ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the process of Yorke’s radicalisation through both ideology and activity. It considers the question also resonant today: what makes an accomplished young gentleman join the radical cause? Yorke threw himself into the excitement of revolutionary Paris in late 1792 when the Brissotins or Girondins were dominant in revolutionary politics. In his later Letters from France (1804), Yorke retold much of his experiences in Paris in 1792: the people he met and events he experienced, including the trial of Louis XVI. Yorke joined the radical British Club in Paris and befriended members such as Thomas Paine, John Oswald, John Frost, and Joel Barlow. Yorke’s first radical pamphlet reflects Brissotin universalism. Such universalism with its broad Enlightenment humanitarianism led Yorke to recant his anti-slavery position and embrace an abolitionist stance. Yorke’s adoption of a citizen of the world persona and cosmopolitan identity are explored here, particularly as a means to evade the emerging national identity in England. Yorke fled Paris to escape arrest under a warrant issued by Jacque-Louis David. He returned to England a dangerously revolutionary radical.
