Sister republics : the origins of French and American republicanism

Exploring the backgrounds of the American and French revolutions, Higonnet finds that dominant American ideology welded together strands of individualist and communitarian thought under an umbrella of virtue, while most Frenchmen, by contrast, were still suspicious of economic individualism. Whereas in America both the rights of the individual and the interests of the community were protected in a pluralistic Federal system, in France these two forces remained at loggerheads. This resulted in politics of consensus in America and generated political conflict in France. ISBN 0-674-80982-3: $27.50. Content INTRODUCTION: Republicanism in France and America 1. Forced Community and Transcendental Individualism in America's First Colonies 2. The Decay of Traditionalist Corporatism in Seventeenth-Century France 3. An Ideology of Virtue in Eighteenth-Century America 4. Possessive Individualism and Universalist Illusion in Prerevolutionary France 5. Public Good and Transcendental Self in the American Revolution 6 Possessive Individualism or Determining Community in the French Revolution EPILOGUE: The Political and Social Effects of French and American Republicanism Notes Selected Bibliography Index Notes Selected Bibliography Name Index Subject Index Higonnet Patrice L.-R. : Patrice Higonnet is Robert Walton Goelet Professor of French History, Harvard University. Patrice Higonnet. Includes Indexes. Bibliography: P. [291]-308.