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  • Une société civilisée et religieuse: Postrevolutionary French liberalism and the character of Europe
  • Cheryl B. Welch (bio)

In nineteenth-century Europe there was a growing perception that the peoples within its borders exhibited distinctive “âmes nationales.” This forum attests to the many ways in which the idea of national character was theorized and debated from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, especially in relation to democracy and liberalism. At the same time, however, Europe itself was emerging as an increasingly singular space. Indeed, the European “family of nations” was often conceived as a group of siblings who manifested complementary excellences that helped to explain Europe’s emerging dominance in the world. Rather than considering what separated national types, I explore in this essay the connection between two shared attributes that formed the basis of a new understanding of European kinship: civilization (or the capacity to achieve it) and Christianity.

For some writers who hoped to restore religion to the very center of communal life in Europe after the frightening apostacies associated with the Revolution, civilization and Christianity were thought to be fused and inseparable.1 For others, however, the relationship was more problematic and contingent. Among these were French liberals in the post revolutionary period who manifested a new enthusiasm for “une société civilisée et religieuse.”2 If they continued to think of civilization primarily in secular terms as a socio-economic process of [End Page 117] development with implications for the perfection of human natural abilities, they grafted a compensatory—rather than constitutive—role for Christianity onto this notion.3 My focus here is on what is hidden or assumed by the conjunction “et” in the phrase “civilisée et religieuse.” After a schematic discussion of the concept of civilization as bequeathed by the Enlightenment, Revolution, and Empire, I explore the new and surprising congruence of opinion on the civilizing role of Christianity in writers as different as René de Chateaubriand and François Guizot. I then offer a typology of the various ways in which liberals appealed to Christianity to shore up conditions for the emergence of civilized self-government. Finally, I briefly suggest that these discursive shifts in evaluating the role of Christianity in fostering progress within Europe could have unintended consequences, including ready acquiescence in the imperial pretentions of Europe towards “declining” civilizations.

Civilization and Christianity in the Enlightenment, Revolution, and Empire

French writers began in the 1760s to use the word “civilisation,” a new word for a concept with ancient roots. The neologism connoted the process of perfecting society, i.e., rendering it progressively more “policée”, and “raffinée.” Passing quickly into English, it was adopted in particular by Scottish historians who described a progression of socio-economic forms based on land ownership, moving towards a dynamic and inherently expansive commercial society that would transform manners and morals. Indeed, during this period, there was an extraordinary efflorescence of histories of European civil society in French and English, weaving complicated plots between Europe’s history in general and the history of single countries.4 Intermingled in these Enlightenment narratives were two strands of argument about the forces that were civilizing Europe: the progressive change of the material infrastructure of society and the development of human reason. Between 1765 and 1795 the word “civilization” gained increasing traction and “lorsque approche la Révolution, il triomphe.”5

Although some in the eighteenth century questioned the ethnocentric identification of the civilizing process with Europe, and although the concept generated well-known moral malaise, it was nevertheless widely accepted that Europe was the geographical site of [End Page 118] the most advanced societies on earth. This Eurocentrism, however, was somewhat tempered by skepticism about, or hostility toward, Christianity. It was generally admitted that some aspects of Christianity had favored moderation and softened moeurs; nevertheless, Europe was more often thought to have become civilized despite, rather than because of, its religious history and formation.6 As John Pocock has put it,”writing history for [Enlightenment historians] was a weapon against the church, Protestant as well as Catholic.”7 Or as Chateaubriand caustically commented in 1802, “Enfin il fut reconnu que le christianisme n’était...

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