompanied it, to explore the relationship between criminal cause and punitive effect during the Terror of year II. As a case study in revolutionary justice, this episode appears extreme, but this article argues that it allows us to interrogate the meanings that ordinary revolutionaries attached to terms like crime and complicity when the survival of the state seemed at stake. In looking beyond the Terror to the controversies that enveloped this village's destruction, this article also examines the aftermath of atrocity to consider how a society comes to terms with crime when both the definition of criminality and the identity of the criminal are in flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the concept of dignity played an important role in the political thought of Edmund Burke. It seeks to show that, in contrast with the egalitarian and individual version of dignity associated with Immanuel Kant, Burke devised a conception of dignity that rested on reverence, grandeur and formality, to be manifested through institutions, customs, and social relations. Burkean dignity was thus closely linked with the ancient constitution. In his thought, dignity played an essential role in maintaining social stability and ensuring wise governance. This conviction informed Burke's opposition to the French Revolution, which he feared would destroy the conditions necessary for dignity to thrive. Unpicking Burke's understanding of dignity thus gives us new insights into the intricacies of his political thought and another perspective on his opposition to the French Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the famous night session of the Assemblée nationale on August 4/5, 1789, my article examines the intertwining of political representation, theatrical representation and bon sens or sens commun , as it becomes apparent in journalistic texts from the first phase of the French Revolution. The following questions will be discussed: 1) To what extent does the theater audience function as a paradigm of the public sphere in revolutionary society? How and by what means can the audience gallery of the assembly hall be extended into the media public sphere? 2) If the public sphere of the revolutionary society is to be conceived according to the model of the theater audience, what contribution can it make to the formation of national will and the activation of the public spirit? Is there perhaps a latent sensus non-communis hidden behind the ostensibly propagated sensus communis ? And finally: 3) Does the introduction of the theater paradigm for the public sphere have anything to do with a new time economy of political and communicative action, i.e. with the strong acceleration of political decision-making processes on the one hand, and mass media communication on the other? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1789, during the outset of the French Revolution, Jens Baggesen (1764–1826) embarked on a journey traversing Germany, Switzerland, and France. His experiences were later crystallized into a two-volume travelogue, Labyrinten , published between 1792 and 1793. In a similar vein, in 1793, Adam Moltke (1765–1843), a close friend of Baggesen, visited the besieged city of Mainz and subsequently chronicled his experiences in Reise nach Maynz (1794), also a two-volume work. Both authors, profoundly impacted by their travels, expressed a compulsion to write as an outlet. Intriguingly, their texts employ alimentary and metabolic metaphors to depict the act of experiencing as a form of ingestion, where impressions are consumed, assimilated, and eventually transformed into written narrative. This portrayal of memory and writing as a bodily process sharply diverges from the classical ideals of artistic and literary purity. This article argues that these alimentary and metabolic metaphors represent a subversive poetics, challenging conventional literary norms and offering a novel perspective on the interplay between human experience, bodily processes, and literary creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Johann Gottlieb Fichte's philosophy of religion combines revolutionary pathos with Christian convictions and transcendental philosophical insights. The result is a bourgeois philosophy of religion that preaches freedom, equality and brotherhood, expects the national upswing of a still-longed-for Germany based on the example of revolutionary France, and praises all this as a continuation of Kant's philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French Revolution is rightly regarded as a major milestone in human history. Its most famous ideas of equality and freedom have endured up to the present day, but these were not the only ideas promoted during this turbulent time. In order to establish a new social order, the revolutionaries proposed, among other things, the use of decimal time which was part of the so-called Republican calendar. This chapter will focus on the circumstances of the creation, application, and the use of the decimal (time) system, analyse the reaction of society, and explain the reasons for the early demise of this revolutionary undertaking.

The Vendée War (1793-1795) was an essential part of the French Revolution (1789-1799). A region of western France, south of Nantes, the Vendée, refused to continue obeying the new authorities of the Republic (1792), against a backdrop of forced military mobilization and anti-Catholic religious persecution. This peasant insurrection, led by nobles like Charette, suffered terrible repression, beyond military counter-insurgency. The Convention, the assembly governing the Republic, was very frightened in 1793, in a context of difficult foreign war and multiple domestic disputes. It took revenge by organizing a populicide in the Vendée. Carrier's infamous massacres in Nantes, carried out to order, were the norm, not a pathological exception. The infernal columns of the Republican army carried out the Vendée genocide. We propose to rediscover these historical facts, sometimes still hidden.

Studies on the Indo-European principle of trifunctionality and on the medieval Three Estates imagery provide researchers with precious resources for investigating the ways and means through which social representations become loaded with sacredness, and sacredness progressively transferred from one set of social representations to another. This article focuses on the transformations undergone by the Three Estates religious substratum, first at the time of the birth of Absolutism, and second during and after the French Revolution. In the case of France (and with openings towards other contexts), it shows how trifunctionality has been attributed, alternatively or conjointly, to the bourgeoisie and to the nation. Triune imagery has thus contributed to shape rituals and symbols proper to civil religion in France. Additionally, this contribution draws lessons from our case study for assessing both the resilience and the power of metamorphosis proper to symbolic references once the latter are organized into patterns that nurture a community’s cohesiveness by the putting into motion of images, narratives and ritual practices.

The ancient Athenian historian Thucydides’ account of the civil and interstate wars of classical Greece proved particularly illuminating for British commentators writing at the time of the French Revolution (1789–99). However, despite a growing scholarly interest in Thucydides’ Nachleben in historical and political thought, little has been said on this period of his reception. This paper aims to address that gap. It suggests that, while Thucydides remained something of a minority interest, a curious mix of historians, journalists and political commentators turned to his History to explore the possibility that it might illuminate contemporary events. They were particularly interested in Thucydides’ account of the stasis on Corcyra (modern Corfu), and its role in spreading instability, civil strife and war throughout Greece. These commentators used Thucydides to think through the similarities and differences between ancient and modern iterations of political violence and sometimes appropriated his language to existing political vocabularies and categories of thought. This resulted in innovative interpretations of Thucydides’ text that emphasized the affinities between stasis in Antiquity with the idea of civil war, sedition, political instability and decline and fall in the contemporary world. It also led to the emergence of nuanced ideas of the lessons and warnings that could be drawn from Greek history as presented by Thucydides and how they could be applied to the turbulent politics of the 1790s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]