Fatal attraction. The classical past at the beginning of the French revolutionary republic (1792-93)

AutorDaniele di Bartolomeo
CargoUniversità degli Studi di Teramo
Páginas1-18
FATAL ATTRACTION.
THE CLASSICAL PAST AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY REPUBLIC (1792-93)1
Daniele di Bartolomeo
Università degli Studi di Teramo
CONTENTS: I. INTRODUCTION: BACK TO THE PAST - II. THE FIRST FRENCH
REPUBLICANS FACE-TO-FACE WITH CLASSICAL REVOLUTIONS - III. THE
ANCIENTS IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATE OF YEAR I - IV. CONCLUSION: A
TRICK OF FATE
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate the image of the ancient
republics in the early months of the French Republic, with particular attention to
the debate that preceded the adoption of the Constitution of the Year I (24 June
1793) and to the publications on historical themes discussed or signaled by the
press in the summer of 1792. I intend to show how the history of the ancient
republics served as a laboratory in which model or simulate the effectiveness of
new ideas and concepts, but also as practical guide for those where living
through the shocking reality of the revolution.
Keywords: French revolution, Constitution, National Convention, Uses of the
past, Republicanism
I. INTRODUCTION: BACK TO THE PAST
Until recently, the French Revolution was studied with a gaze to the future2,
toward the new world that it generated and that could only be conceived through
the categories that it had created3. For this reason, the revolution seemed like a
familiar event for those who studied it, one that had little to do with the past or
with events that occurred elsewhere in the late eighteenth century4. This
approach was accompanied by the conviction that the Revolutionaries had
chosen the future as a term of comparison for imagining France's regeneration5,
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1 Translated by Zakiya Hanafi
2 See Rebecca L. Spang, “Paradigms and Paranoia: How Modern Is the French Revolution?”,
American Historical Review, n° 108, 2003, pp. 119-147.
3 Keith Michael Baker et al. (eds.), The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political
Culture, 4 vols., Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1987-1989, 1994; François Furet, La Révolution en
débat, Gallimard, Paris, 1999; Michel Biard (ed.), La Révolution française. Une histoire toujours
vivante, Tallandier, Paris, 2010; Sophie Wahnich (ed.), Histoire d'un trésor perdu. Transmettre la
Révolution française, Les Prairies Ordinaires, Paris, 2013.
4 See Francesco Benigno, Mirrors of Revolution. Conflict and Political Identity in Early Modern
Europe, English trans., Brepols, Turnhout, 2009.
5 François Hartog, “La Révolution française et l’Antiquité. Avenir d’une illusion ou cheminement
d’un quiproquo?”, in Chrissanthy Avlami (ed.), L’Antiquité grecque au XIXème siècle. Un exemplum
contesté?, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2000, pp. 7-46; Avlami, Le modèle antique à l’épreuve du
XVIII siècle. Réflexions sur l’analogie la différenciation et l’Histoire, in Avlami, Jaime Alvar, Mirella
Romero Recio (eds.), Historiographie de l’Antiquité et transferts culturels . Les histoires anciennes
dans l’Europe des XVIIe et XIXe siècles, Brill, Amsterdam and New York, 2010, pp. 51-65.
Revista de Historia Constitucional
ISSN 1576-4729, n.16, 2015. http://www.historiaconstitucional.com, págs. 1-18
ignoring current events and definitively emancipating themselves from the past6.
This position, which still garners support in the wake of Reinhart Koselleck7, has
since been strongly questioned8. Historians have realized that the Revolution did
not serve exclusively as a forge for the future: it was also a laboratory where the
new took shape through the reuse of discourses about the past and from the
past, and through comparison with contemporary experiences9.
This radical shift in understanding has opened up new areas for
investigation: the topos of the French exceptionality10 has been fruitfully
challenged11, while the Revolution has been reintroduced into its own spatial and
temporal perspective12 . In the last decade especially, many historians have
labored to identify the French republican moment13, with the aim of extending to
revolutionary France the studies on the classical republican tradition begun by
John Pocock14 and developed variously by Quentin Skinner15, Philip Petitt16, and
many others17. However, despite having filled this gap by partially reconstructing
French contributions to classical republican discourse, they have overlooked
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6 Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1984.
7 Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe,
Cambridge, Columbia University Press, Mass., and London, 1985.
8 François Quastana, Pierre Serna, “Le républicanisme anglais dans la France des Lumières et
de la Révolution: mesure d’une présence”, La Révolution française [En ligne], n° 5, 2013, mis en
ligne le 31 décembre 2013, Consulté le 04 février 2014. URL: http://lrf.revues.org/984.
9 See, for example, Francesco Benigno and Nicoletta Bazzano (eds.) Uso e reinvenzione
dell’antico nella politica di età moderna (secoli XVI-XIX), Lacaita Editore, Manduria, Bari, and Roma,
2006 and Manuela Albertone and Antonino De Francesco (eds.), Rethinking Atlantic Word. Europe
and Amer ica in the Ag e of Demo cratic Revol utions, Palgrave, New York, 2009.
10 Michel Vovelle (ed.), Révolution et République. L’exception française, Kimé, Paris, 1994.
11 Annie Jourdan, La Révolution, une exception française?, Flammarion, Paris, 2004.
12 Pierre Serna, Le Directoire, miroir de quelle République?, in Pierre Serna (ed.), Républiques
sœurs. Le Directoire et la Révolution atlantique, PUR, Rennes, 2009, pp. 7-20.
13 Raymonde Monnier, Républicanisme, patriotisme et Révolution française, L’Harmattan, Paris,
2005, p. 38. See also: Mona Ozouf, Varennes. La mort de la royauté, Gallimard, Paris, 2005;
Jacques de Saint-Victor, Les racines de la liberté. Le débat français oublié 1689-1789, Perrin,
Paris, 2007; Andrew Jainchill, Reimagining Politics after the Terror: the Republican Origins of
French Liberalism, Cornell University Press, Itacha, N.Y., and London, 2008.
14 John G. A. Pocock, “Cittadini, clienti e creditori: la repubblica come critica del mutamento
storico”, in Maurizio Viroli (ed.), Libertà politica e virtù civile. Significati e percors i de l
repubblicanesimo classico, Edizioni della Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, Torino, 2004, p. 133; John
G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican
Tradition, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1975.
15 Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998;
Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Republicanism: a shared European heritage, 2
vols., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002.
16 Philippe Petitt, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1997.
17 Marco Geuna, “La tradizione repubblicana e i suoi interpreti: famiglie teoriche e discontinuità
concettuali”, Filosofia politica, n° 1, 1998, pp. 102-132.
Daniele di Bartolomeo
2

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