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Revolutionary Insurgency and Revolutionary Republicanism

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Revolutionary Insurgency and Revolutionary Republicanism REVOLUTIONARY INSURGENCY AND REVOLUTIONARY REPUBLICANISM: ASPECTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY TRADITION FROM THE ADVENT OF THE JULY MONARCHY THROUGH THE REPRESSION OF THE PARIS COMMUNE SUBMITTED BY: DAVID A. SHAFER DEGREE: PhD COLLEGE: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON ProQuest Number: 10045641 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10045641 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT During the greater part of the nineteenth century the French political, social and cultural landscapes continued to reverberate from the echoes of the French Revolution. On one level, the Revolution framed the parameters of political debate. However, on another level the Revolution represented the first time in French history when political activism appeared to open up boundless opportunities for effecting change. In large measure, this was due to the prominence of popular protest in the Revolution and its transformation after 1789. Popular protest was nothing new to France. In fact, it was ingrained in the popular mentalité as a response to grievances. That said, the scope of popular protest during the ancien régime tended to be quite limited and rarely transcended the immediate source of the dispute. However, it was clear that the combination of increased centralisation of the French state and a growing tendency to associate traditional grievances with political institutions or social relationships indicated a burgeoning political consciousness that was bound to alter the dimensions of protest. The French Revolution accelerated and expanded this process by infusing manifestations of popular protest with larger implications. Consequently, in so far as France's transformation from a kingdom to a nation was accomplished by outbreaks of popular protest, insurgency assumed revolutionary proportions. For some, it was legitimised as the purest expression of a sovereign people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Bourbon Restoration in 1830, a revolutionary tradition grounded on the referents of the French Revolution was established. Over the course of the next forty-one years, a strain of the republican movement premised its rhetoric and ideals on the revolutionary origins of France's first experiment with a republic. To these nineteenth century revolutionary republicans, republicanism was inextricably linked with revolution and their discourse remained riveted to the experience of 1793-4. This study examines the anthro-historical rôle of tradition in society. Next, it traces the etymological transformation of 'revolution' in producing a definition that distinguishes it from other forms of popular protest. Finally, the concept of a revolutionary republican tradition is applied to three contentious periods of the nineteenth century: the nine years following Louis-Philippe's revolutionary path to authority in 1830; the violent first four months of the Second Republic; and, the period which led up to and witnessed the competing republican visions of 1871. To the protagonists of revolution in the nineteenth century, each period reflected different stages of the Revolution and, consequently, the letter's example remained viable in spite of a different context and a changed society. CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................2 Introduction ......................................................................................................5 1. Tradition. Maintaing the Past in the Present .............................................. 9 2. Comprehending Revolution .................................................................. 56 3. Insurgency and Tradition; 1830-1840 100 4. Insurgency and the Case of 1848 ................................................... 175 5. The Insurgent Tradition: 1868-1871 224 6. Conclusion .................................................................................................. 287 Bibliography................................................................................................. 295 INTRODUCTION In the wake of the Napoleonic Empire and the Bourbon Restoration, the legacy of the French Revolution became one of the ideological battlegrounds of nineteenth century French politics and society. If the ideals and ultimate importance of the French Revolution have continued to divide historians 200 years after the events, imagine its impact on an era characterised by divisions between various hues of monarchists, imperialists and republicans. Over time, though, the once-controversial liberal ideals of the Revolution have gained almost universal acceptance and debate over the Revolution has limited itself to the intellectual and scholarly arenas. In short, the Revolution has, for all intents and purposes, become yet another historical corpse whose life is assessed through retrospection. Yet throughout much of the nineteenth-century the Revolution was still a living, breathing, viable entity; the shattered and fragmented tiles of the Revolution were variously selected and rejected in the rush of competing visions of a national mosaic. In large measure, the Revolution's enduring importance during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth-century had much to do with its temporal immediacy. The experience of the Revolution was still relatively fresh. For most of the period, witnesses to, and participants in, the major events were still alive. Beyond this, there was the Revolution's real or perceived rôle in transforming France from the ancien régime and its introduction of such nebulous concepts as sovereignty, equality, liberty, fraternity and nation. After all, these principles had recently been written into the French nomenclature and the Revolution also provided them with their definitions. The tempestuous political and social climate during the middle third of the nineteenth-century resulted, at least partially, from competing conceptualisations of the Revolution's principles. This study is devoted to one of those conceptualisations, perhaps its most radical and militant manifestation - the revolutionary republicans. It must be noted from the outset that the revolutionary republicans did not have a monopoly over the Revolution's traditions (although they might have thought they did). Instead, they represented one of many strands of opinion in France whose referents were premised on the French Revolution. As republicans, they shared a rather general goal with the numerous other individuals who desired a republican form of government. However, as revolutionaries, their specific brand of republicanism was inextricably connected to revolutionary change. As such, they were a rather stark departure from those who sought a parliamentary path to the republic. Although their agenda consisted of a socialist restructuring of society, the significance of the French Revolution for revolutionary republicans was not specifically tied to dialectical materialism and social class conflict. Rather, the French Revolution was perceived as an expression of alienation and detachment from society. Certainly, social class was a factor likely to generate a sense of alienation. However, as we know, not all revolutionaries were victims of economic exploitation; others would feel their dissociation from society to be a function of political impotence or cultural estrangement. In as much as the Revolution's principles were pronounced against the backcloth of anticipations regarding social regeneration, expectations of the advent of a Golden Era were engendered. However, this Golden Era failed to materialise. None the less, all was not lost. The Revolution was salvaged as having initiated France on a secular process of millenarianism. It was to this objective that the revolutionary republicans in the succeeding century directed their efforts. Although they were conscious of social class dynamics, and while these framed the content of much of their discourse, to them, the French Revolution had more to do with national regeneration than bourgeois supremacy. By consequence, their own revolutionary designs had less to do with the rise of the proletariat than with the advent of le bonheur public. In other words, as products of the era of romanticism, revolutionary republicans perceived the French Revolution as a romantic inspiration, a harbinger of a utopia. It was not only the ideals of the French Revolution that inspired revolutionaries in the nineteenth-century. They were also encouraged by the diversity of participation in the Revolution between 1792-4. If the French Revolution signified France's transition from kingdom to nation, nothing symbolised the unifying spirit behind nationalism more than the Revolution's temporary integration of society's most disengaged elements. In fact, from the perspective of the nineteenth-century revolutionary republicans, the years 1792 to 1794 represented the Revolution's apotheosis. While 'revisionist' historians have referred to this as the dérapage of the liberal revolution,
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