| Description |
vi, 438 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
1. 'He snatched lightning from the heavens': Benjamin Franklin, the Enlightenment and France's crisis of the 1780s -- 2. 'The best model the world has ever produced': Governing America and Britain in the traumatic 1780s -- 3. 'Vibrating between a monarchy and a corrupt oppressive aristocracy': The woes of France and America, 1787-8 -- 4. 'The seeds of decay and corruption': Britain, empire: and the king's madness, 1784-8 -- 5. 'The base laws of servitude': Empire, slavery and race: in the 1780s -- 6. 'That offspring of tyranny, baseness and pride': Abolitionism, political economy and the people's rights -- 7. 'Constant effort and continuous emulation': The revolutions of cotton and steam -- 8. 'This general agitation of public insanity': France and Britain in the spring of 1789 -- 9. 'Highly fraught with disinterested benevolence': Empire, reason, race and profit in the Pacific -- 10. 'Deep rooted prejudices, and malignity of heart, and conduct': President Washington and the war in the West -- 11. 'No, sire, it is a revolution': From the Estates-General to the Bastille, France, May-July 1789 -- 12. 'For all men, and for all countries': Declaring rights in America and France -- 13. 'Your houses will answer for your opinions': The French Revolution imperilled -- 14. 'The greatest event it is that ever happened in the world': The British and the French Revolution -- Conclusion: 1789/1798 |
| Summary |
"France wrestled to grasp the prize of citizenship from the ruins of the old order. The United States struggled to forge a new constitution in the face of crippling debt. Britain recoiled from squalid tales of imperial greed and the plunder of India before a king's madness threw the constitution into turmoil. Radical changes were in the air, crowned in documents drafted at almost the same moment - the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the American Bill of Rights - giving the world a new political language." "In this stunning narrative of the tumultuous days of 1789 David Andress reveals brilliantly how through these events, the world stood at the threshold of the modern age."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Formerly CIP. Uk |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [398]-421) and index |
| Subject |
Enlightenment.
|
|
History, Modern -- 18th century.
|
|
Revolutions.
|
| ISBN |
0316731978 (hbk.) |
|
9780316731973 (hbk.) |
|
