"Despite critical interest in the role of women in the French Revolution, there is no single, comprehensive study of the works of the two most prolific women writers of the period: Olympe de Gouges and Manon Roland. At a time when politicians were molding public policy concerning life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and constituting criteria for citizenship, increasing numbers of women in Paris were clamoring for rights. New medical and philosophical theories redefining female nature were trotted out to justify women's continued exclusion from full political participation. Such theories focused on the female body as the locus of women's intellectual inadequacies and promulgated the idea that women who acted outside of the confines of their physiological nature were considered desensitized and unfeminine. "Deviant Women of the French Revolution and the Rise of Feminism" aims to uncover the work of those women who challenged prevailing views of female nature, sought social reforms, and were deemed 'deviant' for their writing and/or activism during the French Revolution."--Jacket.

Situating the French Revolution in the context of early modern globalization for the first time, this book offers a new approach to understanding its international origins and worldwide effects. A distinguished group of contributors shows that the political culture of the Revolution emerged out of a long history of global commerce, imperial competition, and the movement of people and ideas in places as far flung as India, Egypt, Guiana, and the Caribbean. This international approach helps to explain how the Revolution fused immense idealism with territorial ambition and combined the drive for human rights with various forms of exclusion. The essays examine topics including the role of smuggling and free trade in the origins of the French Revolution, the entwined nature of feminism and abolitionism, and the influence of the French revolutionary wars on the shape of American empire. The French Revolution in Global Perspective illuminates the dense connections among the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the French Revolution, revealing how new political forms-at once democratic and imperial, anticolonial and centralizing-were generated in and through continual transnational exchanges and dialogues. Contributors: Rafe Blaufarb, Florida State University; Ian Coller, La Trobe University; Denise Davidson, Georgia State University; Suzanne Desan, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Lynn Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles; Andrew Jainchill, Queen's University; Michael Kwass, The Johns Hopkins University; William Max Nelson, University of Toronto; Pierre Serna, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne; Miranda Spieler, University of Arizona; Charles Walton, Yale University

Writing the Revolution challenges the thesis that exclusion defined women's experiences of the French Revolution by exploring the life of a middle-class wife and mother of revolutionary elites, Rosalie Jullien.

This edited collection showcases the contribution of women to the development of political ideas during the Enlightenment, and presents an alternative to the male-authored canon of philosophy and political thought. Over the course of the eighteenth century increasing numbers of women went into print, and they exploited both new and traditional forms to convey their political ideas: from plays, poems, and novels to essays, journalism, annotated translations, and household manuals, as well as dedicated political tracts. Recently, considerable scholarly attention has been paid to women’s literary writing and their role in salon society, but their participation in political debates is less well studied. This volume offers new perspectives on some better known authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Macaulay, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld, as well as neglected figures from the British Isles and continental Europe. The collection advances discussion of how best to understand women’s political contributions during the period, the place of salon sociability in the political development of Europe, and the interaction between discourses on slavery and those on women’s rights. It will interest scholars and researchers working in women’s intellectual history and Enlightenment thought and serve as a useful adjunct to courses in political theory, women’s studies, the history of feminism, and European history.

The French Revolution remains the most examined event, or period, in world history. It was, most historians would argue, the first “modern” revolution, an event so momentous that it changed the very meaning of the word revolution, from “restoration,” as in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England, to its modern sense of connoting a political and/or social upheaval that marks a decisive break with the past, one that moves a society in a forward, or progressive, direction. No revolution has occurred since 1789 without making reference to this first revolution, and most have been measured against it. One cannot utter the date 1789 without thinking of revolution, and so significant were the changes unleashed in that year that it has come to mark the dividing line between early modern and late modern European history Kings This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on the causes and origins; the roles of significant persons; crucial events and turning points; important institutions and organizations; and the economic, social, and intellectual factors involved in the event that gave birth to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this period.

Women Warriors in Romantic Drama advances scholarship on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century theater by bringing together, for the first time, female and male dramatists as well as British, German, Irish, and French writers, thinkers, actors, and philosophers. This transnational perspective allows Women Warriors in Romantic Drama to make the provocative claim that in some instances, the violence of the French Revolution--and especially women's participation in it--advances proto-feminist concerns.

In our time, the term "democracy" is frequently evoked to express aspirations for peace and social change or particular governmental systems that claim to benefit more than a select minority of the population. In this book, Temma Kaplan examines attempts from ancient Mesopotamia to the early twenty first century to create democratic governments that allow people to secure food, shelter, land, water, and peace for their mutual benefit. Since early times, proponents of direct or participatory democracy have come into conflict with the leaders of representative institutions that claim singular power over democracy. Patriots of one form or another have tried to reclaim the initiative to determine what democracy should mean and who should manage it. Frequently, people in small communities, trade unions, or repressed racial, religious, and political groups have marched forward using the language of democracy to carve a space for themselves and their ideas at the center of political life. Sometimes they have reinterpreted the old laws, and sometimes they have formulated new laws and institutions in order to gain greater opportunities to debate the major issues of their time. This book examines the development of the democratic ideal from ancient Rome to the Cortes in Spain, the philosophies of Guru Nanak and the Castilian patriot Juan de Padilla, and such inspirational personalities as the Polish trade unionist Anna Walentnyowicz and Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi. Though few democracies have sustained themselves for significant lengths of time, their emergence nearly everywhere on earth over thousands of years indicates their resilience despite the fragility of the democratic ideal.

The West – Europe and the USA – has kind of had its way with the world for a few centuries. Why else does everyone speak English, listen to hip-hop, and want to buy Mercedes? Starting with the Enlightenment, Europeans developed big ideas that have increased opportunities for people around the world and raised standards of living. But those same ideas have also produced wars, genocide, colonialism, and the potential for global environmental disaster. This book describes the origins and legacy of this mixed bag of ideas which includes everything from democracy and feminism to those old foes, communism and capitalism. After all, it's a bag which still shapes how most people on the planet look at things today. In a natural, funny and engaging style, So, About Modern Europe... expertly guides readers through the good, the bad and the indifferent of modern European history, convincingly arguing the need to 'tip the cap' to the Enlightenment and its influence along the way.

The first volume to explore comprehensively the intersection of feminism, politics, and philosophy, Women in Political Theory sheds light on the contributions of women philosophers and theorists to contemporary political thought. With close attention to the work of five central thinkers-Sarah Grimké, Anna Julia Cooper, Jane Addams, Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt-this book not only offers sustained analyses of the thought of these leading figures, but also examines their relationship with established political theorists of the past, such as Locke, Machiavelli, and the ancients. Demonstrating that each of the figures covered was indeed a political theorist of her time, whilst highlighting the strength of her thought and the reasons for which it has not been accorded the attention that it merits, Women in Political Theory offers a fascinating overview of the political thought of five theorists whose work is central to an understanding of modern thought. As such, it will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, philosophy, political and social theory, feminist thought, and gender studies.