Studies in the History of Political Thought
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Christianity Unveiled; Being an Examination of the Principles and Effects of the Christian Religion
Christianity Unveiled; Being An Examination Of The Principles And Effects Of The Christian Religion by Paul Henri d’Holbach - 1761 [1819 translation by W. M. Johnson] CONTENTS. A LETTER from the Author to a Friend. CHAPTER I. - Of the necessity of an Inquiry respecting Religion, and the Obstacles which are met in pursuing this Inquiry. CHAPTER II. - Sketch of the History of the Jews. CHAPTER III. - Sketch of the History of the Christian Religion. CHAPTER IV. - Of the Christian Mythology, or the Ideas of God and his Conduct, given us by the Christian Religion. CHAPTER V. - Of Revelation. CHAPTER VI. - Of the Proofs of the Christian Religion, Miracles, Prophecies, and Martyrs. CHAPTER VII. - Of the Mysteries of the Christian Religion. CHAPTER VIII. - Mysteries and Dogmas of Christianity. CHAPTER IX. - Of the Rites and Ceremonies or Theurgy of the Christians. CHAPTER X. - Of the inspired Writings of the Christians. CHAPTER XI. - Of Christian Morality. CHAPTER XII. - Of the Christian Virtues. CHAPTER XIII. - Of the Practice and Duties of the Christian Religion. CHAPTER XIV. - Of the Political Effects of the Christian Religion. CHAPTER XV. - Of the Christian Church or Priesthood. CHAPTER XVI. - Conclusions. A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR TO A FRIEND I RECEIVE, Sir, with gratitude, the remarks which you send me upon my work. If I am sensible to the praises you condescend to give it, I am too fond of truth to be displeased with the frankness with which you propose your objections. I find them sufficiently weighty to merit all my attention. He but ill deserves the title of philosopher, who has not the courage to hear his opinions contradicted. -
The Enlightenment, Special Ediction October 2010
The Enlightenment The Newsletter of the Humanist Association of London and Area An Affiliate of Humanist Canada (HC) Volume 6 Number 8 Special Issue Two Contrasting Legacies of the Axial Age Grecian Philosophical Rationalism & Monotheistic Christianity From about 900 to 200 BCE (Before the Common Era) in different regions of the world, four great traditions came into being that have continued to influence humanity to this day. They were Confucianism and Taoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheistic Judaism in Israel (followed by its offshoot Christianity); and philosophical rationalism in Greece. This was the period of Confucius, Buddha, Jeremiah and Socrates. During this era, which came to be known as The Axial Age, spiritual and philosophical geniuses pioneered intense creativity and generated new kinds of human experiences unlike anything that had occurred up until that time. This special issue of The Enlightenment will explore the outcomes of two of these historical entities, the glory that was Greece and the monotheistic Judaism in Israel that led to the invention of Christianity and the founding of the early Roman Catholic Church. In the centuries leading up to the beginning of the Common Era (CE) great things were happening in Greece. This was the civilization that spawned philosophy, democracy, and humanism, among other things, in a polytheistic society that honoured many gods and goddesses. At the same time, not far away in Palestine, the Jews were worshiping only one God called Yahweh. In the first century CE, one of these Jews who went by the name of Jesus, organized a band of twelve disciples and began preaching a reformed gospel that irritated the leaders in the Jerusalem Temple, and possibly the Roman civic authorities as well. -
The Dutch Revolution of 1795 and the History of Republicanism Wyger RE
Much in Little Revisited: The Dutch Revolution of 1795 and the History of Republicanism Wyger R.E. Velema, Department of History, University of Amsterdam Paper prepared for the conference ‘The Republican Tradition: From the Hanseatic League to the Era of the Enlightenment’, European University at St. Petersburg, December 7-9, 2012 Not to be quoted or cited without permission from the author It is more than half a century ago that R.R. Palmer, who was soon to become famous with his magisterial work The Age of the Democratic Revolution, introduced an international scholarly audience to the Dutch revolution of 1795, also known as the Batavian revolution. In his pioneering article ‘Much in Little: the Dutch Revolution of 1795’, he pointed out that the fall of the Dutch ancien régime and the revolutionary transformation of the Netherlands that followed this downfall could best be understood as part of an international and interlinked series of revolutionary events.1 On a small scale, the Batavian revolution therefore could serve to ‘illuminate the whole complex of war and revolution which then gripped the Western world’.2 As he made abundantly clear in the title of his later magnum opus, Palmer had a relatively simple and straightforward view of the struggles that tore the Western world of the late eighteenth century apart. Just as democracy had been at issue in the Dutch revolution of 1795, the whole European and American world of the final decades of the century of Enlightenment saw the rise of a new and historically unprecedented democratic opposition against all sorts of aristocratic ‘constituted bodies’. -
