In Defence of the Terror
Liberty or Death in the French Revolution
Published on 7. August 2012
140 pages
978-1-78168-399-6 (ISBN)
Description
For two hundred years after the French Revolution, the Republican tradition celebrated the execution of princes and aristocrats, defending the Terror that the Revolution inflicted upon on its enemies. But recent decades have brought a marked change in sensibility. The Revolution is no longer judged in terms of historical necessity but rather by "timeless" standards of morality. In this succinct essay, Sophie Wahnich explains how, contrary to prevailing interpretations, the institution of Terror sought to put a brake on legitimate popular violence-in Danton's words, to "be terrible so as to spare the people the need to be so"-and was subsequently subsumed in a logic of war. The Terror was "a process welded to a regime of popular sovereignty, the only alternatives being to defeat tyranny or die for liberty."
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Edition
Ebook UK & RoW
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Reflowable
ISBN-13
978-1-78168-399-6 (9781781683996)
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Schweitzer Classification
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01/2016
Verso Books
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Book
08/2012
Verso Books
€36.11
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Persons
Sophie Wahnich is a historian based at the Laboratoire d'anthropologie des institutions et des organisations sociales in Paris. Her previous publications include L'impossible citoyen. L'¿tranger dans le discours de la R¿volution fran¿aise and La Longue patience du peuple: 1792, naissance de la R¿publique.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Epigraph
- Foreword: The Dark Matter of Violence, Or, Putting Terror in Perspective
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: An Intolerable Revolution
- 1. The Emotions in the Demand for Terror
- 2. The September Massacres
- 3. The Terror as a Long Cycle of Vengeance
- 4. The People and the Popular
- Conclusion: The Terror and Terrorism
