Modern European political history has been indebted to what historians have commonly interpreted as the “revolutionary tradition” that originated during the years of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. This course proposes a critical examination of the legacy left by the Revolution and its impact on politics and society in the nineteenth century. Starting with the uprisings of the late eighteenth century, lectures and discussions will examine the divergence of the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity and their impact on shaping leading political movements in the modern period. Throughout the year, topics will examine revolutionary movements in a comparative context and consider how revolutionary projects and ideologies were transformed in the midst of the social, political and cultural changes that took place between the French Revolution and First World War. Classes will also focus on new perspectives that assess European revolutions in transnational and global contexts, noting the ways in which Enlightenment and emancipatory values created tensions within colonial and non-Western societies as leaders and revolutionary actors attempted to apply and adapt the principles of Europe’s revolutionary tradition to the particularities of their own societies.

• Demonstrate a broad knowledge of the theoretical approaches and paradigms employed by historians in examining the nineteenth century
• Critically assess scholarly arguments and note their relationship to wider theories within the discipline of history.
• Evaluate and engage primary source materials and subject them to critical analysis
• Write well-argued essays drawn from evidence-based claims that support their main points and conclusions.

A range of teaching methods will be used in each of the sessions of the course, comprising a combination of lectures, seminar discussion of major issues and workshops for the study of primary source material. The syllabus is divided into a series of major course themes, then sub-divided into principal topics for the study of each theme.

Lectures:

The aim of the lectures is to provide a brief introduction to a particular topic, establishing the salient features of major course themes, identifying key issues and providing historiographical guidance. The lectures aim to provide a basic framework for understanding and should be thought of as useful starting points for further discussion and individual study. Where appropriate, handouts and other materials may be distributed to reinforce the material discussed.

Seminar and Source Workshops:

The primary aim of the sessions will be to generate debate and discussion amongst course participants, focused in particular on primary source material. Seminars and source workshops for each of the course topics will provide an opportunity for students:

(a) to discuss topics or issues introduced by the lectures,

or(b) to discuss related themes, perhaps not directly addressed by the lectures, but drawing on ideas culled from those lectures.

and(c) to analyse different types of primary sources available, discussing the principal ways in which they can be used by historians.

Seminars and source workshops will provide the student with guidance on how to critically approach the various types of primary source material. Preparation for seminars and workshops will focus on specific items from the sources and related background reading, with students preparing answers to questions provided for each session. Both seminars and source workshops will provide an opportunity to discuss and debate the issues with fellow students. Classes will be divided into smaller groups for discussion purposes, with the results presented as part of an overall class debate at the end of the session.

• communicate ideas and arguments effectively, whether in class discussion or in written form, in an accurate, succinct and lucid manner.
• formulate and justify arguments and conclusions about a range of issues, and present appropriate supporting evidence
• an ability to modify as well as to defend their own position.
• an  ability to think critically and challenge assumptions
• an ability to use a range of information technology resources to assist with information retrieval and assignment presentation.
• time management skills and an ability to independently organise their own study methods and workload.
• work effectively with others as part of a team or group in seminar or tutorial discussions.   

Students will be assessed by means of a combination of one essay relating to primary sources [20%], an assessed essay [30%] and an examination paper [50%].

Course assignments:

1. The essay relating to primary sources will contribute 20% of the final mark for the module and must be no longer than 1,000 words.
2. The Assessed Essay will contribute 30% of the final mark for the module. It is designed to give students the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to review evidence, draw appropriate conclusions from it and employ the formal conventions of scholarly presentation. It must be no longer than 2,000 words.
3. The Examination will take place during the second assessment period [May/June] and will consist of an unseen two hour paper that will contribute the remaining 50% of the final mark for this module. Students must write 2 answers in total.

The Origins of The Revolutionary Tradition

Lectures and discussions will examine the outbreak of revolution in Europe and how new ideas of politics, culture and society fundamentally challenged the existing status quo across the continent. Attention will also be given to the use of terror and its place within the modern democratic tradition.

Revolution in a Global Perspective

Students will be introduced to the new historiographic trends in global history which have assessed the “Age of Revolution” as a global phenomenon. Lectures and discussion will seek to evaluate what impact historians believe the French Revolution had for societies beyond the continent and how revolutionary values changed as they were adapted in the Atlantic world and European colonies.

Reactions to the French Revolution

Lectures and discussion will focus on the controversies which the French revolution continued to generate throughout the nineteenth century. Readings will especially highlight the importance of the revolutionary tradition in shaping the ideological outlooks of conservatives and classical liberals during the period.

Nationalism and Fraternity

Lectures and readings will examine the various implications that the revolutionary ideal of “fraternity” had in nineteenth-century thought and politics. In particular, sources will introduce students to the various forms of nationalism that grew out of the French Revolution and the ways in which these ideas were integrated into political programs and debate.

