ABSTRACT

Remembering Early Modern Revolutions is the first study of memory in relation to the major revolutions of the early modern period. Beginning with the English revolutions of the seventeenth century (1642–60 and 1688–9), this book also explores the American, French and Haitian revolutions.

Through addressing these events collectively, this volume demonstrates the interconnectedness of these revolutions in the contemporary mind and highlights the importance of invoking the memory of prior revolutions in order both to warn of the dangers of revolution and to legitimate radical political change. It also unpicks the different ways in which these events were presented and their memory utilised, uncovering the importance of geographical and temporal contexts to the processes of remembering and forgetting.

Examining both personal and collective remembrance and exploring both private recollection and public commemoration, Remembering Early Modern Revolutions uncovers the rich and powerful memory of revolution in the Atlantic world and is ideal for students and teachers of memory in the early modern period.

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

Revolution, time and memory

chapter 1|15 pages

Remembering the Good Old Cause 1

chapter 2|17 pages

Commemorating the English Revolution

Local deliverance and thanksgiving

chapter 3|16 pages

Remembering the Regicide in an Age of Revolutions

The case of Mark Noble

chapter 4|17 pages

‘A Total Contradiction to Every Principle Laid Down at the Time of the Revolution’

American revolutionaries and the Glorious Revolution

chapter 5|15 pages

Settlers Among Empires

Conquest and the American Revolution 1

chapter 7|11 pages

Reliving the French Revolution Through Gouverneur Morris’s Diary

An American perspective from behind the scenes rediscovered

chapter 8|15 pages

Reviving the Memory of James Harrington (1611–77) in Revolutionary France

Henry and Aubin’s translations in year III of the French republic 1

chapter 10|13 pages

The Haitian Revolution and the Myth of the Republic

Louis Joseph Janvier’s revisionist history

chapter 11|18 pages

Haiti’s Fête Nationale

A revolutionary site of memory

chapter |14 pages

Afterword