Buch, Englisch, 384 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm
Confiance and the Politics of Revolutionary France
Buch, Englisch, 384 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm
ISBN: 978-0-19-898226-5
Verlag: Oxford University Press
Few concerns loomed larger in eighteenth-century French political and intellectual life than that of trust. Political disputes, pamphlet debates, and philosophical writings all reflected a belief that public trust was essential to society, yet constantly vulnerable to breakdown. Such concerns helped shape the extraordinary moment in 1789 when the French people were invited to record their grievances, setting in motion a revolutionary upheaval. Trusting in the Revolution argues that the French Revolution was driven by a series of profound dilemmas surrounding trust.
David Andress posits that the course of the Revolution was shaped, to a remarkable extent, by the efforts of revolutionary leaders to establish trust within France's new institutions and political order. After the collapse of trust in the ancien régime, the revolutionaries who came to power sought to rebuild politics on new foundations. Trust in patriotic national unity was supposed to be the greatest of these, yet persistent resistance and skepticism among the populace soon prompted growing distrust from above.
Questions of trust also shaped the design of the new political system, as debate on the electoral foundations of the new order increasingly turned on how to limit the electorate, and constrain their potential choices, to those that would be comfortably trustworthy. Rebuilding the justice system around elected judges and juries led to the invention of a system of immediate oral confrontation, as jurors could not be trusted to reflect reliably on written evidence.
As France moved from constitutional monarchy to republic, war, and eventually the Terror, trust remained a defining theme of political rhetoric. Leaders repeatedly invoked the relationship between representatives and a supposedly united people, while fears of conspiracy and betrayal multiplied. Offering a new perspective on one of history's most debated events, Trusting in the Revolution provides insights into the origins of our own trust-starved political era.