Liberty and Its Limits

Following the evaluation of ideological nationalism, students will be asked to assess how revolutionary movements both encouraged and discouraged democratic government in various countries. Reading and sources will examine the limits that were placed on emancipatory movements and the cautious approach taken to mass democracy in the wake of the Reign of Terror and revolutionary radicalism.

Modernization

The French Revolution consciously set out to overturn all existing social and political conventions. Lectures and discussion will look at the ways in which the Revolution inspired modernizing discourses during the nineteenth century. Subjects will include the impact of industrialization, the formation of nominally modern identities and the methods through which revolutionaries attempted to create novel types of societies built upon democratic foundations. In particular, students will be asked to consider whether these modernizing agendas were, in fact, representative of the democratic and rational principles they claimed to embody.

Socialism, Protest and Equality

In examining the third major tenet of the French Revolution—“equality””—lectures will assess how post-revolutionary thinkers attempted to imagine and realize the egalitarianism they professed. Readings will highlight the many ways that “socialism” was understood and contextualized, ranging from democratic and economic principles to the ideologically-driven program laid out by Marxism.

Colonialism and Empire

As European states acquired colonial empires, they commonly exported the principles of the revolution to their imperial peripheries. The modernizing and egalitarian agendas of the French Revolution were, however, often drastically transformed in the process. Readings will examine how revolutionary principles were applied to the colonies and the forms of violence they frequently took. Students will be asked to assess to what extent colonies served as “laboratories” for the implementation of revolutionary ideas and how what Edward Said once called the “enterprise of empire” changed European outlooks.

The Anarchist Movement and The Fin-de-Siècle

Lectures and discussions will look at the wide-spread anarchist movements that grew up during the tail end of the nineteenth century in France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia. Readings will question to what extent anarchism derived its consistency from the original revolutionary program and to what extent it was a response to the politics and social changes of the day. This theme will also be developed within evolving outlooks of society in the fin-de-siècle period and the threats that mass democracy and popular politics posed to order, stability, and the classical liberal tradition.

The Russian Revolution

In assessing the nineteenth-century’s revolutionary currents, lectures and discussion will examine the Bolshevik rise to power that resulted in the October coup of 1917. Readings will focus primarily on the works of V.I. Lenin and question to what extent his revolutionary program was compatible with the revolutionary traditions of Jacobin and Marxists ideology and to what extent they reflected unique conditions in Russian society. Students will be asked to compare the Russian experience with the French Jacobins of the late-eighteenth century and note the commonalities and contrasts between these two radical movements.

Books

Hannu Salmi, The Nineteenth Century: A Cultural History (Polity, 2008)

David Parker, Revolutions and The Revolutionary Tradition in The West, 1560-1991 (Routledge, 2000), Introduction, Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9

Alan Kahan, Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage (Palgrave, 2003), Chapters 4 and 5

Randall Law, Terrorism: A History (Polity, 2009), Chapters 4 and 5.

Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on The Social Imaginary, 1750-1850 (Harvard University Press, 2005), Chapters 5 and 6.

Leora Auslander, Cultural Revolutions: Everyday Life and Politics in Britain, North America and France (University of California Press, 2009), Chapters 5 and 6.

Peter Fritzsche, Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History (Harvard University Press, 2010), Chapter 1.

Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2001), Chapter 5.

Articles

Lynn Hunt, “The Rhetoric of Revolution in France,” History Workshop, 15 (Spring 1983)

Philipp Ziesche, “Exporting American Revolutions: Governeur Morris, Thomas Jefferson and the National Struggle for Universal Rights in Revolutionary France,” Journal of the Early Republic, 26:3 (Fall 2006)

Patrick Hutton, “The Role of Memory in the Historiography of the French Revolution,” History and Theory, 30:1 (February 1991)

Laurent Dubois, “The Price of Liberty: Victor Hugues and the Administration of Freedom in Guadeloupe, 1794-1798,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 56:2 (April 1999)

Jaime E. Rodríguez, “New Spain and the 1808 Crisis of the Spanish Monarchy,” Mexican Studies, 24:2 (Summer 2008)

Anthony Pagden, “Fellow Citizens and Imperial Subjects: Conquest and Sovereignty in Europe’s Overseas Empires,” History and Theory, 44:4 (December 2005)

Laurent Dubois, “An Atlantic Revolution,” French Historical Studies, 32:4 (Fall 2009)

François Furet, “The Tyranny of Revolutionary Memory,” in Bernadette Fort, ed. Fictions of the French Revolution (Northwestern University Press, 1991)

Charles Tilly, “States and Nationalism in Europe, 1492-1992,” Theory and Society, 23:1 (February 1994).

Yael Tamir, “The Enigma of Nationalism,” World Politics, 47:3 (April 1995)

Anthony D. Smith, “Culture, Community and Territory: The Politics of Ethnicity and Nationalism,” International Affairs, 72:3 (July 1996)

Jesús Cruz, “An Ambivalent Revolution: The Public and The Private in The Construction of Liberal Spain,” Journal of Social History, 30:1 (Autumn 1996)

John Plotz, “Crowd Power: Chartism, Carlyle and The Victorian Public Sphere,” Representations, 70 (2000): 87-114.

