Trading Words, Waging War: The Mystified Relationship between British Radicals and French "Révolutionnaires"

Abstract

he question of interactions between British radicals and their French counterparts during the 1790os is complex when studied in terms of responses to the French Revolution in Britain, and answers are even more elusive when the opposite perspective is considered. This elusiveness is reflected in, as well as reinforced by, the paucity of historical studies from the French perspective, in sharp contrast to the rich bibliography on the British militant groups and their special relationship with revolutionary France. The enduring lack of interest in the topic among French historians can be traced back to the nineteenth century and might well be interpreted as a symptom of the prevailing patriotic reading of the French Revolution-although such an interpretation, however convincing in the case of Michelet, would be much less likely to explain, for instance, de Tocqueville's indifference not only to the British radicals but also to any form of British influence on the events in France. However, there is no avoiding another possibility-namely, that the lack of interest among historians simply mirrors or repeats a similar indifference on the part of the French revolutionaries toward their British counterparts and associates. Assessing the impact of British radical thought or experience on the French revolutionaries involves a frustrating attempt to give some historical shape to a slippery, deceptive episode; but here again, the frustration might well reflect the very nature of a relationship best described as a political and cultural rendez-vous manque'. Over the span of only a few years, British radicals and French revolutionaries traded words-of encouragement, of praise, of affection. They also borrowed from each other phrases, slogans, and newly coined terms that they could brandish against their mutual ideological enemies. On the French side, particularly, the semantic and rhetorical aspects of the relationship appear to have been much more important than the political ones. It should be useful, then, to address the question of the French revolutionaries' attitude toward the British radicals in terms of language.