Book Description
For two hundred years, the Terror has haunted the imagination of the West. The descent of the French Revolution from rapturous liberation into an orgy of apparently pointless bloodletting has been the focus of countless reflections on the often malignant nature of humanity and the folly of revolution.
David Andress, a leading historian of the French Revolution, presents a radically different account of the Terror. In a remarkably vivid and page-turning work of history, he transports the reader from the pitched battles on the streets of Paris to the royal family's escape through secret passageways in the Tuileries palace, and across the landscape of the tragic last years of the Revolution. The violence, he shows, was a result of dogmatic and fundamentalist thinking: dreadful decisions were made by groups of people who believed they were still fighting for freedom but whose survival was threatened by famine, external war, and counter-revolutionaries within the fledging new state. Urgent questions emerge from Andress's trenchant reassessment: When is it right to arbitrarily detain those suspected of subversion? When does an earnest patriotism become the rationale for slaughter?
Combining startling narrative power and bold insight, The Terror is written with verve and exceptional pace-it is a superb popular debut from an enormously talented historian.
Customer Reviews:
Well Written and Thoughtful.......2007-07-02
I would rank this among the best of the latest titles on the French Revolution. Andress covers the so-called radical phase of the revolution with great skill and detail. A revisionist text, The Terror is freed from the old right-left dogmas that haunted the writers of earlier histories of the French Revolution even as late as the cold war era.
Andress is not without sympathy for the leading actors, but neither is he willing to excuse them their crimes. He does make it clear however that they were driven by a so-called "Concert of Europe" which sought to stamp out liberty and democracy in its cradle. In the process he does a solid job of the task to explaining how a Revolution born in the ideals of universal rights could descend into such bloodletting.
Perhaps one of the author's most inciteful, disturbing and likely controversial conclusions is to find parallels between the political and religious fundementalisms of 1789-1795 and today; between the Terror and the War on Terror; between the era of Robespierre and the rise of the national security state.
While the book is great in detail and an excellent choice for those familiar with the events of the French Revolution, I probably wouldn't recommend it as a first choice to a casual reader.
One thing I might add for certain. The Terror: Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France proves that the euphoric proclamation by some that we had somehow reached "the end of history" now seems naively premature.
IN THE TIME OF THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION.......2007-06-28
This year marks the 218th anniversary of the beginning of the Great French Revolution with storming of the Bastille on July 14th 1789. An old Chinese Communist leader, the late Zhou Enlai, was once asked by a reporter to sum up the important lessons of the French Revolution. In reply he answered that it was too early to tell what those lessons might be. Whether that particular story is true or not it does contain one important truth. Militants today at the beginning of the 21st century can still profit from an understanding of the history of the French Revolution.
There are many books that outline the history of that revolution. I have reviewed some of them in this space. Probably the most succinct overview, although it was written over one half century ago, is Professor Georges Lefebvre's study. For those who want a more up-to-date overview of the main events and political disputes reflecting the tremendous increase in scholarship on the subject the book under review has a lot to recommend it. The author, a professor at the University of Portsmouth, England, covers all the main pre-revolutionary problems confronting France at the time, including its terrible debt problems caused in the main by its support of the American Revolution to the political, social and, yes, sexual inadequacies of Louis XVI. As has been noted by many commentators on revolution, including the author and myself, one of the prerequisites for revolution is that the old regime can no longer govern in the same way. The personage of Louis XVI seemingly fits that proposition to a tee.
Professor Andress goes on to highlight the key events. Obviously, and most visibly the storming of the Bastille that opened up the cracks in the old monarchial regime. He details the struggle to create a constitutional monarchy through the various legislative assemblies that sought to carry out the reforms necessary to bring France into the modern age short of declaring a republic. And also the attempts, including by Louis himself, by forces of the old regime to return the old monarchy or stop the revolution in its tracks. When those efforts failed and the revolution began in earnest the Professor Andress goes into great detail analyzing the internal struggle by the revolutionaries, most notably the great fight between the Girondins and Jacobins for power, and the formation of the republic. After the defeat of the Girondins this led to the further fights to `purify' the revolution among the Jacobin forces and the reign of the Robespierre-led Committee of Public Safety that consolidated the gains of the revolution through the `Reign of Terror'. Finally, the professor highlights the downfall and execution of Robespierre in 1794 represented the reaction that most revolutions exhibit when the political possibilities for further revolutionary moves is no longer tenable.
The author has done more than merely outline the highlights though for those who are trying to understand the sometimes confusing political alignments in Paris and in the country. He discusses the voting patterns of the delegates in the various legislative assemblies; the role of the sans-culottes in pushing the revolution leftward; the falling out among the Jacobins; the international situation (meaning the immediate European one); and, most importantly, the reaction in non-Paris, the countryside, that rebelled for various reasons against the central authority in the capital. Other subjects include the murder of Marat by Corday that helped set the revolution bloodily leftward, the Festival of the Supreme Being as an attempt to finally destroy the power of the Catholic Church and other reforms by the left-Jacobins to consolidate the revolution. The major negative of this work is political. As almost always in any discussion of the first five years of the French Revolution there is an almost fatalistic portrayal of the emergence of Robespierre intertwined throughout all of the earlier events giving the impression that he was inevitably bound to take power. And, also inevitably, due to the excesses of the `Reign of Terror' to lose it. This may be a good way to save one's political soul but it is bad history. Revolutions, particularly great revolutions, are few and far between. They are messy affairs at the time and as seen through the historical lens. Nevertheless if the social tensions in society could always, or should always, be resolved in a nice non- violent parliamentary way there would be no revolutions. Damn, where would that leave us as the inheritors of the sans-culottes tradition?