Charles Maier, “Empire’s Past . . . Empire’s Future,” South Central Review, 26:3 (Fall 2009)

Dominic Lieven, “Dilemmas of Empire 1850-1918: Power, Territory, Identity,” Journal of Contemporary History, 34:2 (April 1999): 163-200.

Alberto Elena and Javier Ordóñez, “Science, Technology and the Spanish Colonial Experience in the Nineteenth Century,” Osiris, 15 (2000)

Casey Harison, “The Paris Commune of 1871, The Russian Revolution of 1905 and The Shifting of the Revolutionary Tradition,” History and Memory, 19:2 (Winter 2007)

Jeremey Jennings, “Syndicalism and the French Revolution,” Journal of Contemporary History, 26:1 (January 1991)

Carl Schorske, “Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio,” The Journal of Modern History, 39:4 (December 1967): 343-386.

Susan K. Morrissey, “The ‘Apparel of Innocence’: Toward a Moral Economy of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia,” The Journal of Modern History, 84:3 (September 2012)

Elun Gabriel, “The Left Liberal Critique of Anarchism in Imperial Germany,” German Studies Review, 33:2 (May 2010)

Robert Mayer, “Lenin and the Jacobin Identity in Russia,” Studies and Eastern European Thought, 51:2 (June 1999)

Sources

Edmund Burke, “On Conciliation with America” (1775)

Abbé Sieyès, “What is the Third Estate?” (1789)

“The Declaration of The Rights of Man” (1789)

Maximillian Robespierre, "Speech Denouncing the New Conditions of Eligibility," (1789)

Maximillian Robespierre, “On Revolutionary Government” (1793)

Maximillian Robespierre, “Terror and Virtue” (1794)

Charles-Gilbert Romme, “Report on The Era of The Republic” (1793)

Louis de Saint-Just, “Republican Institutes” (1794)

Graccus Babeuf, “The Manifesto of The Equals” (1795)

The Free Citizens of Color, “Address to the National Assembly” (1789)

The National Assembly, “Law on The Colonies” (1791)                    

Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on Slavery” (1780 – 1790)

Simón de Bolívar, “Message to the Congress of Angostura” (1819)

Edmund Burke, “Reflections on The French Revolution” (1791)

François-René Chateaubriand, “Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern” (1815)

Alexis de Tocqueville, “On The French Revolution” (c. 1852)

Charles Maurras, “On The French Revolution”

Voltaire, “Patrie” (1752)

Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, “On Patriotism” (1730-1754)

Richard Price, “Discourse on the Love of Country” (1789)

Johan Gottfried von Herder, “The Philosophy of History for Mankind” (1784)

Johan Gottlieb Fichte, “Address to The German Nation” (1807)

Giuseppe Mazzini, “On Nationality” (1852)

Jules Michelet, “Our Native Land” (1846)

Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” (1882)

Francois Guizot, “On the Condition of the July Monarchy” (1832 – 1848)

Thomas Babington McCaulay, “Speech on The Reform Bill of 1832” (1831)

James Madison, “The Federalist Papers, no. 10” (1787)

Andrew Ure, “The Philosophy of the Manufacturers” (1835)

Thomas Carlyle, “Sign of the Time” (1828)

Henry Thoreaux, “Walking”

David Ricardo, “The Iron Law of Wages” (1817)

“In Defense of Laissez-Faire,” (1840)

Frederick Engles, “Industrial Manchester” (1845)

“Chartism: The People’s Petition” (1838)

Louis Blanc, “The Organization of Labor” (1840)

William Morris, “Why I Am A Socialist” (1884)

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848)

V.I. Lenin, “What’s to Be Done?” (1902)

V.I. Lenin, “The State and Revolution” (1918)

Peter Kropotkin, “Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal” (1898)

Mikhail Bakunin, “Stateless Socialism: Anarchism,”

Jules Ferry, “On French Colonial Expansion” (1880-1885)

Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899)

Joseph Chamberlain, “Speech on Imperialism” (1893)

Albert Beveridge, “March of The Flag” (1898)

Friedrich Farbi, “Does Germany Need Colonies?” (1879)

Thomas Babington Macauly, “On Empire and Education” (1833-1838)

Dadabhai Naoroji, “The Benefits of British Rule” (1871)

Francisco Garcia Calderón, “Imperialism of Decadence” (1913)

Joseph A. Schumpeter, “The Sociology of Imperialism” (1918)

Gustave Freensen, “In the German South African Army” (1903-1904)

Captain F. D. Lugard, “The Rise of Our East African Empire” (1893)

John Hobson, “Imperialism” (1902)

Wilfred Scawen Blunt, My Diaries (1896-1900)        

The Earl of Rosebery, “The State of Liberalism (1908)

W. L. Blease, “The New Liberalism” (1913)              

Alexander Millerand, “Reformist Socialism” (1903)

“French Socialist Program” (1905)

Robin Winks, Europe and the Making of Modernity: 1815-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2005)