Alan Forrest

The insurgency of the Vendée

The insurrection in the Vendée combined open warfare with the methods of petite guerre, ambushing French republican soldiers and cutting their supply lines to Paris. These tactics, when combined with the hatreds generated by a civil war, go far to explain to the cruelty of the conflict in the west and the depth of the hatreds it engendered. In republican eyes the use of guerrilla tactics was unjust and illegitimate, and they denounced their adversaries as common criminals and brigands, portraying them as backward, superstitious, even as subhuman, and in the process justified the savage repression they unleashed against them.

The Hundred Days, the Congress of Vienna and the Atlantic Slave Trade

Because the Hundred Days strengthened Britain’s negotiating hand at Vienna, British abolitionists sensed that this was their chance to secure the abolition of slaving across Europe. In particular, they were eager to ensure that France could not profit from the trade now that Britain had abandoned it, and Castlereagh was eager to include a commitment to abolition in any peace treaty. However, his enthusiasm was not shared by Louis XVIII or by the other Allies. The right of the Royal Navy to board foreign vessels was resisted, and 1815 ushered in a period of illegal slaving across the Atlantic world.

The French Revolution and the Birth of Electoral Democracy

either have a working knowledge of, or a willingness to grapple with, the technical processes of the common law. If, overall, Smith’s book broadly fits within a ‘revisionist’ account of consensus rather than great constitutional conflict, and one in which the advent of Stuart monarchy raises tensions, it still hints at how a shared sense of problems could stimulate a diverse set of proposed solutions, causing conflict. In this sense it is a shame that the book does not offer at least some account of Coke’s place in the political tensions of the 1620s. For while Coke aimed to solve a practical problem, it is not hard to see how his solution could generate the textual and conceptual resources for others to deploy in their constitutional quarrels.

Review: Stephen Miller, State and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. A Study of Political Power and Social Revolution in Languedoc, Catholic University of America Press: Washington, DC, 2008; 322 pp.; 9780813215174, £54.50 (hbk)

In Chapter 4, McDonough analyses Conservative contributions to parliamentary debates on the German question, and points out that they were basically moderate: few, if any, Conservative MPs used their position in parliament to make inflammatory speeches or to spread a fear of Germany’s economic or political power. As the author acknowledges, things become more complex when the perspective is broadened to include material directed at the more general public. Election materials, the subject of study in Chapter 5, make clear that the relative decline of the British navy and the need for tariff reform in the face of German competition were key planks in the Conservative election effort. However – and McDonough’s analysis of three conservative extra-parliamentary organizations confirms this – the argument of Conservatives was complex. First, criticism was directed less at Germany, because efforts at increasing power and status were seen as legitimate, than at Liberal governments’ failure to prevent Britain from losing ground to Germany in industrial production, shipbuilding and education. Second, even (or particularly) on the radical conservative fringe, the Conservative image of Germany retained many positive elements. In order to make the need for tariff reform plausible, Conservative canvassers, MPs and pressure groups had to argue that protective tariffs had led to higher living standards for German labourers than free trade had assured to Britain’s working class – and this included repeated statements praising the nutritional value of brown bread, a staple synonymous with poverty for much of the British public. Moreover, some Conservatives saw the more authoritarian nature of Germany’s internal constitution, and the greater role of the state, as models, not threats. The final chapter looks closely at the events leading to war, and again absolves the Conservatives of blame. The Conservative leadership did not press for war, but believed government assurances that no European crisis was imminent. George Grey, by contrast, wished to ensure that Britain did intervene, and sought to ensure Conservative support for such a course – and this, according to McDonough, meant that Liberal imperialists, not Conservatives, took the decisive initiatives. In sum, McDonough presents us with an elegant account of high politics based on an extremely impressive number of sources, which should encourage further debate on the view of Germany in British foreign policy and on the use of ‘Germany’ as an example in disputes on British domestic policy before 1914.

Book Review: Donald Stoker, Frederick C. Schneid and Harold D. Blanton, eds, Conscription in the Napoleonic Era. A Revolution in Military Affairs? Routledge: London, 2007; 240 pp.; 9780415349994, £70.00 (hbk):

How is this intellectual construction relevant to the material and political world of the sans-culottes – or even to their rhetoric, which recent research has shown to be just as important? Sonenscher knows a great deal about the world of eighteenth-century artisans, as his earlier works prove. Yet, this book is not about that world, and consequently it may prove less relevant for scholars of the French Revolution.