Interesting subject - very poor writing.......2007-01-12
This could have been an excellent book but unfortunately the author's writing style makes it unreadable. I can't remember a book with this many unintelligible sentences. Don't waste your money.
The terror comes alive!.......2006-12-15
The terror was a traumatic time in France and Andress book does an excellent job of showing how the terror evolved. It covers the rise of Robespierre, the trial of Danton, and even references the activities of Sade. The book is well written and is a great starting point for the terror as long as you understand the events that have occurred previously. If you have covered them before there is a very helpful timeline in the back of the book but you do need to have some prior knowledge of the revolution for it to be helpful.
This really IS The French Revolution and the People.......2006-11-26
Some months ago I saw a notice of this book in the NYTBR and marched out to buy it. Either I was distracted or couldn't find it, because I brought home quite another book by the same author, The French Revolution and the People (see my review). This latter volume was the sort of thing the history professor puts on Overnight Reserve in the library--a dense, badly written collection of anecdotes strung loosely together in a forced narrative, with the bad writing you expect in a history PhD dissertation (which this was not, by the way). But for all the crap of its poor construction and atrocious editing, it was full of telling details I hadn't seen before.
Some agent or publisher's editor must have felt the same way about the book, and urged Andress to write a pop history of the French Revolution, using the same sources but putting it all into a tighter and more cinematic narrative.
Here Andress gives us a vivid picture of French politics (mostly in Paris and Lyons) during the period, with particular attention to the successive fall of Danton and Robespierre and to the manias of the popular press (particularly the Pere Duchesne). Without appearing too biased, he presents the case against the King and Queen--and it is a compelling one. Louis XVI swore fealty to the Republic while plotting against it every day, and hiding his secret correspondence in a private wall safe at the Tuileries--something seldom emphasized in other histories. He lied, and lied and lied again, and this is why he lost his head. The Queen's trial revolved around the accusation that she had sexually abused her son, the Dauphin. Usually this is glossed over with outrage, but Andress presents the arguments of both sides without bias.
Nearly every other nation in Europe was arrayed against the new government of the Republic--invading, bribing, spying, and spreading the most grotesque misinformation about conditions in the new nation. France was like a person who is attacked on all sides, by family and former friends, and flails about in insane defensiveness in order to keep alive. This is a brilliant description of a national trauma from which the nation never recovered.
Book Description
This classic work on the French Revolution and Napoleonic era has been thoroughly updated to reflect the most recent scholarship on a magnificently complex epoch. Appropriate for upper-level French Revolution and Napoleonic era courses, this text's primary purpose is to give students the generally accepted "story" of the era and to furnish them with the basic knowledge to put in context the more sophisticated works listed in the bibliography.
Customer Reviews:
yay textbooks.......2007-01-31
Shipping time was good, I actually received the book a little before I expected it. The condition of the book was excellent, as promised.
A Great Text by a Great Teacher.......2004-09-17
I had the pleasure of having Professor Conelly this past summer for a class on the French Revolution and Napoleon at the University of South Carolina. This book was the only text for the class. Reading a book is one thing, but hearing it straight from the horse's mouth is another entirely.
I didn't realize just how well known and respected he was until I saw him interviewed on a NOVA special on Napoleon. Trust me, this guy knows what he's talking about, and he writes a simple, concise, easy-to-read explanation of France from 1789 - 1815.
It's all here.......2003-02-11
I completely agree with the previous review in every respect except I feel the book deserves more stars, given the "rating inflation" prevalent with so many of the titles reviewed. I wouldn't want anyone to be put off getting this book. Connelly has squeezed an incredible amount of information into a small amount of space. As usual, he is clear and entertaining. People interested in the period should check out his other titles.
Just Enough.......2001-09-29
Ideal for those starting out on their study of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era (as one would expect from a university history text), Owen Connelly's modest volume has much to recommend it: fresh, readable style; decent maps, a comprehensive bibliography (pointing the way for future purchases!) and quite a few interesting little kernels that one seldom comes across. I particularly enjoyed his insights into the siblings of Napoleon; Jerome's sponsorship of Gauss, Louis' campaign for breast-feeding, Joseph's conversion of El Prado into an art museum. I heartily recommend this book as an excellent staging ground for future operations into the hinterlands of Napoleonic literature. I also recommend Connelly's BLUNDERING TO GLORY as a vey good next step on your journey.
Average customer rating:
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Sister Republics: The Origin of French and American Republicanism
Patrice Higonnet
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| United States
| Americas
| History
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General
| Revolution & Founding
| United States
| Americas
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General
| World
| History
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General
| France
| Europe
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Revolution
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ASIN: 0674809823 |
Book Description
This biography of French liberator General de Lafayette (1757-1834) reveals not only how the 19-year-old bravely ventured to the infant United States to serve in its War of Independence, but also the iconoclast's enormous contribution to the causes of social and economic justice in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Poland.
Customer Reviews:
Great Life, Excellent research and writing.......2004-03-11
After all that's been written about Lafayette, this book was a complete surprise. It added much to read of his wife's devotion and abilities and their lifelong relationship. It also places them in history, and by reading their letters, you are introduced to them directly. This book is not only entertaining but scholarly. Should be in every college library.