1 ENTER the GHOST Cashless Payments in the Early Modern Low
ENTER THE GHOST Cashless payments in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-18001 Oscar Gelderbloma and Joost Jonkera, b Abstract We analyze the evolution of payments in the Low Countries during the period 1500-1800 to argue for the historical importance of money of account or ghost money. Aided by the adoption of new bookkeeping practices such as ledgers with current accounts, this convention spread throughout the entire area from the 14th century onwards. Ghost money eliminated most of the problems associated with paying cash by enabling people to settle transactions in a fictional currency accepted by everyone. As a result two functions of money, standard of value and means of settlement, penetrated easily, leaving the third one, store of wealth, to whatever gold and silver coins available. When merchants used ghost money to record credit granted to counterparts, they in effect created a form of money which in modern terms might count as M1. Since this happened on a very large scale, we should reconsider our notions about the volume of money in circulation during the Early Modern Era. 1 a Utrecht University, b University of Amsterdam. The research for this paper was made possible by generous fellowships at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Wassenaar. The Meertens Institute and Hester Dibbits kindly allowed us to use their probate inventory database, which Heidi Deneweth’s incomparable efforts reorganized so we could analyze the data. We thank participants at seminars in Utrecht and at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and at the Silver in World History conference, VU Amsterdam, December 2014, for their valuable suggestions. -
Introduction
© Copyright, Princeton University Press. No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher. CHAPTER 1 Introduction French Society in 1789 Historians working on the French Revolution have a problem. All of our attempts to find an explanation in terms of social groups or classes, or particular segments of society becoming powerfully activated, have fallen short. As one expert aptly expressed it: “the truth is we have no agreed general theory of why the French Revolution came about and what it was— and no prospect of one.”1 This gaping, causal void is cer- tainly not due to lack of investigation into the Revolution’s background and origins. If class conflict in the Marxist sense has been jettisoned, other ways of attributing the Revolution to social change have been ex- plored with unrelenting rigor. Of course, every historian agrees society was slowly changing and that along with the steady expansion of trade and the cities, and the apparatus of the state and armed forces, more (and more professional) lawyers, engineers, administrators, officers, medical staff, architects, and naval personnel were increasingly infusing and diversifying the existing order.2 Yet, no major, new socioeconomic pressures of a kind apt to cause sudden, dramatic change have been identified. The result, even some keen revisionists admit, is a “somewhat painful void.”3 Most historians today claim there was not one big cause but instead numerous small contributory impulses. One historian, stressing the absence of any identifiable overriding cause, likened the Revolution’s origins to a “multi- coloured tapestry of interwoven causal factors.”4 So- cial and economic historians embracing the “new social interpretation” identify a variety of difficulties that might have rendered eighteenth- century French society, at least in some respects, more fraught and vulnerable than earlier. -
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Righteous Citizens: The Lynching of Johan and Cornelis DeWitt,The Hague, Collective Violens, and the Myth of Tolerance in the Dutch Golden Age, 1650-1672 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2636q95m Author DeSanto, Ingrid Frederika Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Righteous Citizens: The Lynching of Johan and Cornelis DeWitt, The Hague, Collective Violence, and the Myth of Tolerance in the Dutch Golden Age, 1650-1672. A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Ingrid Frederika DeSanto 2018 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Righteous Citizens: The Lynching of Johan and Cornelis DeWitt, The Hague, Collective Violence, and the Myth of Tolerance in the Dutch Golden Age, 1650-1672 by Ingrid Frederika DeSanto Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles Professor Margaret C Jacob, Chair In The Hague, on August 20 th , 1672, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, Johan DeWitt and his brother Cornelis DeWitt were publicly killed, their bodies mutilated and hanged by the populace of the city. This dissertation argues that this massacre remains such an unique event in Dutch history, that it needs thorough investigation. Historians have focused on short-term political causes for the eruption of violence on the brothers’ fatal day. This work contributes to the existing historiography by uncovering more long-term political and social undercurrents in Dutch society. In doing so, issues that may have been overlooked previously are taken into consideration as well. -
