Making Connections

Fifty years ago, Princeton University Press published the first of R. R. Palmer's two-volume magnum opus, The Age of the Democratic Revolution. In that work, Palmer argued that the European and American revolutionary movements of the late eighteenth century revolved around a struggle between democratic and aristocratic forces. The latter took up the cause of constituted bodies' corporate rights. The former reacted to the aristocratic ascendancy by contending for a more open system of political activity. Although the crusade for a hierarchical system attracted large numbers of the wealthy and privileged, and while the campaign for a representative political culture served as a magnet for the less well-to-do and low-born, the clash between aristocracy and democracy was never simply a socioeconomic one. Rather, it was an ideological battle, a "conflict between incompatible conceptions of what the community ought to be."¹

One of the striking things about Palmer's rendition of the Atlantic revolutions is the way in which it made intelligible a confusing mass of disparate events. According to the author, the goal was not to deny the existence of dissimilarities, but to provide a "larger framework, or conceptual structure, in which phenomena that are admittedly different . . . may yet be seen as related products of a common impulse." In this respect, The Age of the Democratic Revolution was eminently successful. For in contrast to most other scholars during the early Cold War, Palmer eschewed presentist preoccupation with the ways in which the "French Revolution" was "a kind of origin, partial cause, or distant prefigurement of the Russian Revolution" and instead took late eighteenth-century political upheavals on their own terms.² In so doing, Palmer contextualized—better than anyone else up to that point, and perhaps even since that point—a watershed historical era.

Somewhat surprisingly, most scholars failed to follow up on the insights offered in The Age of the Democratic Revolution. Perhaps awed by the magisterial quality of the work, or perhaps conditioned by the requirements of increasing specialization, the vast majority of historians devoted their energies to other, narrower lines of inquiry. As a result, Palmer's books were often cited but not seriously engaged. This remained true even as historians of the early modern era became increasingly interested in the transoceanic dynamics shaping particular nations and locales. All current historians of the early modern era may be Atlanticists, but they are not, for the most part, Atlanticists in a Palmerian vein.

David Andress' 1789: The Threshold of the Modern Age does not presume to follow in the path blazed by Palmer. Indeed, he altogether ignores—despite overlapping interests—The Age of the Democratic Revolution and thus carries forward the general disregard for that award-winning study. Even so, Andress' work invites comparison with Palmer's because it seeks to make connections among various revolutionary (and counterrevolutionary) movements in the late eighteenth century. For Andress, the "common impulse" worth highlighting is the shift toward modernity, the "great transformation" that brought into being the world we know today (p. 4). Unfortunately, and unlike Palmer, Andress does not offer a straightforward, well-developed explanation of his central concept. Instead, he briefly alludes, in the introduction, to a "new language" of rights and the "interplay between freedom and subjection, equality and difference" (p. 5). The author returns to the issue of modernity in the last few pages of the book, but in an equally unsatisfying manner. The "quest" to make sure human rights are not "mere pieces of paper" is what characterizes the "modern age," writes Andress; yet because large portions of the book hardly touch upon that "quest," the rights theme operates largely as an unpersuasive sidebar (p. 397).

The lack of clarity about the book's central theme brings into relief another important difference between Andress' work and Palmer's. The latter is rigorously argued and its thesis clear and direct. In that sense, it fits really well into the view that professional history should be, at...