Adrienne Lafayette her Husband's Equal.......2004-01-18
After reading both Unger and Kramer on the astounding life of General Lafayette, I was very curious about his wife. This book of letters and history concerning her life of privilege and partnership is a complement to what most people know about her famous husband. Both the American and French Revolutions were pivotal in their life together of sharing their wealth to the very end. Adrienne generously gave the peasants working her land the best circumstances of the day, while Lafayette at age 18 bought and outfitted a ship to help the colonies win freedom. Three daughters and a son were born while the General was going back and forth across the Atlantic to muster more help from the French for the new nation. Their only son was named George Washington Lafayette and he escaped being imprisoned due to his mother's clever arrangement. Before she joined her husband in prison voluntarily, she snuck her son out of France to be raised for several years by Martha and George Washington. Lafayette's two daughters also joined their father in prison. When Lafayette was not allowed to enter France, his wife pursued their family interests in war torn Paris and environs. She regained La Grange for Lafayette's retirement. He survived Adrienne by almost 30 years at this lovely chateaux and never remarried. She died at 50 due to her illness contracted at the prison where she decided to join her beloved husband. Many relatives were guillotined, so Adrienne arranged their burial site at Picpus Cemetery to be close to the thousands dumped in a mass grave. An American flag flys over their grave for they were both truely "Partners in Liberty's Cause." Lafayette took a triumphal tour of all the United States and returned to France with American soil to spread over their graves. Both equal partners and generous souls.
Product Description
Forgetting the set backs of the American Revolutionary War, in 1793 the Royal Navy embarked on an almost unprecedented era of victories at sea, producing a considerable appetite for pictures of every incident, great or small. A thriving trade in prints and engravings grew up, supplemented by watercolors and oils by celebrated artists. Besides these ‘public’ works, many officers--and indeed members of the lower deck--kept personal journals and sketchbooks, illustrated with surprisingly accomplished drawings and watercolors, often depicting the everyday aspects of wartime life at sea that were ignored in the more celebratory artistic media. These sources form a rich vein that have been barely touched in previous publications, but which this book uses to full effect. Despite numerous defeats, the French navy continued to dispute command of the sea in the period 1793-1797, and the early years of the war abound with fleet engagements, including dramatic victories against the Spanish at St. Vincent and the Dutch at Camperdown, between which the navy endured the shocking events of the Great Mutiny, potentially the most dangerous moment of the whole war.
Customer Reviews:
Wish there was some color.......2007-07-14
Excellent book, with a good blend of art and history. Each picture is explained in text with associated historical and artistic caveats. For the price I guess you couldn't expect color pictures though I think a few would add to the quality of the book and perhaps add to the cost. With color it would have been 5 stars and a bargan. Mr. Gardiner's books have never disappointed me, and I have a few.
A must have book for Naval historians.......2003-12-04
An excellent Naval History. Well written easy reading. A great array of period pictures, blueprints, and sketches. Concisely organized and well presented. What I enjoyed most about this book was that it not only covers the chronology and naval actions of the period, it also discusses life at sea and how the fleets and ships operated. Particularly interesting are the essays on The ship of the line, 36 and 28 gun frigates and smaller craft with line drawings and pictures of the class of vessel. An excellent book for Naval Historians, ship modellers, and Naval war gamers.
Book Description
This book presents ten selections from the most important scholarship on the French Revolution over the past quarter century, introduced and contextualized for student readers.Historians typically categorize the historiography of the French Revolution according to each author's approval or disapproval of the Revolution, political agenda (for example Marxist, liberal, conservative, or feminist), or methodology (for example social, political, or cultural history). This book demonstrates the inadequacy of these categories of analysis for a nuanced understanding of the Revolution and emphasizes the surprising connections between historians typically seen simply as opponents in a debate. In its thorough introduction, The French Revolution: The Essential Readings demonstrates the success of an eclectic, interdisciplinary approach to this central period in modern European history and the larger relevance of the historiography to the humanities more generally.
Book Description
William James's Naval History is one of the most valuable works in the English language on the operation of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. James corresponded widely with the survivors of the events he describes. By carefully evaluating and balancing conflicting reports and testimonies, he achieved an accuracy often lacking in later studies.
The original five volumes were published in 1822-24, with a six-volume edition appearing in 1826. Previously, the work has only been available to scholars through specialist libraries. This new hardcover edition, with an introduction by the noted naval historian Andrew Lambert as well as an index for each volume, provides both scholars and maritime enthusiasts an accessible and affordable edition of this important work. Illustrated with charts, diagrams, and images, the work remains an essential source for all those who are interested in the operation of the Royal Navy in this period.
Customer Reviews:
Essential history of the era.......2007-03-18
This history, first published in the early 19th century, has recently been reprinted. It has been used as a source by many present day writers for novels set during the time period covered. The author was a historian who wrote about events as they occurred. In one case he was badly beaten in his home by a Royal Navy captain who was displeased by what he had written. The history is written as a narrative account, running chronologically through each year. It tends to jump from location to location as you change paragraphs. There are not chapters as such, just a chronological account for each year. It was published in six volumes, and each volume of the reprinted history has an introduction, appendix and index.
There are a sprinkling of tables and diagrams in the book, although not very many diagrams. Some are of particular interest. For example, at the beginning of 1798 the Royal Navy had 24 admirals, 36 vice admirals, 44 rear admirals, and 26 superannuated rear admirals (retired). There were 518 post captains on the active duty list, and 20 superannuated captains. Some of these, like Admiral Jervis, are well remembered. Most have faded into obscurity. One had to reach the top of the captain's list to become an admiral, a process that usually required over 20 years if the man survived from perils of war, shipwreck, disease, or just old age.
