The language of politics and political culture in France, England, the USA, and the Dutch Republic

Abstract

In a paper that has a title as hopelessly pretentious as mine, it is well to begin with a few disclaimers. I cannot possibly offer a detailed comparison of the political cultures or political languages of France, England, the British North American colonies, and the Dutch Republic at the end of the eighteenth century. Rather, I hope to bring out a few of the major themes that helped define the distinctive qualities of French revolutionary discourse by comparing it with the operation of political language in the other countries. I cannot hope, however, even to catalogue the different kinds of political language used in any one country. Isaac Kramnick, for example, has identified four 'distinguishable idioms' of 1787-1788 in America: republicanism, Lockean liberalism, work-ethic protestantism, and state-centered theories of power and sovereignty1. And that is just America in 1787-1788. A discussion of such a typology for any one of these four countries would occupy much more of your time than I can possibly demand, though Kramnick's categories might serve as an interesting base for comparison. Nor am I trying to revive what Robert Palmer called the 'comparative constitutional history of Western Civilization', for I cannot hope to adequately address the workings of such major concepts as private rights, public authority, law, sovereignty, and political representation — much less liberty, equality, and fraternity or their attendant institutional incarnations. All these disclaimers aside, there is some basis for comparison here. All of these countries experienced the 'Atlantic Revolution' of the eighteenth century in some decisive way. In England, where no revolution occurred, opposition politics took on new shapes and stridency in the Wilkes Affair. To some extent, all of these countries experienced a broadening of popular political participation and a nationalization of political discourse. But the differences between them are also instructive. My major focus will be on the different uses of the national past as a point of reference. I should make clear from the start that I focus on the operation of political discourse not only because it distinguishes the French Revolution from the other Atlantic political movements but also and more importantly because political discourse was an essential feature in revolutionary political culture. It is my view that political culture was the arena of greatest innovation during the French Revolution. In this I follow the opinion of Francois Furet, but with many differences: though I agree that the establishment of a democratic political culture was much more important than innovations in the socio-economic realm and that political culture had its own inherent and often autonomous dynamic, I have a much more positive view than he does ofthat