Democracy, long reviled as mob rule, has become a global aspiration. In a book I will complete in the coming year, I examine the theory and practice of democracy since the ancient world and show why it metamorphosed from nightmare to ideal. The book traces the emergence of–and controversies surrounding--forms of limited popular government in Greece and Rome, then examines the reasons for the recovery and transformation of these ideas in late-medieval Europe and their unsteady development through the chaotic wars of religion, the English Civil War, the haphazard emergence of self-rule in the English colonies of North America, and the diverse forms that developed from the eighteenth-century democratic revolutions.
My AHA paper will sketch the contours of republican discourse in Greece and Rome, the similarities and differences between the Renaissance and early modern revivals of republican thinking in southern and northern Europe, and the role played by civil wars in obstructing the realization of such plans. Although democracy is often understood today as a method of managing civic strife, popular government emerged historically from--and just as often died in--bloody battles. My paper will intersect with David Armitage’s at many points.
My analysis of the American and French Revolutions traces their distinct trajectories from their different histories and highlights the contrasts between the republics they spawned. Whereas the French inherited the bitterness of religious warfare and the dynamic of centralizing state power, the isolated English colonies of North America learned to cope with diversity and experimented with forms of self-government unlike any across the Atlantic. Because ideas of common sense so resonated differently in Anglo-American culture and in continental Europe before, during, and long after those revolutions, juxtaposing Sophia Rosenfeld’s argument with mine should likewise prompt fruitful conversation.
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