Some naval actions are covered in great detail. Others only receive a passing reference. It is a useful reference if you are reading novels set during the period, and you wish to read the account of the actual event. Individual volumes are sold separately.
Amazon.com
One is sorely tempted to allow the marvelously lucid prose in Alan S. Kahan's new translation of Alexis de Tocqueville's study of the French Revolution speak for itself: "In 1789 the French made the greatest effort ever undertaken by any people to disassociate themselves from their past, and to put an abyss between what they had been and what they wished to become." But as Tocqueville found out when--with the hindsight of half a century--he examined the historical records, the revolution was really not so radical a turn of events. "True, it took the world by surprise, and yet it was the result of a very long process, the sudden and violent climax of a task to which ten generations had contributed." Thus the first volume of The Old Regime and the Revolution concerns itself with the state of affairs before 1798, getting beyond the "confused and often mistaken notions" of his contemporaries "about the manner in which business was conducted, the real practices of institutions ... the real basis of ideas and mores." Although many historians have taken on the French Revolution in the years since Tocqueville's analysis was first published, few have addressed the subject with as effective a combination of insight and clarity. --Ron Hogan
Book Description
With his monumental work The Old Regime and the Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)-best known for his classic Democracy in America— envisioned a multivolume philosophic study of the origins of modern France that would examine the implications of French history on the nature and development of democratic society. Volume 1, which covered the eighteenth-century background to the Revolution, was published to great acclaim in 1856. On the continuation of this project, he wrote: "When this Revolution has finished its work, [this volume] will show what that work really was, and what the new society which has come from that violent labor is, what the Revolution has taken away and what it has preserved from that old regime against which it was directed."
Tocqueville died in the midst of this work. Here in volume 2—in clear, up-to-date English—is all that he had completed, including the chapters he started for a work on Napoleon, notes and analyses he made in the course of researching and writing the first volume, and his notes on his preparation for his continuation. Based on the new French edition of The Old Regime, most of the translated texts have never before appeared in English, and many of those that have appeared have been considerable altered. More than ever before, readers will be able to see how Tocqueville's account of the Revolution would have come out, had he lived to finish it. This handsomely produced volume completes the set and is essential reading for anyone interested in the French Revolution or in Tocqueville's thought.
Customer Reviews:
the great French observer of America looks at France.......2000-10-13
Alexis de Tocqueville is, of course, the most perceptive observer of American democracy ever to grace our shores, his Democracy in America one of the most important books ever written about democracy in general and the American Republic in specific. Here, in a less read work, he takes on the origins of the French Revolution and the peculiar French form of democracy it brought and proves an equally keen observer of his own country and countrymen.
De Tocqueville makes several vital points about the French Revolution: first, that it built gradually and, given circumstances in France, was inevitable; second, where the American Revolution had as its lodestar the ideal of freedom, the French Revolution was motivated by a passionate hatred of inequality; third, the demise of all insitutions other than the monarchy in France made it certain that when Revolution came, it would be violent and unchecked; finally, this combination of factors lead to the bizarre nature of the French Revolution, with no developed institutions to turn to once the King was gone and with no great emphasis placed on freedom, the French people were willing to tolerate the nihilism of the Terror and the authoritarianism of the governments that replaced the monarchy. He does not make the case, but it lies before us, that the American Revolution was fundamentally a positive action, a demand for greater freedom, but the French Revolution was a negative action, a demand that the few not own more than the many.
This book was to be followed by a second volume dealing with the the Revolution itself, but he died before he could continue the work. That is a shame; it would have been interesting to have some more insight from him into the French, it seems unlikely that anyone has ever rendered a better description of his people than the one he offers in his Conclusion:
When I observe France from this angle [their temperament] I find the nation itself far more remarkable than any of the events in its long history. It hardly seems possible that there can ever have existed any other people so full of contrasts and so extreme in all their doings, so much guided by their emotions and so little by fixed principles, always behaving better, or worse, than one expected of them....Undisciplined by temperament, the Frenchman is always readier to put up with arbitrary rule, however harsh, of an autocrat than with a free, well-ordered government by his fellow citizens, however worthy of respect they be. At one moment he is up in arms against authority and the next we find him serving the powers that be with a zeal such as the most servile races never display.
In the context of this paragraph, we can begin to understand Vichy France and the bureaucratic tyranny of the modern French nation. I say "begin"...
GRADE: B+
Tres Tres Bien.......2000-04-27
Tocqueville has always been, and probably always will be, known as the author of "Democracy in America," a wide-ranging and perspicacious study of the early republic. However, it's when he writes about his own France, and its political system that he knows so intimately, that Tocqueville is at his best. Unlike "Democracy," "The Ancient Regime" is neither sprawling, judgmental, nor inaccurate. These are excusable lapses, of course, in a grand work of poignant analysis, but such deficiencies do not mar "The Ancient Regime." This book is succinct, beautifully written, expertly researched, and incredibly original. Because Tocqueville was French and worked in the French government, this work is much more focused, specific, and accurate than "Democracy" (written hastily after a 9-month tour of America in 1830-31). It is simply a brilliant work, the creation of a curious and sometimes eccentric mind.
Amazon.com
Conor Cruise O'Brien, the distinguished Irish diplomat, constitutional historian and writer, has produced a typically vigorous and sweeping polemic against the reputation of the author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson. O'Brien contends that liberals are mistaken in claiming Jefferson as one of their own; indeed he regards the right-wing militias as the true heirs to Jefferson's spirit. Contrasting Jefferson's position with that of his longtime hero, the anti-revolutionary Edmund Burke, O'Brien details the extreme edges of Jeffersonian political theory, in particular his commitment to the French Revolution even in the face of its excesses ("rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated"). For O'Brien, the American revolution is still a glorious achievement, but Jefferson is demoted to a mere "draughtsman" of the Declaration.
