The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 - Updated Edition

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Princeton University Press, Jun 1, 2014 - History - 880 pages

For the Western world, the period from 1760 to 1800 was the great revolutionary era in which the outlines of the modern democratic state came into being. Here for the first time in one volume is R. R. Palmer's magisterial account of this incendiary age. Palmer argues that the American, French, and Polish revolutions—and the movements for political change in Britain, Ireland, Holland, and elsewhere—were manifestations of similar political ideas, needs, and conflicts. Palmer traces the clash between an older form of society, marked by legalized social rank and hereditary or self-perpetuating elites, and a new form of society that placed a greater value on social mobility and legal equality.

Featuring a new foreword by David Armitage, this Princeton Classics edition of The Age of the Democratic Revolution introduces a new generation of readers to this enduring work of political history.

 

Contents

Preface to Part 1 3
3
The Constituted Bodies 22
22
Theory and Practice
42
Clashes with Monarchy
64
Geneva and JeanJacques Rousseau
83
The British Parliament between King and People
106
The Forces in Conflict
138
The People as Constituent Power
159
The Survival of the Revolution in France
447
Victories of the CounterRevolution in Eastern Europe
473
Eastern Europe in 1791 443
474
The Batavian Republic
505
Mirage of the Moderates
530
The French Directory between Extremes
544
The Revolution Comes to Italy
568
The Cisalpine Republic
589

Europe and the American Revolution
177
Two Parliaments Escape Reform
214
Democrats and AristocratsDutch Belgian and Swiss
242
The Limitations of Enlightened Despotism
280
The Aristocratic Resurgence
326
The Explosion of 1789
347
Preface to Part 2
375
Revolutionary Zone Early 1789
389
The Revolutionizing of the Revolution
400
17921793
424
The Republics at Rome and Naples
642
The Revolution of the Mind
684
Republicanism and the Establishment
709
Democracy Native and Imported
745
Climax and Dénouement
775
Appendixes
796
The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 and
811
Index
821
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About the author (2014)

R. R. Palmer (1909–2002) was professor emeritus of history at Yale University and a guest scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His books include Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution (Princeton). The first volume of The Age of the Democratic Revolution won the Bancroft Prize in 1960. David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University.

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