Working-Class Women and Republicanism in the French Revolution of 1848

Abstract

Following the February Revolution in 1848, working-class women as well as men attempted to hold the government to its promise of the right to work, through street demonstrations, individual and collective demands for work, and participation in the national workshops that had been established in an attempt to address the problem of unemployment in the capital. In the process, these activists articulated what scholars have labelled as a democratic socialist vision of republicanism. In June of 1848, women participated in the insurrection that sought to defend the vision of a social republic. While the republicanism of working-class men and bourgeois women such as George Sand has been examined, studies of working-class women in the first half of the nineteenth century have to this point focused on the romantic socialist influences that shaped their activities, in particular the Saint-Simonian movement. Drawing primarily on individual letters, police interrogations and newspaper reports, a vision of republicanism emerges that includes the ability for women to sustain their families through waged as well as household labour. This concept of republican virtue based itself not in suffrage but in women's capacity to act as both producers and consumers under just and equitable conditions.     

De Bow’s Revolution: The Memory of the American Revolution in the Politics of the Sectional Crisis, 1850–1861

In January 1861 editor James D.B. De Bow advocated the secession of southern states from the union as he proclaimed to his readers that white Southerners “are mainly the descendants of those who fought the battles of the Revolution, and who understand and appreciate the nature and inestimable value of the liberty which it brought.” While editors on both sides of the Sectional Crisis over slavery in the 1850s and 60s claimed to be “custodians of the legacy of 1776” as they used the American Revolution symbolically in their rhetoric. By focusing on De Bow’s Review, a widely read and influential journal during this fight, we can gain a better understanding of the specific terms by which Southerners were encouraged to think of themselves not as rebels but as guardians of “the true American character.”     

Humphrey and Civil Rights: The Politics of Racial Progress

Abstract

This article explores and defends Leo Strauss's interpretation of Edmund Burke's thought. Strauss argues that Burke's conservatism is rooted in the modern empiricist school of John Locke and others. Following Strauss, this article sets out to consider the suitability of these foundational principles to conservative politics. Burke wants to temper or ennoble Lockean politics by inspiring sublime attachment to the political community and its traditions, but he shies away from stating universal standards according to which the traditions of political communities ought to be judged. This respect for reason in history without moorings in transcendent standards of reason or revelation leaves his conservatism on precarious ground.     

From constitutional monarchy to republic: The trajectory of Yuan Shikai

In the conventional narrative of the 1911 Revolution, the reemergence of Yuan Shikai leads to a series of troubling actions. First, he bargained with the Qing court by taking advantage of the crisis at Wuchang to extract concessions for himself, and then he used the Qing military force to menace the southern revolutionaries. Eventually Yuan used the southern revolutionary threat as a pretext to force the abdication of the Qing emperor. Moreover, he traded his contribution for the position of the first president of the Republic, and thus stole the fruits of victory. This narrative is quite different from the historical facts. As one of the most important higher officials in late Qing times, Yuan played an essential role in pushing the political reforms of the late Qing. His generation of the political elite largely supported constitutional monarchy, consequently he chose to promote political reform to realize a constitutional solution after he returned to the political arena during the 1911 Revolution. Only after realizing that the goal of a constitutional monarchy had been rejected by all the political groups did Yuan follow the trend by supporting republicanism.     

A synopsis of the international symposium in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the 1911 Revolution

The International Symposium in Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the 1911 Revolution was held in Wuhan from 12 to 15 October 2011. Participants engaged in lively discussions around the following significant academic issues: the dilemma of the New Policy Reform of the Qing, the background of the 1911 Revolution, its historical process, the intellectual circles during the 1911 Revolution, politics and society, the main players, finance and economics during the revolutionary period, centennial memory and reinterpretations, and the historical meaning and legacy of the 1911 Revolution. The current article is a synopsis of the symposium.     

Count Karl von Zinzendorf 's ‘New Accountancy’: The Structure of Austrian Government Finance in Peace and War, 1781–1791

This article examines various British proposals for co-operation with other European imperial powers to counter the rebellion of the American colonies or curb the pretentions of the new United States. Historians have paid little attention to these projects, mainly because none of them eventuated in the co-operation their authors envisaged. But their lack of success is not a reason to dismiss them as unimportant; their failure reveals much about British attitudes at the time.     

Let there be light … and bread: the United Nations,the developing world,and atomic energy’s Green Revolution

Although President Eisenhower’s 1953 ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech typically is associated with the promotion of nuclear power, it also recommended other peaceful uses of the atom, including applications in agriculture. ‘Developing’ countries in particular took a keen interest in food preservation, grain disinfestation, fertilizer studies, insect control, and mutation breeding, all using irradiation. A conflict of philosophies emerged at the United Nations between the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA stood accused of promoting a narrow range of technological solutions, ignoring more sensible but less sensational techniques, and tempting the poorest countries of the world to achieve ‘modernization’ with unproven technologies. The present essay outlines the origins of FAO/IAEA conflict and collaboration in the 1960s, and explores the failed effort of plant geneticist Ronald Silow to stop what he saw as the IAEA’s hijacking of agriculture at the UN.     

The Newer New Life: A.S. Byatt,E. Nesbit and Socialist Subculture

This article considers the political implications of Victorian language-study for Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution (1837) (reprinted and edited by K.J. Fielding and David Sorensen (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 1989)). I investigate how Carlyle responded to the scientific study of language with what he termed a ‘bodied word’, a reading of language based in the word-become-flesh or the doctrine of the Incarnation. I show how this bodied word reflects wider changes in modern conceptions of the polity in the wake of the French Revolution, in the shift from a hereditary body politic towards what critics have termed a ‘social body’ or a more broadly inclusive model that incorporates the working classes. I then offer a reading of The French Revolution to show how Carlyle's French history was crucial to the linguistic and conceptual production of this liberal notion of the social body, even as he worked both to acknowledge and contain its political agency.     

论辛亥革命中的巡防队

晚清巡防队是清政府军政改革中保留下来的一种新旧混杂的军队,长期以来史学界对于辛亥革命时期军队的研究主要集中在新军上,对于巡防队的研究基本上是一片空白.本文对巡防队的历史和巡防队在辛亥革命中的表现及作用进行研究,认为清政府对于巡防队的改造存在诸多问题;巡防队在辛亥革命中有一定的表现,在不同的省区其作用是不一样的;但是也不能忽视其反面作用,军队起义意味着对中国传统文化意识的强烈挑战,造成了军阀政治的悲惨结局,影响了半个世纪中国社会的发展进程.     

"旺代叛乱"述略

“旺代叛乱”是法国大革命中的一个重大事件。这一事件的发生,不能简单地归因于旺代农民的“愚昧”、“保守”。从最直接的现象看,它实起因于共和国政府的政策与农民的传统情感之间的冲突,共和国政府的过激政策无疑应负一定的责任。共和国政府对旺代农民的镇压,不仅是拯救共和国的胜利,而且也是恐怖政策的过火表现。在近现代世界历史中,“旺代叛乱”并非只是个别的现象。在革命或者现代化进程中,不难看到一部分农民或者一部分弱势群体因维护自身利益而陷入与掌握着“革命”话语权的政府相对抗的困境乃军绛埔汶种历史现象。萤新探讨“旺代叛乱”,有助于深入理解法国大革命以及世界历史中的“旺代现象”。