Book Description
As controversial and explosive as it is elegant and learned, The Long Affair is Conor Cruise O'Brien's examination of Thomas Jefferson, as man and icon, through the critical lens of the French Revolution. O'Brien offers a provocative analysis of the supreme symbol of American history and political culture and challenges the traditional perceptions of both Jeffersonian history and the Jeffersonian legacy.
"The book is an attack on America's long affair with Jeffersonian ideology of radical individualism: an ideology that, by confusing Jefferson with a secular prophet, will destroy the United States from within."—David C. Ward, Boston Book Review
"With his background as a politician and a diplomat, O'Brien brings a broad perspective to his effort to define Jefferson's beliefs through the prism of his attitudes toward France. . . . This is an important work that makes an essential contribution to the overall picture of Jefferson."—Booklist
"O'Brien traces the roots of Jefferson's admiration for the revolution in France but notes that Jefferson's enthusiasm for France cooled in the 1790s, when French egalitarian ideals came to threaten the slave-based Southern economy that Jefferson supported."—Library Journal
"In O'Brien's opinion, it's time that Americans face the fact that Jefferson, long seen as a champion of the 'wronged masses,' was a racist who should not be placed on a pedestal in an increasingly multicultural United States."—Boston Phoenix
"O'Brien makes a well-argued revisionist contribution to the literature on Jefferson."—Kirkus Reviews
"O'Brien is right on target . . . determined not to let the evasions and cover-ups continue."—Forrest McDonald, National Review
"The Long Affair should be read by anyone interested in Jefferson—or in a good fight."—Richard Brookhiser, New York Times Book Review
Customer Reviews:
A Great but Flawed Man.......2006-08-06
Conor Cruise O'Brien has here given us an extremely interesting, if troubling, book on Jefferson's views on the French Revolution and slavery. In a nutshell, O'Brien has two charges against Jefferson to bring: first, he believes that Jefferson's support of the French Revolution was for the most part sincere, but convenient. Secondly, and most provocatively, O'Brien not only argues that our third president was a racist, not merely when judged by exacting late Twentieth Century standards, but when judged by Eighteenth Century Virginian standards. And that when white extremists claim to be his genuine heirs, they are not entirely wrong! An extraordinary charge, given the general view of Jefferson as the most 'liberal' and progressive of the Founders. A charge to which we will return momentarily.
But first, Mr. O'Brien's discussion of Jefferson and the French Revolution runs something like this: Slaveholders of the American South were being attacked and ridiculed, not only by their rivals in the northern states but by the French and English, for their hypocrisy. It was this combination of embarrassment about slavery and political struggle with the Federalists that led Jefferson and most of the South to answer their enemies by the amazing stratagem of virtually unconditional support of the French Revolution.
I say amazing, though ingenious comes to mind, because at first blush it would seem that support of the French Revolution would mean support of her humanitarian principles. But Jefferson, the South, and the Republicans needed political support from voters in the North, they needed a unifying theme to counterbalance the particularism and divisiveness of slavery. Their policy of fervent public support for the French Revolution did that very well indeed. Jefferson's party was to successively place three men, himself, Madison and Monroe, in the presidency in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.
But I honestly find the whole discussion of Jefferson's maneuvers, and O'Briens purported shock at them, disingenuous and unconvincing. Imagine! Politicians playing at Politics!!! If anything, we end up impressed by the political acumen of Jefferson and the Republicans. Not only did they make so many people forget that so many of their leaders were slaveowning patricians, but they were able to saddle the Federalists, within a generation of the Revolutionary War, with the defense of the hated British Empire! What I did find deeply disturbing, however, was O'Briens discussion of Jefferson's views of slavery.
What O'Brien tries to show, and I think very much succeeds in showing is, first, that Jefferson's reputation as the outstanding liberal of his generation is sentimental nonsense. Not only did he never seriously consider any practical way of ending the slave/plantation system, but he was among its most ardent defenders. In his beloved Virginia, around the time of his Declaration, he was a member of a committee chosen to revise, modernize and codify the statutes of Virginia, including laws dealing with slaves. Among the enlightened additions to the law that came out of this committee were that no free blacks would be allowed to emigrate into Virginia, though God only knows why they would want to, and any white woman having a child of a black man would have to leave the state! Thus spoke the author of the Declaration of Independence.
Later, during a slave revolt in the French colony Saint Dominique (Haiti), Jefferson behaved in an equally abominable fashion. He sweats blood over the sufferings of the former masters, gone into penurious exile, "Never was so deep a tragedy presented to the feelings of man"! But as to the recently self-emancipated slaves, our third president advises the French, in the person of Louis A. Pichon (the Charge d' Affairs) to reduce Toussaint [the Haitian leader] to starvation after making peace, and in collusion, with England! In other words, Jefferson advises France to abandon the Revolution and Revolutionary Principles because there are free black in the Caribbean! During his second administration, after the failure of the French to retake the island, he imposed an embargo on the Haitians...
Jeffersonians are forever drawing our attention to the words, the magnificent words, on the Jefferson Memorial: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free." But O'Brien wonders, as do we, about the words that follow those quoted above. Can the man who, in his Autobiography, wrote "Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Native habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them", still be an unquestionable monument in our multi-cultural society?
