ABSTRACT
Introduction In a volume dealing with discourses and counter-discourses on Europe, a chapter devoted to counter-revolutionary thought seems almost obligatory.1 At once desperate and militant, aware of its own defeat yet incapable of surrender, counterrevolutionary thought was the ‘counter’ thought par excellence: the beginning of an intellectual tradition variously described, over time, as reactionary, conservative, anti-modern and intransigent.2 Hostile to the Enlightenment, in revolt against rationalism, distrustful of the idea of progress, counter-revolutionary thought was born during the Revolutionary crisis and was fuelled by it.3 Along with the French Revolution, it founded political modernity,4 giving voice to the vanquished of history, and came to terms with the fragility of the secularized political structures and the pathologies of what, a few decades later, Tocqueville would call the ‘democratic revolution’. As Antoine Compagnon wrote, counterrevolutionaries, untimely and outdated, pessimistic and sceptical, now appear, with their disenchantment, to be our real contemporaries.5 Being forced to stand on enemy ground and to confront the issues and language of the Revolution, counter-revolutionary thought organized its discourse in reaction to its adversary. Its vocabulary, arguments and polemics were chosen for opposition and were dictated by the agenda of the Revolution.6 When revolutionaries spoke on behalf of a sovereign people, counter-revolutionaries spoke in the name of God, the one true sovereign. When the Revolution invoked the language of the rights of man, the counter-revolution invoked those of duties. When the Revolution fought in the name of the nation, the counter-revolution fought in the name of Europe. In the age in which the problematic relationship between Europe and its constituent nations arose, Europe became a weapon in the rhetorical arsenal of the counter-revolution: if ‘nation’ was le mot de la Révolution, which knew no middle term between nation and humanity, ‘Europe’ was the rallying cry of the counter-revolution. In the polemics and debates of those crucial years Europe thus appeared as a counter-discourse, a discourse against the very idea of Revolution and against a certain idea of mankind, of history and of man’s role in history. The Europe of the counter-revolutionaries had its roots in the ground
abandoned by their foes: history, religion, tradition. The outcome was the historiographical invention of a Christian medieval Europe, as a model of a balanced order characterized by spiritual harmony, strong social cohesion and respect for the established hierarchies. In other words, the creation of the myth of a peaceful medieval Europe, designed and conceived for the use and nurture of counterrevolutionary concerns and struggles. The Europe of the counter-revolutionaries took on the characteristics of a ‘concept-refuge’,7 of a notional world in which to seek shelter from the revolutionary menace, which threatened to destroy its values, to wipe out its traditions and erase its history. At the end of the eighteenth century Europe was certainly not a new subject in the history of political thought, but neither had it ever been the centre of a real political debate.8 From Hesiod onwards, the intellectual, cultural, religious and political history of the West had been punctuated by allusions to Europe: however, these references had never really entered the political debate or been the object of a lively dispute.9 It was only with the French Revolution that – to use Martyn P. Thompson’s expression – the European moment began,10 and the subsequent debate on Europe was animated by the thinkers of the crisis. Nevertheless, with few exceptions, the contribution of counter-revolutionary thought to the development of the idea of Europe has so far remained in the shadows, squeezed out by the utopianism of the great projects for perpetual peace of the eighteenth century and by the realism of the Congress of Vienna. After all, it was hard for the counter-revolutionaries to compete on the ‘European’ ground with Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. Napoleon’s campaigns had upset the political balance and a centuries-old consolidated European physiognomy, following his dream and ambition of founding a European system, a European Code and a Supreme Court for all Europe.11 The aspiration to turn Europe into ‘a truly united nation’ under the aegis of a French empire which, by military force, would succeed in bringing harmony and unity to Europe, was shattered after the Hundred Days.12 Napoleon had, however, had time to commission Benjamin Constant’s Acte additionnel aux Costitutions de l’Empire, whose preamble – written jointly by the Emperor and Constant – expressed the desire to give birth to a ‘great European federal system’.13 With the end of the Imperial adventure, the Congress of Vienna had run for cover, giving life and articulation to the political and diplomatic system whose importance for the history of Europe is unquestionable. Indeed, however one interprets the Restoration, it is impossible to deny its significance as a turning point in the construction of modern Europe.14 These factors, taken together, have to a large extent obscured the importance of the counter-revolutionary contribution to the conceptualization of Europe. With the exception of the analyses written by some distinguished contemporaries – in particular Edmund Burke and Novalis, author of Christianity or Europe15 – counter-revolutionary thought has not been given an autonomous space of investigation. This is partly because the counter-revolution has interested and fascinated scholars more for its activities – the workings of its conspiracy and
information networks, the various kinds of national and European uprisings, the itineraries and components of emigration – than for its theoretical features.16 In recent years, however, there has been a kind of turnabout: what was for a long time largely considered only as the reversal of the French Revolution is now seen as the voice speaking out against the tradition that inaugurated politicaldemocratic modernity and at the same time laid the foundations for its recurring crises. Thus there has been a growing interest in the theoretical distinctiveness of the counter-revolution, and in its polemics, its conception of the world and its anthropology.17 This contribution follows this trend, investigating the reasons that led the counter-revolutionaries to place ‘Europe’ at the centre of their discourses and analysing where and in what way this operation was carried out.18
