Suchergebnisse

After 1789, counterrevolution emerged as revolution's first counterconcept in
French political discourse. While scholars of the French Revolution commonly
associate counterrevolution with a backward-oriented political program,
often with the restoration of the ancien régime, this article challenges
such a retrograde understanding. Drawing on a broad corpus of sources, it
emphasizes the flexible and pluralistic meanings of counterrevolution during
the 1790s. Rather than designating a political objective, counterrevolution
first of all focused on the process of combating the revolution as such, which
allowed for different political strategies and aimed beyond a return to the
status quo ante. By discussing, next to the French case, examples from the
Haitian Revolution, Britain, Germany, and Switzerland, this article also highlights
the transnational dimension of the debate on counterrevolution. It concludes
with a plea for rethinking counterrevolution as revolution's asymmetric
other in a more relational rather than dichotomous perspective.

The Impossible Ancien Régime colonial: Postcolonial Haiti and the Perils of the French Restoration This article discusses the consequences of Napoleon's downfall for the world's first modern post-slavery state, Haiti. It focuses on the interplay between the French colonial office's diplomatic missions that were lobbied by dispossessed planters to recover the lost colony and the Haitian propaganda to guarantee national independence. These relations ultimately contributed to a shift in French colonial politics towards Haiti, from military conquest and re-enslavement to financial indemnification. Taking the rhetoric of pacification beyond Europe, French diplomacy presented racial hierarchies as an extension of the 1814 compromise between old and new elites in metropolitan France. The Haitian side, however, insisted on the sharp contradiction between the supposed reconciliation in France and a quasi-restoration of the Ancien Régime colonial. Drawing on Haitian, French and British source material, this article analyses how Haitian propaganda attacked the precarious political legitimacy of Restoration France from an extra-European viewpoint to exert pressure on European colonial politics. Relying on Haiti as a model for slave emancipation, British abolitionists significantly contributed to excluding the option of the Ancien Régime colonial. The debate on Haiti's future forced Louis XVIII's government to ponder the political risks of colonial restoration. In the outcome, financial indemnification became France's primary condition for recognising Haitian independence in 1825.

The education of children as future elites after the Restoration was a persistent concern for French émigrés after the Revolution of 1789. Focusing on discourse on émigré education and émigré schools in Britain and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, this article examines how, in the 1790s, the émigrés' rejection of the Republic and their quest for monarchical restoration resonated in pedagogical activities. Under difficult living conditions and unclear prospects of political exile, education became a consolidating strategy of combating the Revolution with pedagogical means. The social composition, educational programmes, and public representations of émigré schools reveal their pivotal role in émigré community life, involving priests, women, writers, politicians, local supporters – and children. Comparison between Britain and the Holy Roman Empire allows for differentiating strategies of integration into the host societies and of immunization against revolutionary influences. Education contributed to strengthening the émigrés' identity and mobilizing their hosts for the ideological, military, and humanitarian struggle against the Revolution. The students' later careers call for reconsidering experiences of exile education among the elites of Napoleonic and Restoration France.

Using the example of the Monarchiens, a group of constitutional monarchists, Friedemann Pestel examines how émigrés moved from being on the defensive to political action in the 1790s. Their pan-European connections gave them extensive visibility. The study shows the interconnections between lands of origin and exile. It corrects the prevalent view of emigrants as historical losers. Friedemann Pestel,Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

AbstractWhat qualifies as a political event is a core question for social and historical research. This article argues that the use of temporal structures in narratives of political and social developments contributes significantly to the making and unmaking of events. We show how arguments that draw upon history play a particularly important role in transforming the everyday unfolding of politics into discernable events with a clear time bracket. Through this lens, we investigate the 2016 Brexit referendum as an event that has triggered extensive debates about both Europe's experiences of the past and political expectations for its future. Conflicting assessments of history are crucial for understanding how and when Brexit became an event of European significance and why it then ceased to be so. This case also enables us to distinguish more clearly between the agent-centered focus on the event itself, and the analytical ex-post assessment as a critical juncture. Methodologically, the article demonstrates the value of a multi-perspective approach for qualitative analyses with a focus on Brexit narratives articulated across several EU countries and the United Kingdom.