The Age of the Democratic Revolution, Vol 1: The Challenge

by R.R. Palmer

subtitle: A Political History of Europe & America 1760-1800
Preface
I/The Age of the Democratic Revolution
The Revolution of Western Civilization
A Democratic Revolution: Democrat & Aristocrat in European Languages
A Preview of What Follows
II/Aristocracy about 1760: The Constituted Bodies
The Diets of Eastern Europe
Councils & Estates of the Middle Zone
The Provincial Estates & Parlements of France
Parliaments & Assemblies in the British Isles & America
III/Aristocracy about 1760: Theory & Practice
Montesquieu, Réal de Curban, Blackstone, Warburton
Uses & Abuses of Social Rank
Problems of Administration, Recruitment, Taxation & Class Consciousness
IV/Clashes w/Monarchy
The Quasi-Revolution in France 1763-74
The Monarchist Coup d'Etat of 1772 in Sweden
The Hapsburg Empire
V/A Clash w/Democracy: Geneva & Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau, Voltaire & Geneva to 1762
The Social Contract 1762
The Genevese Revolution of 1768
VI/The British Parliament between King & People
The British Constitution
The 1st American Crisis: The Stamp Act
Tribulations of Parliament 1766-74
The 2nd American Crisis: Coercive Acts & Continental Congress
VII/The American Revolution: The Forces in Conflict
The Revolution: Was There Any?
Anglo-America before the Revolution
The Revolution: Democracy & Aristocracy
The Revolution: Britain & Europe
VIII/The American Revolution: The People as Constituent Power
The Distinctiveness of American Political Ideas
Constitution-making in N Carolina, Pennsylvania & Massachusetts
A Word on the Constitution of the US
Ambivalence of the American Revolution
IX/Europe & the American Revolution
The Sense of a New Era
Channels of Communication
The Depths of Feeling
The American Constitutions: An International Argument
X/Two Parliaments Escape Reform
The Arming of Ireland: Grattan's Parliament
The Association Movement in England
The Reform Bills & Their Failure
The Conservatism of Edmund Burke
The Appellation of Citizen v. the Test Act
XI/Democrats & Aristocrats--Dutch, Belgian & Swiss
The Dutch Patriot Movement
The Belgian Revolution
A View of Switzerland
Reflections on the Foregoing
XII/The Limitations of Enlightened Despotism
Joseph II: The Attempted Revolution from Above
Leopold II: The Aristocratic Counterattack
Three Charters of the North
XIII/The Lessons of Poland
The Gentry Republic
The Polish Revolution: The Constitution of 1791
A Game of Ideological Football
XIV/The French Revolution: The Aristocratic Resurgence
The Problem of the French Revolution
Ministers & Parlements 1774-88
The Aristocratic Revolt
XV/The French Revolution: The Explosion of 1789
The Formation of a Revolutionary Psychology
The Overturn: May-August 1789
The Constitution: Mounier & Sieyès
Appendices
I/References for the Quotations at Heads of Chapters
II/Translations of Metrical Passages
III/Excerpts from Certain Basic Legal Documents
1. The Russian Charter of Nobility 1785
2. The Prussian General Code 1791
3. The Swedish Act of Union & Security 1789
4. The Polish Constitution of 1791
5. The Hungarian Coronation Oath of 1790
6. The Brabant Declaration of Independence 1789
7. The Geneva Edict of Pacification 1782
8. The Canada Act 1791
9. The Constitutions of the US 1787 & of Pennsylvania 1790
10. The French Constitution of 1789-91
IV/The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 & the French Declaration of Rights of 1789
V/Democratic & Bourgeois Characteristics in the French Constitution of 1791: Property Qualifications in France, Britain & America
Index

Genres: History, Politics, International Relations, Nonfiction, American, Academic, World History

544 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Robert Roswell Palmer (January 11, 1909 – June 11, 2002), commonly known as R. R. Palmer, was a distinguished American historian at Princeton and Yale universities, who specialized in eighteenth-century France. His most influential work of scholarship, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800 (1959 and 1964), examined an age of democratic revolution that swept the Atlantic civilization between 1760 and 1800. He was awarded the Bancroft Prize in History for the first volume. Palmer also achieved distinction as a history text writer.

Reviews

[Paige Bowers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably would not have read this book if I hadn't enrolled in graduate school and decided to study 19th century European history. My academic advisor recommended it to me, all the while cautioning that it was big and a challenge to read. This advisor said you cannot understand the 19th century if you do not understand the French Revolution and so I accepted this challenge. At one point this challenge drove me to a two-hour nap.

All the same, Palmer's book is an acclaimed synthesis that turns the usual Marxist interpretations of revolution on their head. He offers a revisionist theory of what occurred in the United States and then across Europe, closing with the revolution in France. If you can hang in there (Palmer's mind is fine, but his writing is turgid), you will be rewarded in the end. Me? I wonder what he would have said about the Arab Spring if he were still alive today.

This book probably isn't for the general reader. But if you reeeeally like history, especially revolutionary history, you might find it fascinating.

[Sean Chick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb book! Works like this are what excite me, for Palmer is adept at seeing both the connections and differences between the various revolutions and reform movements that rocked the world in the 1700s.

[Linda Munro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was one of the recommended reads for the class in ‘The Modern World: Global History since 1760 course I am taking through coursera.org. I understand why it was recommended, it covers a great deal of the French Revolution and the overflow that captured Europe and America, there was a great deal of information in this book. The problem was, I felt that I was sitting in a giant auditorium and the guy from ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ that repeats in a monitone voice; “Bueller, Bueller….”

This book held statistics and clues but lacked life. I believe that writer’s like this overflow into teachers and that causes a lack of interest in the subject of history. So let me sum up what this book was about, enlightenment and the worldwide struggle to continue forward, escaping from the tradition that refused to allow culture to advance. There is so much that occurs during the ‘Democratic Revolution’ that holds implications on today’s society that I believe everyone should at least read a well researched book on the era; for, even as badly written as Palmer’s book was (in my estimation) I was still able to retrieve important information that helps me understand how we got where we were as a society and who the people were that helped assure we did advance (although their tactics were far from civilized in most cases).