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Full Description
This volume presents to readers a timely and detailed analysis of a recently discovered document from the French National Archives. Titled, Manuscrit pour publication des réflections de Thomas Paine, the document was found by Dr Adam Lebovitz and provides an authentic, contemporary witness to the Jacobin ascendancy at a time when Thomas Paine retreated from the Convention and confined himself to a small circle of British and American expatriates.
While Paine is known to have repeatedly announced his intention of writing a history of the French Revolution, the overwhelming academic conclusion in recent years is that the text was not written by Paine himself but by a contemporary emulating his style of writing. Therefore, the text is still an incredibly valuable insight into a tumultuous period in European history. Its overarching purpose is to rehabilitate republicanism by sketching an idea of what a just and free alternative to the Jacobin terror might have looked like.
Lebovitz expertly guides readers through a detailed inspection of the text and explains its threefold value to scholars and amateurs alike in its disclosure about how the revolution was remembered in the later Restoration; adoption of a critical stance supporting neither royalist nostalgia for the monarchy, nor liberal fear of majoritarian tyranny; and how it may tell us something about the political ideas of Thomas Paine through its depiction of Paine as a confirmed moderate.
Contents
Preface Introduction
I. The text
A. Introduction and editorial apparatus
B. The narrative
II. Attribution to Paine
A. Prima facie plausibility
B. Paine's "missing" history
C. The letter to Danton
III. Reasons for doubt
A. Provenance
B. Lack of personality
C. French language and history
D. Royalist and reactionary sentiments
E. Cross-outs
F. Plagiarism
G. Motives for falsification
H. Suspects
IV. Political and constitutional ideas
A. Constitutional republicanism
B. Political violence and emergency
C. Offensive war
D. Private property
