Cosmopolitan Patriots: Americans in Paris in the Age of Revolution

Epilogue

165 Epilogue Historians have often told the story of the United States and France in the late eighteenth century as one of inevitable disenchantment, in which exclusionary yet realistic nationalisms supplanted a well-meaning yet utopian cosmopolitanism. But looking at the age of revolution from the vantage point of Americans in Paris suggests that nation-building and universalism were complementary rather than competing forces during this period . The efforts of Americans to apply their revolutionary expertise in Paris highlight the central role of cosmopolitanism in the construction of the new national communities in the United States and France. Only through appeals to universal principles could American and French revolutionaries unify their diverse populations and transform royal subjects into citizens in a process of national “regeneration.” Moreover, nationalists needed to think in cosmopolitan terms because their nation’s future depended on a hospitable international environment and on recognition by other nations. However, as the French Revolution unfolded in unpredictable twists and turns, cosmopolitan patriots faced two fundamental challenges. First, they had to grapple with the inherent tension in cosmopolitan ideology between universalism and particularism. American and French revolutionaries 166 Cosmopolitan Patriots believed that their respective nations offered a universal model to the rest of the world. But they were equally convinced that each people had to develop according to its particular manners and customs. Second, in both the United States and France, nation-builders had to invent the rules of a new political culture in which “the people” figured both as the source of legitimacy and as a potential agent of disorder. American and French elites subscribed to the ideal of a united, harmonious , and stable political domain. When factions nevertheless formed in each country around domestic and foreign policy issues, the ensuing conflicts were exacerbated by the definition of the nation as based on supposedly universal, but in fact highly contested and evolving principles. Each faction identified itself as speaking for the nation and its underlying principles, and branded its opponents as “foreigners.” This exclusion from the nation in turn justified the use of political violence, which many American and French revolutionaries came to see as the inevitable price of nation-building. The harrowing experience of the Terror convinced American Republicans in Paris that the pursuit of universal ends might require particular means in each country and led them to justify the increasing authoritarianism in France. At the same time, fear of the subversive presence of literal and political “foreigners” caused some American Federalists and officials of the French Directory to argue for more-restrictive concepts of national belonging. As relations between the United States and France deteriorated, the activities of Americans in Paris became the object of a heated debate over the boundaries of the national community and the primary locus of political allegiance. Yet Federalist efforts to manufacture a nationalist consensus faced a resilient tradition of revolutionary cosmopolitanism. Once in power, Republicans chose to dissociate themselves from the French Revolution , in the interest of consolidating their own regime. Although America and France shared certain universal principles, they argued, these principles had to assume different political forms as each nation followed its own destiny. Just as the Federalists and their ostensible antithesis, the Directory, had similar attitudes toward popular politics and foreigners, Thomas Jefferson ’s and Napoleon Bonaparte’s pursuit of a post-revolutionary order had much in common. Neither American nor French nationalism became any less universalist, even as the two countries appeared to develop in opposite political directions at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The universalism that had inspired American and French revolutionaries and forged a 167 Epilogue bond between sister republics now found expression in national expansionism across the North American continent and Europe, respectively. The French Revolution reinforced the idea that France was a “universal nation” that represented the apex of civilization and was charged with rescuing other peoples from tyranny and ignorance. Despite the strong resistance of France’s European neighbors against being rescued, and the loss of all conquered territories after Napoleon’s final defeat, this national selfunderstanding continued to dominate debates about France’s place in the world throughout the nineteenth century, developing into the ideology of the nation’s mission civilisatrice. The idea of the “universal nation” proved so enduring in part because it reflected an anxiety that, as a nation, France could not do without the confidence and unity that only military conquest and colonization were able...