Introduction—on and off Topic

Abstract

It has long been established, mainly with the works of Robert Roswell Palmer, Jacques Godechot, and more recently, Wim Klooster and Janet Polasky, that a revolutionary wave, promoting more egalitarian and progressive political regimes, swept over Northern America and Europe, France more particularly, in the 18th century. This approach, known as the Atlantic Revolution theory, holds that the 1776 American War of Independence initiated such a philosophical and political process, later reaching Europe. It appears however that this revolutionary movement was initiated a long time before 1776. In the 1960s, famous French historian Fernand Braudel had already raised the question whether the questioning of a society dominated by the Catholic Church originated from Renaissance humanism.