The Reception of Considerations: Left-Wing Historians’ Refutation in the 1820s

Takeda, Chinatsu

doi:10.1007/978-981-10-8087-6_12

Chinatsu Takeda²

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Abstract

This chapter focuses specifically on left-wingers’ refutation of Considerations after 1818, which gave rise to the republican interpretation of the French Revolution. As opposed to Staël, who broke up the French Revolution into liberal and illiberal phases, republican historians of the French Revolution considered it a whole block. While Jacques Bailleul was a main protagonist, some left-wingers were torn between the Revolution (Terror) and moderation (hereditary peerage). In addition, left-wingers refuted Considerations in epistemological terms. They sided with Montlosier’s civilizational historiography of the French Revolution and elaborated a scientific history on the basis of social and economic factors, leading to a romantic historiography of the French Revolution.

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Notes

1.
Dictionnaire des parlementaires français (1789–1889), Robert Adolphe and G. Cougny ed., (Paris: Bourloton, 1891), 1318; Nouvelle biographie générale, vol. 3–4, Ferdinand Hoefer ed., (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1855), 186.
2.
Stéphanie Tribouillard, “Les Considérations,” 203–214.
3.
Jacques Bailleul, “Réponse” Examen critique de l’ouvrage posthume de Mme la Baronne de Staël ayant pour titre: Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française, vol. 1, second edition, (Paris: Chez Anti, 1818), i–ii.
4.
Ibid., “Réponse,” i–ii.
5.
Ibid., vol. I, 28.
6.
Ibid., vol. I, 31.
7.
Ibid., vol. I, 31.
8.
Ibid., vol. I, 75.
9.
Ibid., vol. I, 36.
10.
Chinatsu Takeda, “On a Liberal Interpretation of the French Revolution: Mme de Staël’s Considérations sur la Révolution française,” Forging a politics of Mediation, 91–108.
11.
Bailleul, Examen critique, 1818, vol. I, 22.
12.
Ibid., vol. 1, 213–214.
13.
Staël, Circonstances actuelles, 419, 423–424; Patrice Rolland, “Les droits garnatis,” 305–306.
14.
Staël, “De la littérature sous Bonaparte,” IV–XVI, Considérations, 416–419; François Furet, La gauche et la révolution au XIX siècle, (Paris: Hachettes littéraires, 1986), 50–51.
15.
Staël, Considérations, VI–XII, 604.
16.
Bailleul, Examen critique, 1818, vol. I, 25–26.
17.
Bailleul, Examen critique, re-edited version (Paris: Renard, 1822), vol. 1, 206.
18.
Ibid., 1822, vol. 2, 17.
19.
Ibid., 1822, vol. 2, 17.
20.
Ibid., 1822, vol. 1, 315.
21.
Ibid., 1818, vol. I, 17.
22.
Ibid., 1818, vol. II, 228–229.
23.
Ibid., 1818, vol. II, 236.
24.
Ibid., 1818, vol. II, 90.
25.
Ibid., 1818, vol. II, 90, 99.
26.
Léon Thiesse, “Examen de l’ouvrage posthume de Madame de Staël par J. Ch. Bailleul, ex-député,” Lettres normandes, January 5, 1819, 352.
27.
“Considérations sur la révolution française, par madame de Staël,” (3) July 22, 1819, Ibid., 97.
28.
Godechot , “Introduction,” Staël, Considérations, 33–36; Claude Mazauric, “Note sur Jacques-Charles Bailleul, Conventionnel de la Seine-Inférieure et Historien de la Révolution,” Annales de Normandie, 1989, 39 (2), 219–229; Takeda, Mme de Staël’s Contribution, 301–341; Tribouillard, “Les Considérations,” 227–250.
29.
Left-wingers, including radicals and moderates were generally called libéraux from Restoration France onward.
30.
“Examen critique des Considérations de Madame la baronne de Staël sur les principaux événements de la révolution française, avec des observations sur les dix ans d’exil du même auteur et sur Napoléon Bonaparte,” Constitutionnel, April 1, 1822, 3.
31.
Tribouillard, “Les Considérations,” 247–248.
32.
Adolphe Thiers, L’Histoire de la Révolution française (1823–1827), (Paris: Lecomte et Duray, 1823–1827)a and Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire (1845–1847), (Paris: Paulin, 1845–1847).
33.
Mignet writes, “The Revolution had so many obstacles to overcome that it produced temporary excesses alongside its lasting benefits.” Quotation from Tribouillard, “Les Considérations,” 241.
34.
Tiers, Histoire de la Révolution française, vol. V, 215–216.
35.
Minet, Histoire de la Révolution française depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1814, 6.
36.
Ibid., 201.
37.
Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin Buchez and Jules Bastide, Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, ed. André Olivier Ernest Sain de Bois, (Paris: Otto, Auguste, 1834–1838), 40 vols; Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Révolution française, (Paris: Furne. Jouvet et Cie, 1847). On the rise of the socialist historiography of the French Revolution, François Furet, Révolution en débat, (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 39–46.
38.
Alice Gérard, La révolution française, mythe et interprétations, 1789–1970, (Paris: Flammarion, 1970), 83–84.
39.
Jean Marc Antoine, La Revue encyclopédique, no. 16, 1822, 523–537 and no. 17, 1823, 282–295.
40.
Ibid., no. 17, 284.
41.
Ibid., no. 16, 528.
42.
Ibid., no. 16, 528.
43.
Ibid., no. 17, 289.
44.
Ibid., no. 17, 289.
45.
Fiévée , “Du pouvoir souverain.”
46.
Thiers , Histoire de la Révolution française, vol. X, 58; Jean Walch, Les maîtres de l’histoire, 1815–1850, (Paris: Slatkine, 1986).
47.
Adolphe Thiers, quoted in ed. Madival and Laurent, Les archives parlementaires, vol. 70, 321–329.
48.
Ibid., vol. 70, 362–370; Pierre Rosanvallon, La monarchie impossible: Les chartes de 1814 et de 1830, (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 165–166.
49.
On Le Globe, A.G. Lehmann, Sainte-Beuve: a Portrait of the Critic, 1804–1842, (Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 1962), Chap. 3.
50.
“Hisoire de la Révolution française par M. Thiers, V et VI volumes (1),” Le Globe, no. 8, vol. 3, January 10, Tuesday, 1826, 42–44.
51.
Ibid., 42–44.
52.
“France: Du rôle de la pairie dans un coup d’état,” Le Globe, vol. VII, no. 102, December 23, 1829, 804–805.
53.
Ibid., 808.
54.
Ibid., 808.
55.
Ibid., 809.
56.
Takeda, “A Liberal,” 98–102.
57.
Augustin Thierry , Récits des temps mérovingiens précédés de “Considérations sur l’histoire de France,” (Paris: Just Tessier, 1842).
58.
Ibid., 186–190, 207–224.
59.
Ibid., 186–190, 207–224.
60.
François Guizot, “De la monarchie française,” 409.
61.
Shirley Gruner, “Political Historiography in Restoration France,” History and Theory 8 (3), 1969, 345–346.
62.
Ibid., 345–346.
63.
“Histoire de la conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands, de ses causes et de ses suites jusqu’à nos jours en Angleterre, en Ecosse, en Irland et sur le continent par Augusti Thierry (II),” Le Globe, June 25, 1825, no. 124.
64.
Craiutu, Liberalism, 230; Guizot , Histoire de la civilisation européenne, 173 b; Siedentop, “introduction,” the History of European Civilisation, 129–131.
65.
J.G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constituiton and the Feudal Law, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1987); Jacques de Saint-Victor, Racines de la liberté, (Paris: Perrin, 2007).
66.
Benjamin Constant, “Letter to Prosper de Barante,” La revue des deux mondes, 34 (15 July 1906), 246–247.
67.
“Lettres sur l’histoire de France par Augustin Thierry (1),” Le Globe, no. 28, June 30, 1827, 198.
68.
Mélonio François, “L’histoire à l’assaut du pouvoir; Le Globe de 1828 à 1830,” Proceedings from Colloque François Guizot, September 23–24, 1993, www.guizot.com/en/colloque-francois-guizot-1993/, 77–95.
69.
“Histoire des caractères d’une véritable histoire de France (Fragment communiqué par M. Thierry),” Le Globe, December 30, 1826, vol. IV-60, 315–316.
70.
Ibid., 315.
71.
Ibid., 100–102.
72.
Ibid., 108.
73.
Ibid., 108.
74.
“Histoire de la Révolution d’Angelterre par M. Guizot, t.II (1),” Le Globe, August 2, 1827, vol. V-52, 274.
75.
“The constitutional history of Britain from the accession of Henry IV to the death of Gerge II by Henry Hallam (1),” Le Globe, vol. VI-60, May 21, 1828, 418.
76.
Ibid., 419.
77.
Marcel Gauchet, “l’introduction,” Opuscule: Philosophie des sciences historiques, 9–27.
78.
Ibid., 20–21.
79.
On the romantic historiography of the French Revolution, Jacques Godechot, Un jury pour la Révolution; Ceri Crossley, French Historians and Romanticism.

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Faculty of Comparative Culture, Otsuma Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan
Chinatsu Takeda

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Takeda, C. (2018). The Reception of Considerations: Left-Wing Historians’ Refutation in the 1820s. In: Mme de Staël and Political Liberalism in France. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8087-6_12

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8087-6_12
Published: 01 August 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
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