Why this spiteful, evil, resentful hatred of the slaves (indeed, all black people) who toiled so endlessly for him? Those of us alive today in the United States have little understanding of slavery, having never lived under it, whether as masters or slaves. Perhaps if we were to compare modern slavery with ancient slavery we could shed some more light on the institution of slavery.
Jefferson, Virginians, and other modern slaveowners, were mightily given over to the conceit of comparing themselves to ancient slaveholders. After all, if such paragons of virtue and principle like Brutus and Cato could own slaves, what could be essentially wrong with the "peculiar institution"? This argument is, to be honest, idiotic. Just because Cato is politically incorruptible, an icon (in his own time!) in the resistance to Caesar, does not mean that everything he does is magnificent or beyond reproach. If this were so he would have been able to put together a coalition to thwart Caesar long before Caesar crossed the Rubicon.
The comparison of ancient and modern slavery, however, is interesting. Is there anything that sets them apart? Why did (some) slaves in antiquity rise to such 'recognized' preeminence in science, humanities, or the arts, while this was so rare, as to be nonexistent, in Jefferson's Virginia, the rest of the American South, or, to a lesser extent, Brazil and Haiti? Jefferson himself observes that some ancient slaves excelled in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their masters' children. Characteristically, he points out that these slaves, of the Greeks and Romans, "were of the race of whites." Thus it would seem that it is the psuedo-scientific notion of race is what separates ancient and modern forms of slavery. Unfortunately, in the limited space that Amazon allows, this topic must await another review.
In closing I want to say that I don't believe that Jefferson was a premature Nazi, and neither does Mr. O'Brien. But Jefferson's speculations and his actions have given credence to lunatics like Timothy McVeigh claiming our Third President as their hero. These facts should lead us not to the contemptuous dismissal of Jefferson, which is what he did to black people, but rather admiration for what was genuinely admirable in the man, and contempt for what was contemptible.
Readable and Convincing, but ..........2006-06-27
O'Brien provides an interesting, readable and persuasive account of Jefferson's relations with the French Revolution and his views on slavery. Jefferson comes across as a distinctly mixed character, but an interesting one.
Reading the early parts of the book, my main reservation was that the author, having created plausible hypotheses, tended to thereafter treat them as facts. It's hard to avoid doing that when explaining historical events, in particular the apparent contradictions between Jefferson's stated views and his actual policies with regard to both the French Revolution and slavery. The problem for the reader who is not already an expert in the history--and I am not--is that he has no way of knowing how much the author has selected his facts to fit his theories.
As long as he was dealing with the late 18th and early 19th centuries, I found O'Brien convincing. When, at the end, he switched to talking about late 20th century America, on the other hand, he came across as presenting the sort of distorted picture that requires the combination of political bias and massive ignorance. He appears to believe that the major opposition to conventional liberalism in the U.S. is a right wing white racist movement which he occasionally describes as "libertarian" and identifies with Timothy McVeigh and the Militia movement. While he thinks that movement will probably lose out over the next century, he isn't sure.
Somewhere he refers to militias as having tens of thousands of members. It doesn't seem to occur to him that that figure, if true, amounts to about one American in ten thousand. And he greatly overestimates the central role of racial issues in American political discourse, perhaps in part because doing so provides a tie-in to Jefferson, perhaps in part because he cannot imagine any other reasons why those identified as on the right might be critical of late twentieth century American liberalism.
All that being said, I'm glad I read the book, and I think I know more about the early years of the U.S. as a result of doing so.
REVIEW OF CONOR O'BRIEN'S THE LONG AFFAIR BY JOHN CHUCKMAN.......2005-02-26
This is, quite simply, one of the most important books ever written about Jefferson. It redresses the terrible imbalance created by American historians who think of the Founding Fathers as the Twelve Apostles re-incarnated. Critics of the book should understand that O'Brien is a world-class scholar.
When O'Brien published "The Long Affair," about Thomas Jefferson and his peculiar admiration for the bloody excesses of the French Revolution, the Sage for Archer Daniels Midland (aka George Will) went into a word-strewn fit over the book. I think Will's excesses speak to the quality of most criticism of the book.
Perhaps, the single thing about the book that most upset George was O'Brien's comparison of a statement of Jefferson's to something Pol Pot might have said. Jefferson wrote in 1793, at the height of the Terror, "...but rather than it [the French Revolution] should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is." George wrote off Jefferson's brutal statement as "epistolary extravagance," and attacked O'Brien for using slim evidence for an extreme conclusion about an American "hero."
George went so far as favorably to compare the work of Ken Burns with that of O'Brien, calling Burns "an irrigator of our capacity for political admiration," as compared to one who "panders" to "leave our national memory parched."
I mean no disparagement of Ken Burns, but he produces the television equivalent of coffee-table books. O'Brien is a scholar, the author of many serious books. The very comparison, even without the odd language, tells us something about George.
But language, too, is important. The irony is that George's own words, "irrigator of our capacity for political admiration," sound frighteningly like what we'd expect to hear from the Ministry of Culture in some ghastly place (dare I write it?) such as Pol Pot's Cambodia.
But George should have known better. This letter of Jefferson's is utterly characteristic of views he expressed many different ways. Jefferson quite blithely wrote that America's Constitution would not be adequate to defend what he called liberty, that there would have to be a new revolution every 15 or 20 years, and that the tree of liberty needed to be nourished regularly with a fresh supply of patriot blood.