History Bee of Versailles – Final Round Packet
History Bee of Versailles – Final Round Packet 1) This Holocaust survivor and first female minister in French government pushed through her namesake law while serving as Minister of Health in the government of Valery Giscard d’Estaing, where she also championed a law that facilitated access to contraceptives. For the point, name this woman who names the law legalizing abortion in France. ANSWER: Simone Veil (do not accept Simone Weil) 2) After this government arrested General Jean-Charles Pichegru, this government became divided in the aftermath of the Coup of 18 Fructidor. This government’s legislature was consisted of the Counsel of Ancients and Council of Five Hundred, which were stormed by grenadiers in the Coup of 18 Brumaire. The Consulate replaced, for the point, what government which formed after the fall of Robespierre in 1794? ANSWER: French Directory 3) The relics of Saint Thomas Aquinas were donated by Pope Urban V to this city’s Church of the Jacobins. This city was the capital of a kingdom that was conquered by Euric after the Visigoths expanded to Arles and Marseilles, although it was captured and sacked by the Franks under Clovis after the Battle of Vouillé. After Septimania merged with this city’s namesake county, this city became the capital of Languedoc. For the point, name this southern French city, the historic capital of Occitania. ANSWER: Toulouse (or Tolosa) 4) In addition to the Federalist Revolts, the bloodiest of these events was put down by General Turreau’s “flying columns” and failed to take Nantes. During that example of these events, priests who refused to agree to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy were tied to barges and drowned in the Loire. -
Fair Shares for All
FAIR SHARES FOR ALL JACOBIN EGALITARIANISM IN PRACT ICE JEAN-PIERRE GROSS This study explores the egalitarian policies pursued in the provinces during the radical phase of the French Revolution, but moves away from the habit of looking at such issues in terms of the Terror alone. It challenges revisionist readings of Jacobinism that dwell on its totalitarian potential or portray it as dangerously Utopian. The mainstream Jacobin agenda held out the promise of 'fair shares' and equal opportunities for all in a private-ownership market economy. It sought to achieve social justice without jeopardising human rights and tended thus to complement, rather than undermine, the liberal, individualist programme of the Revolution. The book stresses the relevance of the 'Enlightenment legacy', the close affinities between Girondins and Montagnards, the key role played by many lesser-known figures and the moral ascendancy of Robespierre. It reassesses the basic social and economic issues at stake in the Revolution, which cannot be adequately understood solely in terms of political discourse. Past and Present Publications Fair shares for all Past and Present Publications General Editor: JOANNA INNES, Somerville College, Oxford Past and Present Publications comprise books similar in character to the articles in the journal Past and Present. Whether the volumes in the series are collections of essays - some previously published, others new studies - or mono- graphs, they encompass a wide variety of scholarly and original works primarily concerned with social, economic and cultural changes, and their causes and consequences. They will appeal to both specialists and non-specialists and will endeavour to communicate the results of historical and allied research in readable and lively form. -
Black Cosmopolitans
BLACK COSMOPOLITANS BLACK COSMOPOLITANS Race, Religion, and Republicanism in an Age of Revolution Christine Levecq university of virginia press Charlottesville and London University of Virginia Press © 2019 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper First published 2019 ISBN 978-0-8139-4218-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8139-4219-3 (e-book) 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available for this title. Cover art: Jean-Baptiste Belley. Portrait by Anne Louis Girodet de Roussy- Trioson, 1797, oil on canvas. (Château de Versailles, France) To Steve and Angie CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Jacobus Capitein and the Radical Possibilities of Calvinism 19 2. Jean- Baptiste Belley and French Republicanism 75 3. John Marrant: From Methodism to Freemasonry 160 Notes 237 Works Cited 263 Index 281 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has been ten years in the making. One reason is that I wanted to explore the African diaspora more broadly than I had before, and my knowledge of English, French, and Dutch naturally led me to expand my research to several national contexts. Another is that I wanted this project to be interdisciplinary, combining history and biography with textual criticism. It has been an amazing journey, which was made pos- sible by the many excellent scholars this book relies on. Part of the pleasure in writing this book came from the people and institutions that provided access to both the primary and the second- ary material. -
