Counter-revolution, conservatism and conspiracy in the cosmopolitan public sphere from 1770s to 1790s : Mallet Du Pan, Barruel and the philosophes

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

Jacques Mallet Du Pan’s essay ‘Du Degré d’influence qu’a eu la philosophie française sur la Révolution’ [‘Of the degree of influence which the French Philosophy has had upon the Revolution’], was one of the most significant essays he ever wrote. A partial refutation of the philosophic and freemasonic conspiracy theories popularised throughout Europe by abbé Augustin Barruel’s celebrated Mémoires pour server à l’histoire du jacobinsme français, it illustrates the extent to which even one of the most informed, politically moderate and, reputedly, judicious of revolutionary exiles, blamed the revolutionary contagion on the enlightenment and its enthusiasts. This essay uses Mallet’s engagement with Barruel’s argument, and the contexts in which it arose, as a starting point to explore the emergence and circulation of conservative discourses concerning the dangers of philosophie and demands for liberty through the cosmopolitan public sphere and international conservative networks, both before and after the outbreak of the French revolution. In the process, it suggests that then, as now, the print public sphere – so often associated in this period with progressive politics – was, save in times of revolutionary rupture, structurally conservative to a degree unrecognised hitherto, and shows how key conservative discourses were circulating in the Christian apologetic writings and among an elite European audience two decades before the French revolution.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCosmopolitan Conservatisms: Countering Revolution in Transnational Networks, Ideas and Movements (c. 1700‒1930)
EditorsMatthijs Lok, Friedemann Pestel, Juliette Reboul
Place of PublicationNetherlands
PublisherBrill
Pages86-107
Number of pages22
ISBN (Electronic)9789004446731
ISBN (Print)9789004445239
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

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