How did American and French revolutionaries concur in the invention of a republican regime "without precedent"? Abstract: At the end of the eighteen century, many revolutionaries read Montesquieu as an “oracle” (Madison) who could bring endless lights to their deliberations in a time of great political uncertainty. In their views, the well-documented “balance of power” was the key-piece of a limited government ruled by liberal principles such as separation of powers, division of functions, elective representation and public deliberation. In United-States and France, nevertheless, the constituents were facing new issues because they wanted to found an extended republican regime. While deliberating at the American “Convention” and at the French “Constituante”, they realized how deep and “without precedent” was their political crisis, especially when they had to build up a mechanism for allocating military powers. In both cases, they favored a new political system based on the “concours des pouvoirs” (Mirabeau) or “concurrence” of powers (James Wilson). Such a system was slightly different from the British regime as described by Montesquieu and Blackstone – two very influent thinkers at this time. In this paper, I will set a comparison between American and French parliamentary deliberations during the revolutionary era – a “Sattelzeit” according to Reinhart Koselleck – in order to identify the historical and theoretical reasons of this conceptual revolution. I try to understand why and how revolutionaries questioned liberal principles and reinvented republican regime in a time of widespread crisis when all political forms – ancient democracies, city-state, limited government, nation-state, universal empire and absolute monarchy – were deeply challenged. The system of “concurrence of powers” emerged as a solution to the crisis of sovereignty – when king and people were claiming to its sole exercise -, the crisis of political liberalism – when the competition of ambitions failed at regulating both limited monarchies and European system -, and the crisis of early republicanism, - when direct government and popular control on Legislature was unsuccessful at coping with economic crisis and public debts.

Lousiana State University Press, 2020

France is no stranger to revolutions. The first one beheaded Louis XVI, ushered in a Reign of Terror, and ended with an Empire. The second, in 1830, sent Louis' younger brother, Charles X, into exile and put his cousin Louis-Philippe on the throne of a constitutional monarchy. By the late 1840s, the winds of revolution were starting to blow again. Against the backdrop of economic distress, social discontent, and high unemployment, the pear-shaped "bourgeois king" faced rising opposition from the disenfranchised workers and middle classes. Their central demand: expansion of the right to vote, then enjoyed by only the top tier of taxpayers, comprising about one percent of the population. 1 Electoral reform was the focus of the political banquets that, starting in July 1847, served as vehicles for the opposition views of liberals, republicans and socialists, and enjoyed broad popular support. Meanwhile, the toiling classes and their defenders were demanding a "right to work," and a reorganization of the labor system. Members of the revolutionary secret societies were calling for an insurrection. "We are sleeping on a volcano," warned Alexis de Tocqueville, who had taken a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in 1839 and was a close observer of the events that followed. 2 The banning of a major Paris banquet on February 22, 1848-George Washington's birthday, as it happened-was the spark that set off the conflagration. By noon of that day, angry Parisians flooded the streets of the capital and began to erect barricades. The next day, soldiers fixed their bayonets and fired into the crowd on the Place Vendôme, killing 20 people and wounding more than 50. At that point, what had been a popular protest turned into a violent uprising as angry Parisians, largely supported by the Garde nationale citizens' militia, paraded the bodies of their martyrs through the streets, overturned omnibuses, set fires throughout the capital, and surged toward the royal residence in the Tuileries palace. Fearing for his life, Louis-Philippe abdicated on February 24 and fled to England in disguise-he had shaved off his famous muttonchop sideburns and donned an oversized pair of glasses-escaping by ferry from Le Havre under the rather unconvincing alias of "Mr. Smith." 3 On February 26, the Chamber of Deputies named a provisional government with Jacques-Charles Dupont de l'Eure, a octogenarian veteran of the first Revolution, as its president. Meeting at the Hôtel de Ville, Paris's ornate 16 th-century city hall, this impromptu eleven-member body proclaimed the Second Republic. For those on the French left, it was a long awaited moment of triumph. After years of ineffectual opposition, advocates of democratic ideas-men like

Izzivi Prihodnosti, 2020

Purpose and originality: The purpose of this study is to highlight the potential risks for democracy in Europe by focusing on the views of two prominent political theorists and politicians relating to one of the most dramatic turning points in modern European history. Method: In the study historical, comparative and nalytical research method is used. I also tried to combine chronological and thematic approaches. Results: From the experience of the French Revolution, two basic types of modern political outlook have been developed: progressive and conservative. Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville are also included in these basic types. Despite several distinct views and different attitudes to the French Revolution, Burke and Tocqueville agreed in their analyses of some of the causes of this Revolution. Some of their views are unacceptable from the perspective of today's democratic society. But Burke still appeals to us especially by emphasizing the responsibility of our generat...

Law and History Review, 2013

National self-determination was one of the most important and controversial concepts in twentieth century international relations and law. The principle has had a remarkable history, from Woodrow Wilson's assertion that the peoples of Eastern Europe ought to form their own national states in place of ruined multiethnic and multilinguistic empires after the First World War; to decolonization after the Second World War, when populations worldwide invoked a right to throw off the yoke of imperialism; to the breakup of and war in the former Yugoslavia at century's end in precisely the same area in which a nation's self-determination was first intended to be a panacea for the region's diverse peoples. And yet, national self-determination, if not always called that, has a much longer lineage. Some note its earliest appearance in 1581, when the Dutch claimed independence from Hapsburg Spain. However, it was not until the French Revolution when, as Alfred Cobban remarks, “th...

Instantly, in place of the private person of each contracting party, this act of association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as there are voices in the assembly, which receives from this same act its unity, its common self, its life, and its will. This public person, formed thus by the union of all the others, formerly took the name of City, and now takes that of Republic or body politic…. As for the associates, they collectively take the name people; and individually are called Citizens as participants in the sovereign authority, and Subjects as subject to the laws of the State. 1 -Jean-Jacques Rousseau This excerpt taken from Rousseau's eighteenth century publication The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right highlights the profound shift in political and social theory that drove the republican revolutions of the United States and France in that same century. In effect, similar intellectual principles of republican philosophy diffused bilaterally across the Atlantic Ocean prior to and after the revolutions. While domestic progress of republican politics in France was more tumultuous than that of the United States during the succeeding nineteenth century, by 1895 both countries operated according to similar republican principles of government. 2 The following explores the origins and the definition of republican thought in the United States and France, and provides context for understanding the projection of republicanism as a core national value onto the Philippines and AOF at the turn of the twentieth century. The definition of republicanism as a political philosophy has changed over time, reflecting the varying interpretations of the societies that have operated under its