Revolution and the Republic: A History of Political Thought in France since the Eighteenth Century by Jeremy Jennings

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JENNINGS, JEREMY. Revolution and the Republic: A History of Political Thought in France since the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. ISBN 978-0-19-820313-1. Pp. ix + 548. $185. The title and subtitle of this book are somewhat misleading, for Jennings does not focus only on the thought of what today are called political scientists or on such active politicians as Guizot or Thiers, but he also examines the works of the intellectuels, such as Chateaubriand and Camus. In the process he acquaints us with much modern scholarship. The result is an impressive treatment of the varieties of political, social, and cultural ideas that well serves all who teach French Studies. The book’s central theme is the response to the questions raised by the 1789 Revolution’s rejection of the institutions of the Old Regime, e.g., where does sovereignty reside and how can it be exercised without a return to the despotism of the Bourbons, a Napoleon, or Jacobinism? Here the answer is a republican form of government. Or, what is liberty and what are the rights of the citizen and how can they be preserved and fostered? Among the answers given is Jules Ferry’s defense of the Third Republic (105), though Jennings describes its Chamber of Deputies as “a mirror in which France did not recognize itself” (107). It is clear from the “Conclusion: Citizenship, Multiculturalism, and Republicanism,” which deals with the polemics about such modern challenges as Marxism and Islamism, that these are questions still debated. Jennings opted for Pierre Rosanvallon’s “conceptual history of politics” (27) and has arranged this work in such topical chapters as “Rights, Liberty, and Equality,” “Religion, Enlightenment, and Reaction” or “Positivism, Science, and Philosophy.” Jennings surveys changes in these concepts from the Eighteenth Century (and earlier) in a more or less chronological order that takes into account such events as the Revolutions of 1830, 1848, and 1870 or the Dreyfus Affair. Thus we meet some thinkers in different chapters; this we expect for Montesquieu, Rousseau or Napoleon, but perhaps not for Benjamin Constant, Mme de Staël, or Tocqueville as well as many lesser figures. An important criterion for inclusion is their view of the 1789 Revolution revealing their political philosophy. Among pre-eighteenth-century antecedents are the 1688–89 English Glorious Revolution as analyzed by Pierre Jurieu (72–73) and the ensuing polemic with Bossuet. John Locke’s writings are also referred to in several places. Another is the sixteenthcentury debate on the right of resistance (301), though Jennings, emphasizing its Calvinist origins, overlooks the fact that it also justified the murder of two Catholic kings by Catholic clerics. The topical organization and Jennings’s dialectical presentation amount to a real tour de force. Sometimes an alternate association of concepts like “Luxury, Commerce, and Utopian Socialism” appears more logical than the choice of “Sovereignty, the Social Contract, and Luxury” or “Commerce, Usurpation, and Democracy,” but on the whole the author acquits himself well. Although some authors like Voltaire and Tocqueville looked with favor on Anglo-Saxon models, others like Flora Tristan in her 1842 Promenades de Londres were critical and in the late nineteenth-century Anglophobia revealed itself in the celebration of Joan of Arc (442). Montesquieu too was aware of the shortcomings of the English system (155–56) and Tocqueville had reservations as well (189); today the perception of political correctness as the “tyranny of a minority” is used to show that multiculturalism is un-French (521). I wonder about the usefulness of some of Jennings’s descriptions of people: Constant is Rousseau’s “fellow Reviews 589 Swiss Protestant” (123) as well as Mme de Staël’s (315); there is also the collaborationist Drieu La Rochelle’s “imperfection as a disembodied subhuman”(484) where “collaborationist” would suffice. The first page of the “Chronology” has three errors (531). As the bibliographical information in the footnotes is often incomplete, the absence of a “Bibliography” is inexcusable. Ursinus College (PA), emeritus Derk Visser PANH, RITHY, et CHRISTOPHE BATAILLE. L’élimination. Paris: Grasset, 2012. ISBN 9782 -246-77281-1. Pp. 333. 19 a. Le cinéaste cambodgien Rithy Panh livre pour la première fois un témoignage...