Jefferson's well-known sentimental view of the merits of sturdy yeomen farmers as citizens of a republic and his intense dislike for industry and urbanization bear an uncanny resemblance to Pol Pot's beliefs. Throwing people out of cities to become honorable peasants back on the land, even those who never saw a farm, was precisely how Pol Pot managed to kill at least a million people in Cambodia.
What is it about many of those on the right relishing the deaths of others in the name of ideology? You see, much like the "chickenhawks" now running Washington, sending others off to die, Jefferson never lifted a musket during the Revolution. While serving as governor of Virginia, he set a pathetic example of supporting the war's desperate material needs. He also gave us a comic-opera episode of dropping everything and running feverishly away from approaching British troops in Virginia (there was an official inquiry over the episode). Jefferson turned down his first diplomatic appointment to Europe by the new government out of fear of being captured by British warships, a fear that influenced neither Benjamin Franklin nor John Adams.
But real heroes aren't always, or even usually, soldiers. Jefferson, despite a long and successful career and a legacy of fine words (expressing thoughts largely cribbed from European writers), cannot be credited with any significant personal sacrifice over matters of principle during his life. He wouldn't give up luxury despite his words about slavery. He never risked a serious clash with the Virginia Establishment over slave laws during his rise in state politics. And in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, he lamely and at length blamed the king of England for the slave trade, yet, when he wrote the words, it was actually in his interest to slow the trade and protect the value of his existing human holdings.
Unlike Mr. Lincoln later, who had none of his advantages of education and good social contacts, Jefferson did not do well as a lawyer. He never earned enough to pay his own way, his thirst for luxury far outstripping even the capacity of his many high government positions and large number of slaves to generate wealth. Again, unlike Mr. Lincoln, Jefferson was not especially conscientious about owing people money, and he frequently continued buying luxuries like silver buckles and fine carriages while he still owed substantial sums.
Jefferson spent most of his productive years in government service, yet he never stopped railing against the evils of government. There's more than a passing resemblance here to the empty slogans of government-service lifers like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich who enjoy their government pensions and benefits even as they still complain about government. Jefferson's most famous quote praises the least possible government, yet, as President, he brought a virtual reign of terror to New England with his attempts to enforce an embargo against England (the "Anglomen" as this very prejudiced man typically called the English).
Jefferson, besides having some truly ridiculous beliefs, like those about the evils of central banks or the health efficacy of soaking your feet in ice water every morning, definitely had a very dark side. Any of his political opponents would readily have testified to this. Jefferson was the American Machiavelli.
It was this side of him that put Philip Freneau on the federal payroll in order to subsidize the man's libelous newspaper attacks on Washington's government - this while Jefferson served in that very government. At another point, Jefferson hired James Callender to dig up and write filth about political opponents, an effort which backfired when Callender turned on Jefferson for not fulfilling promises. Callender famously dug out and publicized the story about Sally Hemings, Jefferson's slave-mistress, his late wife's illegitimate half-sister (slavery made for some amazing family relationships), a story we now know almost certainly to be true (by the way, dates point to Sally's beginning to serve Jefferson in this capacity at 13 or 14 years old). It was this dark side of Jefferson that resulted in a ruthless, years-long vendetta against Aaron Burr for the sin of appearing to challenge Jefferson's election to the presidency.
Jefferson expressed himself in embarrassingly clear terms about his belief in black inferiority. And it is important to note that in doing so, he violated one of his basic principles of remaining skeptical and not accepting what was not proved, so this, clearly, was something he believed deeply. There is also reliable evidence that on one occasion he was observed by a visitor beating a slave, quite contradicting Jefferson's public-relations pretensions to saintly paternalism.
When Napoleon sent an army attempting to subdue the slaves who had revolted and formed a republic on what is now Haiti, President Jefferson gave his full consent and support to the bloody (and unsuccessful) effort.
Hero? I have no idea how George Will defines the word, but by any meaningful standard, Jefferson utterly fails.
Read the book, and decide for yourself.
Character assasination posing as biography.......2004-06-27
Having much respected O'Brien's writings on Irish history, I was thoroughly looking forward to his take on Thomas Jefferson. Was Jefferson a secret supporter of the Great Terror of the French revolution? Sadly, this is not a biography so much as it is a hatchet job. Jefferson was no saint. So what? Saints don't make for interesting lives anyway. But most of O'Brien's attacks are not substantiated; they're of the "this is the opinion I formed the other day while shaving" variety. This unremitting character assassination -- screed may be a better word -- is not worth the paper it is printed on.
An indictment of Thomas Jefferson's Legacy.......2004-04-04
Jefferson is one of the most revered fathers of the United States.
His sphinx-like profile, while showing some fissure, can still command today great reverence. Most of biographies about him underline the romantic-like élan and the inspiring vision that constitute his legacy, while alluding marginally and with benign neglect to the many inconsistencies that characterize his life.
I happened to read this essay, shortly after "American Sphinx" by J.J Ellis: the leaflet on the book promised to mount an indictment of Jefferson's ideal heritage, and the credential of the writer, a former UN official, were flawless. I must admit that the book did exceed the most optimistic expectation.
While I cannot agree completely with the indictment and the conclusion (the threat posed by Jefferson legacy to American Civil religion), I did greatly enjoy this reading. It demands respect for the quantity of the documents scrutinized, for the careful philological method used to interpret them, for the sharp logic used in building up the case and for the careful balancing and evaluation of different perspectives.
