Beyond the Tunnel of History

Abstract

The Bicentenary came and went. The various commemorations changed nothing. But how could it have been otherwise? Though it may have helped disseminate revolution all over the world, the French Revolution retains the trappings of a very local affair. Besides, was not the French Revolution responsible, to a greater or lesser degree, for such diverse offspring as the Vendée massacre, the bloodshed associated with nineteenth-century nationalism and the Bolshevik Revolution of the twentieth century? And if you must have a date to mark the origin of modem liberalism, is not 4 July 1776 both earlier and more appropriate than 14 July 1789?