Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain, and France in the Eighteenth Century (Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History

by Richard Whatmore

As Britain and France became more powerful during the eighteenth century, small states such as Geneva could no longer stand militarily against these commercial monarchies. Furthermore, many Genevans felt that they were being drawn into a corrupt commercial world dominated by amoral aristocrats dedicated to the unprincipled pursuit of wealth. In this book Richard Whatmore presents an intellectual history of republicans who strove to ensure Geneva’s survival as an independent state. Whatmore shows how the Genevan republicans grappled with the ideas of Rousseau, Voltaire, Bentham, and others in seeking to make modern Europe safe for small states, by vanquishing the threats presented by war and by empire.

Genres: History, European History

413 pages, Hardcover

First published July 31, 2012

About the author

Richard Whatmore is professor of modern history and codirector of the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of What Is Intellectual History?, Against War and Empire, and Republicanism and the French Revolution.

Reviews

[Ira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing to see how the problems the French Revolution was about to face were all already present in the Genevan revolution, and learn about the important role of Genevan exiled revolutionaries in the Paris uprisings. A little known revolutionary history described mainly through the detailed prose of its contemporary detractors. A history of failed experiments, censorship, backstabbing, intellectual dishonesty, political fear, but also one of the struggle between advocates of participatory and representative democratic systems.

[JR Roach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Geneva is a brilliant site from which to survey the transition from the intellectual world of the eighteenth century to that of the nineteenth. Very effectively establishes the vast gulf between the classical republicanism of the eighteenth century (including Rousseau) and the democratic politics that emerged during the French Revolution (often in spite of the intentions of its major figures).