ABSTRACT
The book’s introduction reinterprets the notion of republic in French political history, showing that the definition of republicanism at the time of the 1848 Revolution was by no means self-evident. Taking up Hannah Arendt’s distinction between liberation and freedom, the chapter argues that the work of freedom in 1848 was precisely the invention of republican institutions, in a situation where different possibilities were open. The events in Paris between February and June 1848 showed the emergence of two opposing faces of the French republic, or more precisely of a republic and its double – a dreamed-of republic and an institutionalised republic, without it being possible to say which was real and which was a betrayal of republicanism.
