Natural History of Revolution

Ashburn Miller Mary

Description

How did the French Revolutionaries explain, justify, and understand the extraordinary violence of their revolution? In debating this question, historians have looked to a variety of eighteenth-century sources, from Rousseau's writings to Old Regime protest tactics. A Natural History of Revolution suggests that it is perhaps on a different shelf of the Enlightenment library that we might find the best clues for understanding the French Revolution: namely, in studies of the natural world. In their attempts to portray and explain the events of the Revolution, political figures, playwrights, and journalists often turned to the book of nature: phenomena such as hailstorms and thunderbolts found their way into festivals, plays, and political speeches as descriptors of revolutionary activity. The particular way that revolutionaries deployed these metaphors drew on notions derived from the natural science of the day about regeneration, purgation, and balance. In examining a series of tropes (earthquakes, lightning, mountains, swamps, and volcanoes) that played an important role in the public language of the Revolution, A Natural History of Revolution reveals that understanding the use of this natural imagery is fundamental to our understanding of the Terror. Eighteenth-century natural histories had demonstrated that in the natural world, apparent disorder could lead to a restored equilibrium, or even regeneration. This logic drawn from the natural world offered the revolutionaries a crucial means of explaining and justifying revolutionary transformation. If thunder could restore balance in the atmosphere, and if volcanic eruptions could create more fertile soil, then so too could episodes of violence and disruption in the political realm be portrayed as necessary for forging a new order in revolutionary France.

Sujets

• Histoire
• History of Europe
• French Revolution
• France

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 août 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801460845
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A NATURAL HISTORYof REVOLUTION

A NATURAL HISTORYof REVOLUTION

Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary Imagination, 1789–1794

Mary Ashburn Miller

Cornell University Press ithaca and london

Copyright © 2011 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2011 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Miller, Mary Ashburn, 1979–  A natural history of revolution : violence and nature in the French revolutionary imagination, 1789–1794 / Mary Ashburn Miller.  p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801449420 (cloth : alk. paper)  1. France—History—Revolution, 1789–1799. 2. Violence— Political aspects—France—History—18th century. 3. Natural disasters—Political aspects—France—History—18th century. 4. Rhetoric—Political aspects—France—History— 18th century. I. Title.  DC158.8.M55 2011  944.04'1—dc22 2010052643

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Cloth printing

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For Scott

To nature then Power had reverted: habit, custom, law, Had left an interregnum’s open space For her to stir about in uncontrolled. —William Wordsworth,The Prelude, X.609–612 (1805)

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Ordering a Disordered World Natural Historians Confront Disorder 20 A History of Natural Violence: The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and the Messina and Calabria Earthquakes of 1783 26

2 Terrible Like an Earthquake: Violence as a “Revolution of the Earth” The Glacière Massacres: Avignon, 1791 46 The September Massacres: Paris, 1792 58

xi xiii

1

19

43

3 Lightning Strikes72 Lightning in the Atmosphere 74 The Scepter from Tyrants: Lightning and Sovereignty in the Revolution 82 The Utility of Destruction: The Victims of Lightning 88 The Saltpeter Initiative: Forging Thunderbolts in Backyards 94 Lightning in Crisis: The Explosion of Grenelle 100

4 Pure Mountain, Corruptive Swamp The Natural and Political Mountain 106 The Virtuous Montagnard 114 The Sublime and the Sacred Mountain 117

104