Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848

769 Pages·2017·30.757 MB·English

by  Israel, Jonathan

The Expanding Blaze

The Expanding Blaze
How THE AmEricAn rEvoluTion
igniTEd THE world, 1775– 1848
Jonathan Israel
Princeton university Press
Princeton & Oxford
copyright © 2017 by Princeton university Press
Published by Princeton university Press, 41 william Street, Princeton, new Jersey 08540
in the united Kingdom: Princeton university Press, 6 oxford Street, woodstock,
oxfordshire oX20 1Tr
press.princeton.edu
Jacket art courtesy of manchester libraries, information and Archives,
manchester city council
All rights reserved
iSBn 978– 0- 691– 17660– 4
British library cataloging- in- Publication data is available
This book has been composed in Ehrhardt mT Std
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the united States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
From that bright spark which first illumed these lands,
See Europe kindling, as the blaze expands,
Each gloomy tyrant, sworn to chain the mind,
Presumes no more to trample on mankind:
Even potent louis trembles on his throne,
The generous prince who made our cause his own, . . . 
— Philip Freneau, On the Prospect of a Revolution in France (march 1790)

contents
List of Illustrations ix
introduction: The American revolution and the origins of democratic
modernity 1
1. First rumblings 25
2. A republican revolution 36
3. revolutionary constitutionalism and the Federal union
(1776– 90) 70
4. Schooling republicans 90
5. Benjamin Franklin: “American icon”? 113
6. Black Emancipation: confronting Slavery in the new republic 140
7. Expropriating the native Americans 158
8. whites dispossessed 174
9. canada: An ideological conflict 191
10. John Adams’s “American revolution” 211
11. Jefferson’s French revolution 246
12. A Tragic case: The irish revolution (1775– 98) 285
13. America’s “conservative Turn”: The Emerging “Party System” in the
1790s 321
14. America and the Haitian revolution 361
15. louisiana and the Principles of ’76 385
16. A revolutionary Era: napoleon, Spain, and the Americas
(1808– 15) 423
viii / Contents
17. reaction, radicalism, and Américanisme under “the restoration”
(1814– 30) 456
18. The greek revolution (1770– 1830) 495
19. The Freedom- Fighters of the 1830s 512
20. The revolutions of 1848: democratic republicanism versus
Socialism 547
21. American reaction (1848– 52) 568
conclusion: “Exceptionalism,” Populism, and the radical
Enlightenment’s demise 600
Notes 615
Bibliography 683
Index 727
illustrations
The “cow of British commerce” dehorned before Philadelphia (1775) 27
Title page of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (Philadelphia, 1776) and
portrait of Thomas Paine (1737– 1809), engraving from a painting
by george romney (c. 1792) 47–48
The Battle of Princeton, 3 January 1777 66
Jefferson and madison’s “university of virginia” in 1826 105
Benjamin Franklin (1706– 90), by Joseph- Siffred duplessis (1725– 1802)
painted in Paris around 1778 123
The two sides of Franklin’s propaganda medal “libertas Americana”
by Augustin dupré (1781) 129
The American rattlesnake presenting monsieur his Ally with a dish
of Frogs 131
John Adams (1735– 1826), by revolutionary war artist John Trumbull,
c. 1793 213
The marquis de condorcet (1743– 94), engraving after Augustin de
Saint- Aubin 256
lafayette as commander of the Paris national guard, 1790 265
“The irish rebellion” (1798), by the British caricaturist James gillray
(1756– 1815) 316
Triumph of liberty, dedicated to its defenders in America,
c. 1793 333
“The Providential detection” (1797); divine providence keeps a
protective eye on America 344
“The Paris monster” (1797), political cartoon depicting the
Franco- American diplomatic imbroglio of 1797– 98 349