The Age of the Democratic Revolution: The struggle

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Princeton University Press, 1959 - History - 596 pages

For the Western world as a whole, the period from about 1760 to 1800 was the great revolutionary era in which the outlines of the modern democratic state came into being. It is the thesis of this major work that the American, French, and Polish revolutions, and the movements for political change in Britain, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, and other countries, although each distinctive in its way, were all manifestations of recognizably similar political ideas, needs, and conflicts.

Volume 1 of this distinguished two-volume work, "The Challenge," received critical accolades throughout the world. It was the winner of the Bancroft Prize in 1960 and was called "one of the classic works of American historical scholarship" (Key Reporter) and a book which "will enlarge and clarify our understanding of modern Western history. It will re-emphasize the strength and vitality of the roots that supported the growth of democracy in the Old and New Worlds" (New York Times). "Occasionally a historical work appears which, by synthesis of much previous specialized work and by intelligent reflection upon the whole, makes events of the past click into a new pattern and assume fresh meaning. Professor Palmer's book is such a work" (American Historical Review).

"The Challenge" took the story to the eve of the French Revolutionary wars; Volume 2, "The Struggle" continues the account to 1800.

 

Contents

The Issues and the Adversaries
3
The Revolutionizing of the Revolution
35
17921793
74
The Survival of the Revolution in France
99
The Problem of Eastern Europe
115
99
124
Mirage of the Moderates
130
The Abortive Polish Revolution of 1794
146
A Comparative View of the New Republican Order
338
The Republican Constitutions
346
Christianity and Democracy
353
The Republics at Rome and Naples
365
The Helvetic Republic
395
The Ambiguous Revolution
426
Mainz Jacobins and Cisrhenane Republicans
435
The Colossi of the Goethezeit
444

Agitations in the Hapsburg Empire
156
The Jacobin Conspiracies at Vienna and in Hungary 1794
164
An Addendum on Southeast Europe
171
The Batavian Republic
177
The French Directory between Extremes
211
The Revolution Comes to Italy
263
The Great Nation the SisterRepublics
330
CounterRevolutionary Cross Currents
451
Republicanism and the Establishment
459
Democracy Native and Imported
509
Appendix
550
365
579
Copyright

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About the author (1959)

R. R. Palmer (1909-2002), who taught at Princeton University from 1936 to 1963, the last eleven years as Dodge professor of history, was a past president of the American Historical Association. His other books include A History of the Modern World (later editions with Joel Colton) and Twelve Who Ruled. The first volume of The Age of the Democratic Revolution won the Bancroft Prize in 1960.