ABSTRACT
This chapter explores through the eyes of protagonists the revolutionary impulses that convulsed the Western world in the latter stages of the eighteenth century and their legacy for political activists aspiring to world revolution in the ensuing decades. There were shared ideals which shaped the revolutions, many inherited from Enlightenment thought and recognized by protagonists as having the power to change the world order. The origins and nature of radicalism are difficult to trace. It emerged as an influential political culture in the last decades of the eighteenth century after a prolonged period of relative calm. The degeneration of the revolution into a reign of terror seemed for many to realize Burke’s worst fears, but other writers sprang to the defence of the French. Reverberations from the French Revolution had an immediate and direct impact on Germany.
