Islam in the French Revolution: Anacharsis Cloots and the "Foreign Deputation" of 1790

On the evening of 19 June 1790, the Prussian-born deputy Jean-Baptiste Cloots (later to be known as Anacharsis) led a deputation composed of “English, Prussians, Sicilians, Dutchmen, Russians, Poles, Germans, Swedes, Italians, Spaniards, Brabancons, Liégois, Avignonnais, Swiss, Genevans, Indians, Arabs, Chaldeans etc.” to the bar of the National Assembly, where he delivered a rousing speech on behalf of the peoples of the world that this “Committee of Foreigners” represented. Particularly notable in this delegation were the representatives of the Muslim world of the Middle East and North Africa. In the English-speaking world in particular, Cloots has been largely considered an idealist, a madman or a charlatan. The “unthinkability” of the relationship of the French Revolution to Islam, and to the wider world beyond Europe and the Atlantic, plays an important part in that rejection. This paper proposes to re-evaluate the deputation of 1790, in the context of Cloots’s evolving thought on Islam, cosmopolitanism and universalism, and as a channel for the interaction of Islam and the Revolution. It will draw on a variety of archival and published materials, from Cloots’s major work La Certitude des Preuves du Mahométisme, to his revolutionary writings and speeches as well as the records of the delegation itself.