Why Danton Doesn't
Why Danton Doesn’t Die Martin Wagner Abstract Georg Büchner avoids showing on stage any acts of aggression against the title hero of his play Danton’s Tod. Neither Danton’s arrest, nor the proclamation of his death sen- tence, nor his execution explicitly occurs on stage. Büchner’s decision not to empha- size any of the acts of violence against Danton significantly contributes to the play’s departure from conventional dramatic structure. In contrast to conventional plays, which include a clearly recognizable climax and catastrophe, in Büchner’s play, no single moment – and certainly no moment of violence – dominates the sequence of events. My thesis is that the avoidance of a traditional dramatic arc serves as an impli- cit commentary on the questions of historical progress and revolutionary violence that are raised in the play. The play’s almost flat structure complicates attempts to justify the revolution as a brief violent period that brings about long-term change. Instead, Büchner’s Revolutionsdrama invites us to conceive of a permanent revolution – a concept that first came up around the time when Büchner wrote his play. In its different values in Marxist and conservative literature – which Büchner’s play to some extent all already anticipates – the term ‘permanent revolution’ can either serve to extend the justification of instrumental revolutionary violence to a longer timespan, or to critically highlight the futility of the endlessly perpetuated violence. We may never know for sure what were the last words of the revolutionary Georges Danton when, on 5 April 1794, he mounted the scaffold to be executed by guillotine. -
The Post-Revolutionary Contestation and Nationalization of American Citizenship
Chapter 6 The Post-Revolutionary Contestation and Nationalization of American Citizenship On July 17th, 1799, the poet, editor, and publicist, Robert Treat Paine Jr. deliv- ered an oration at a meeting of the Committee of the Young Men of Boston.1 In this oration, Treat Paine commemorated the annulment of the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France. The Franco-American defensive alliance against British military aggression forged in the midst of the American Revolutionary War had lasted for exactly twenty years. Its dissolution, approved by Congress on July 7, 1798, as France and the United States were locked in an undeclared naval war, was not simply the end of a military pact, Treat Paine made clear, but sym- bolized a deep political and intellectual rift between the ‘sister republics’. ‘The struggle between Liberty and Despotism, Government and Anarchy, Religion and Atheism, has been gloriously decided’, Treat Paine commenced his ora- tion. ‘It has proved the victory of principle, the triumph of virtue. France has been foiled, and America is free’.2 Treat Paine did not deny that France was once ‘considered an amiable nation’.3 For his graduation ceremony at Harvard in 1792, he had written a poem tellingly entitled The Nature and Progress of Liberty in which he, like so many Americans had done at the time, expressed his admiration for the revo- lution in France. ‘May struggling France her ancient freedom gain, May Eu- rope’s sword oppose her rights in vain’, some of the more expressive lines of the poem read. Following a couplet in which the young graduate wished Edmund Burke’s fame to rest in ‘dark oblivion’, the poem went on to record the intimate 1 Robert Treat Paine Jr. -
The Democratic Societies of the 1790S
University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020-11-27 “Fire-Brands of Sedition”: The Democratic Societies of the 1790s Carr, Chloe Madison Carr, C. M. (2020). “Fire-Brands of Sedition”: The Democratic Societies of the 1790s (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112798 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY “Fire-Brands of Sedition”: The Democratic Societies of the 1790s by Chloe Madison Carr A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY CALGARY, ALBERTA NOVEMBER, 2020 © Chloe Madison Carr 2020 ii Abstract The citizen-led Democratic-Republican or Democratic societies in the United States represented a new era of political discourse in the 1790s. Members of these societies, frustrated by their sense that the emerging Federalist executive branch of government was becoming dangerously elitist, and alienated by decision-making in Congress, met regularly to compose resolutions to publish in local and national papers and so make their concerns widely known. Many Federalists, in and out of government, became wary of these societies and their increased presence in the public sphere.