Conspiracy in the French Revolution

Conspiracy in the French Revolution
Author: Peter R. Campbell
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2024-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 152618382X

Conspiratorial views of events abound even in our modern, rational world. Often such theories serve to explain the inexplicable. Sometimes they are developed for motives of political expediency: it is simpler to see political opponents as conspirators and terrorists, putting them into one convenient basket, than to seek to understand and disentangle the complex motivations of opponents. So it is not surprising to see that just when the French Revolution was creating the modern political world, a constant obsession with conspiracies lay at the heart of the revolutionary conception of politics. The book considers the nature and development of the conspiracy obsession from the end of the old regime to the Directory. Chapters focus on conspiracy and fears of conspiracy in the old regime; in the Constituent Assembly; by the king and Marie Antoinette; amongst the people of Paris; on attitudes towards the peasantry and conspiracy; on Jacobin politics of the Year II and the ‘foreign plot’; on counter-revolutionary plots and imaginary plots; on Babeuf and the ‘conspiracy of equals’; and finally on fear of conspiracy as an intellectual impasse in the revolutionary mentality. Inspired by recent debates, this book is a comprehensive survey of the nature of conspiracy in the French Revolution, with each chapter written by a leading historian on the question. Each chapter is an original contribution to the topic, written however to include the wider issues for the area concerned. There is an emphasis throughout on clarity and accessibility, making the volume suitable for a wide readership as well as undergraduates and advanced researchers

The Terror of Natural Right

The Terror of Natural Right
Author: Dan Edelstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2009-10-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226184404

Natural right—the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are “natural” in origin—is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom. In The Terror of Natural Right, Dan Edelstein argues that the revolutionaries used the natural right concept of the “enemy of the human race”—an individual who has transgressed the laws of nature and must be executed without judicial formalities—to authorize three-quarters of the deaths during the Terror. Edelstein further contends that the Jacobins shared a political philosophy that he calls “natural republicanism,” which assumed that the natural state of society was a republic and that natural right provided its only acceptable laws. Ultimately, he proves that what we call the Terror was in fact only one facet of the republican theory that prevailed from Louis’s trial until the fall of Robespierre. A highly original work of historical analysis, political theory, literary criticism, and intellectual history, The Terror of Natural Right challenges prevailing assumptions of the Terror to offer a new perspective on the Revolutionary period.

The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution

The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution
Author: Timothy Tackett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2015-02-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674425189

Between 1793 and 1794, thousands of French citizens were imprisoned and hundreds sent to the guillotine by a powerful dictatorship that claimed to be acting in the public interest. Only a few years earlier, revolutionaries had proclaimed a new era of tolerance, equal justice, and human rights. How and why did the French Revolution’s lofty ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity descend into violence and terror? “By attending to the role of emotions in propelling the Terror, Tackett steers a more nuanced course than many previous historians have managed...Imagined terrors, as...Tackett very usefully reminds us, can have even more political potency than real ones.” —David A. Bell, The Atlantic “[Tackett] analyzes the mentalité of those who became ‘terrorists’ in 18th-century France...In emphasizing weakness and uncertainty instead of fanatical strength as the driving force behind the Terror...Tackett...contributes to an important realignment in the study of French history.” —Ruth Scurr, The Spectator “[A] boldly conceived and important book...This is a thought-provoking book that makes a major contribution to our understanding of terror and political intolerance, and also to the history of emotions more generally. It helps expose the complexity of a revolution that cannot be adequately understood in terms of principles alone.” —Alan Forrest, Times Literary Supplement

The Terror Conspiracy

The Terror Conspiracy
Author: Jim Marrs
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2006-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1934708364

Jim Marrs presents the official government pronouncement on 9/11 as an obvious conspiracy. The only question is whose conspiracy it was. According to the government, the conspiracy involved about nineteen suicidal Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists, their hearts full of hatred for American freedom and democracy, who hijacked four airliners, crashing two into the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon, near Washington, DC. The fourth airliner reportedly crashed in western Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to overcome the hijackers. To add insult to injury, this whole incredible Mission Impossible operation, which defeated a forty-billion-dollar defense system, was under the total control of a devout Muslim cleric using a computer while hiding in a cave in Afghanistan. Primarily using mainstream media and government reports, Marrs has crafted the definitive journalistic account exposing the likely complicity of the Bush administration in the 9/11 attacks, providing a history of the overt and covert causes of the events. However, his analysis goes far beyond 9/11, enabling us to understand the motivation behind American foreign policy, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as primary examples of the US government’s secret agenda.

The Terror Conspiracy Revisited

The Terror Conspiracy Revisited
Author: Jim Marrs
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
Total Pages: 787
Release: 2011-09-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1934708747

The New York Times bestselling journalist and leading conspiracy writer presents his latest findings on the truth behind the 9/11 terror attacks. The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 ushered the United States into an era of war across the Middle East and government surveillance at home. In The Terror Conspiracy Revisited, Jim Marrs updates his authoritative dissection of the official story of 9/11. This revised edition is packed with explosive material including: The revelations of former New Jersey attorney General John Farmer, who served as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission: "At some level of the government, at some point in time. . .there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened." Commission cochairman Thomas Kean's suspicion of deceit: "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us. It was just so far from the truth." The conclusion of European scientists that there was nanothermite in the World Trade Center debris, a high explosive generally available only through the US military. The investigation by Pilots For 9/11 Truth and their conclusion that hijackers could not have accessed the cockpit of Flight 77. One thing we know to be true is that the full truth about the September 11th attacks has not yet been presented to the American public. Jim Marrs thoroughly dismantles the credibility of the US government's narrative and leaves the reader with some unsavory but indisputable conclusionsesented to the American public. Jim Marrs thoroughly dismantles the credibility of the US government's narrative and leaves the reader with some unsavory but indisputable conclusions.

White Terror

White Terror
Author: Allen W. Trelease
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 614
Release: 2023-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807180246

Allen W. Trelease’s White Terror, originally published in 1971, was the first scholarly history of the Ku Klux Klan in the South during Reconstruction. With its research rooted in primary sources, it remains among the most comprehensive treatments of the subject. In addition to the Klan, Trelease discusses other night-riding groups, including the Ghouls, the White Brotherhood, and the Knights of the White Camellia. He treats the entire South state by state, details the close link between the Klan and the Democratic party, and recounts Republican efforts to resist the Klan. Winner of the Charles S. Sydnor Award from the Southern Historical Association

500 Days

500 Days
Author: Kurt Eichenwald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 617
Release: 2012-09-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1451674139

Kurt Eichenwald—New York Times bestselling author of Conspiracy of Fools and The Informant— recounts the first 500 days after 9/11 in a comprehensive, compelling page-turner as gripping as any thriller. In 500 Days, master chronicler Kurt Eichenwald lays bare the harrowing decisions, deceptions, and delusions of the eighteen months that changed the world forever, as leaders raced to protect their citizens in the wake of 9/11. Eichenwald’s gripping, immediate style and trueto- life dialogue puts readers at the heart of these historic events, from the Oval Office to Number 10 Downing Street, from Guantanamo Bay to the depths of CIA headquarters, from the al-Qaeda training camps to the torture chambers of Egypt and Syria. He reveals previously undisclosed information from the terror wars, including never before reported details about warrantless wiretapping, the anthrax attacks and investigations, and conflicts between Washington and London. With his signature fast-paced narrative style, Eichenwald— whose book, The Informant, was called “one of the best nonfiction books of the decade” by The New York Times Book Review—exposes a world of secrets and lies that has remained hidden for far too long.