Exporting Revolution

In our February 2016 issue, David Andress surveys the French Revolution with the help of the History Today archive. The extraordinary narrative that unfolds during the late 18th century is seen traditionally as the beginning of modern history. Why, though, did it happen in France and not, say, in comparable European polities such as Britain or Spain? Demography may help us answer that question. 

During the turbulent 17th century, almost 400,000 people left Britain and Ireland for North America. Though the figures are harder to verify, even more left the Iberian peninsula for Central and South America from the 1500s onwards. Around 250,000 Dutch went in the opposite direction, settling trading stations in Southeast Asia with an almost manic energy.

Such vigour, recklessness even, is a characteristic of the young and ambitious, keen to turn their backs on the constrictions of their homeland, to embrace new political and religious ideas and forge a more nourishing existence in new territories far away, even at the risk of hardship and death. Tim Blanning, in The Pursuit of Glory (2008), his masterly study of Europe from the Peace of Westphalia to Waterloo, quotes one such adventurer, John Dunlap, publisher of the Declaration of Independence, who wrote from the newly independent US to his brother-in-law in Ulster in 1785:

People with a family advanced in life find great difficulties in emigration, but the young men of Ireland who wish to be free and happy should leave it and come here as quick as possible. There is no place in the world where a man meets so rich a reward for good conduct and industry as in America.

Curiously, among the great nations of early modern Europe, only the inhabitants of France seemed reluctant to embrace such adventure. There were around 15 people from Britain and Ireland in North America during the 17th century for every French man or woman. As a consequence, as Blanning points out, Britain’s revolution took place in North America at the end of the 18th century and those of Spain in Central and South America during the 19th. In France, by contrast, the energies of its frustrated, alienated and energetic young people were turned on the patrie. 

Read David Andress' piece on the French Revolution in our February issue

Paul Lay is the editor of History Today.