This is a detailed analysis of the political thought of Thomas Jefferson.Not a personal attack to the man: private life and biography enter only when it may be of help in understanding the development of his political ideas. The indictment is focused especially in the exposing of the grand smoke-screen that revolutionary rhetoric offered him to resist the more liberal attitudes of others revolutionary leading figures. In other words Jefferson, more or less knowingly, appropriated of the grand ideals of the Revolution not to further a new order but to rescue the conservative attitudes of the South and in this attempt he helped to create a dangerous compromise, responsible for the Civil War and still present - under different aspects - in the American political thought. This divorce between action and thought permits to account for the apparently "mistakes" of the man Jefferson: his lenient judgement of the French revolution - even in the most bloodied hours of the Terror, his attitudes towards slavery, his many slips both in private life and in the political arena. And that same obscurity is responsible for the romantic aura that still surrounds his myth.
A weakness of the book is that is often very "dry" in style: terse, but a bit too concise and uninspiring.This is possibly caused by a rather excessive focusing on the main theme: everything has been developed as in an effort to economy. Biography is almost reduced to mere facts and - as I told before - enters only when that can help to understand Jefferson's political ideas, the Enlightenment ideals and the revolution are narrowed to the theme considered (it is not even mentioned the famous letter about "whether one generation of men has a right to bind another") and there's almost no attempt to psychological analysis. The force of Logic supersedes Rhetoric. Possibly this is a voluntary effort to expose Jefferson's rhetoric in the name of hard substance, but none the less I believe the book could be much more pleasant with some touch of colour.
Possibly a lesser fault is also the neglect in analysing the Jefferson role and place in the European Society of the Ancient Regime.After all Jefferson (with Franklin and maybe more than Franklin) was one of the most "European" of the revolutionary leaders. He denied often the links, he showed to despise the European models, and yet he still is a leading figure in pre-revolutionary France (he was friend with Lafayette, with Condorcet, with the salon of madame Helvetius) and his ideas can be best explained on the light of the European pre-romantic movement, with all the emphasis on contrast between heart-purity-uncorrupted nature-individual versus mind-civilities-corruption of progress-society.An analysis of this attitudes could have cast light on the "divorce" of the ideal man (the Jefferson thinker-philosopher) from the actual man (the Jefferson slave owner and cunning political man), a divorce that is typical of many - if not most - European pre-romantics (Rousseau, but also the first Goethe).
While much has been written about the debt to British and Scottish Enlightenment, as far as I know, it seems a balanced assessment of the mutual debt of European pre-revolutionary society and American Revolutionary Thought is still lacking.And yet in Paris we can observe a great turmoil of ideas - in which American intellectuals have a leading role: Franklin and Jefferson, of course, but also Adams, Jay, Paine,... A closer look to that vanished world of late Enlightenment of Literary Salons, Masonic lodges, Enlightened Monarchs and rebel Intellectuals could help to rewrite history and understand many of its inconsistencies.
Book Description
William M. James's Naval History is one of the most valuable works in the English language on the operation of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. James corresponded widely with the survivors of the events he describes. By carefully evaluating and balancing conflicting reports and testimonies, he achieved an accuracy often lacking in later studies. The original five volumes were published in 1822 to 1824, with a six-volume edition appearing in 1826. This new hardcover edition, with an introduction by the noted naval historian Andrew Lambert as well as an index for each volume, provides both scholars and maritime enthusiasts an accessible and affordable edition of this important work. In Volume VI, the United States enters the war at sea, and the 1811-1827 battles feature vessels such as the USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere, Chesapeake and Shannon, United States and Macedonian.
Customer Reviews:
James shows his bias.......2005-10-25
The apparent impetus of this volume was to set the record straight on the events of the naval War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States. In the compilation of the summaries of the various single-ship battles, the recurring theme for just about all of them was that the British crew fought against ships that were clear overmatches against their own and used the fact that American ships were better-constructed as an insinuation that the Americans couldn't defeat the Royal Navy in equal odds.
The last time I checked, having better ships, equal seamanship, and better-trained and better-motivated crews was hardly a negative to pin on a foe. James consistently suggests that 44 gun frigates like USS Constitution were essentially "74s in disguise" and the captains and crews of those ships wouldn't have stood up to an equal ship in the Royal Navy. He also takes issue with the American 74 gun ships of the line that Congress authorized but never used because the Treaty of Ghent was ratified before they could put the new warships to sea. This in spite of the fact that the American 74 gun ships would never face their own in a line of battle or even in a single ship encounter. He pointed out that an "average" British 74, HMS Albion threw a much lighter broadside than the smallest American 74 (USS Franklin).
He also takes issue with the American practice of arming their ships with more guns than their rates (for instance, the Constitution was believed to have carried 54 guns at the time she faced HMS Guerriere and she was rated a 44 gun frigate). However, he ignores the fact that nearly every country did that with their ships. He also falls into the trap of challenging the American assertion that superior seamanship, gunnery drill, and command had at least as much to do with American naval victories as did the construction of the ships themselves by using HMS Shannon's victory over USS Chesapeake. However, that victory was the exception that proved the rule. The Shannon was commanded by Philip Broke, a man who had his men train on their guns much the way the Americans usually did and his crew was among the best in the Royal Navy. Meanwhile, the Chesapeake was consistently considered a most unfortunate ship and it was the poorest-constructed of any of the original six frigates.
In the end, instead of acknowledging that a Royal Navy that had lost only five single ship actions out of 200 in the ten years that preceded the War of 1812 could lose that many in the space of six months to an opponent that beat them fair and square, William James chooses to recite the party line that it wasn't possible for anyone to beat the Royal Navy mano a mano without cheating. That detracts from the otherwise obvious quality in his approach.
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