French Revolutionary Thought after the Paris Commune, 1871-1885.
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This thesis provides the first comprehensive account of French revolutionary thought in
the years that followed the defeat of the 1871 Paris Commune, France’s last nineteenthcentury
revolution. The Commune as an event has captivated imaginations for the past
150 years, but the same cannot be said of its participants. With the majority either dead,
deported, or in exile, this period has traditionally been seen as one of intellectual
stagnation and disarray. After the fleeting unity of the Commune, revolutionaries are
thought to have admitted defeat, divided into groups, and drifted towards a series of
prefabricated, orthodox intellectual positions.
I argue that this is not a satisfactory representation of post-Commune
revolutionary thought. Revolutionary thought cannot be characterised using later neat
assignations of ‘left’ and ‘right’; ‘Marxist’, ‘nationalist’, or ‘anarchist’. Drawing upon the
work of thinkers and activists from across the revolutionary spectrum, I demonstrate
that this was a period of intellectual fluidity and engagement, as activists experimented
with a variety of ways to reconstruct a unified, credible, and autonomous French
revolutionary movement. Even as they were increasingly physically and politically
divided, they remained united by this commitment until well into the 1880s.
I trace this thought through a series of themes including revolutionary
interactions with Marxism and new imperialism. This thesis thus also provides new
perspectives on the construction of these wider doctrines, and on the political and social
history of late nineteenth-century Europe more generally. Finally, by offering a fresh
look at what has often been considered one of its most fundamental periods, I also seek
to interrogate and revise our understanding of the revolutionary tradition itself – a
concept that played a pivotal role in both political thought and practice for substantial
periods of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Authors
Nicholls, Julia CatherineCollections
- Theses [3709]