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Feudalism, venality, and revolution is about the political and social order revealed by the monarchy’s most ambitious effort to reform its institutions, the introduction of participatory assemblies at all levels of the government. It should draw the attention of anyone interested in the sort of social and political conditions that predisposed people to make the French Revolution. In particular, according to Alexis de Tocqueville’s influential work on the Old Regime and the French Revolution, royal centralization had so weakened the feudal power of the nobles that their remaining privileges became glaringly intolerable to commoners. Feudalism, venality, and revolution challenges this theory by showing that when Louis XVI convened assemblies of landowners in the late 1770s and 1780s to discuss policies needed to resolve the budgetary crisis, he faced widespread opposition from lords and office holders. These elites regarded the assemblies as a challenge to their hereditary power over commoners. The monarchy incorporated an administration of seigneurial jurisdictions and venal offices. Lordships and offices upheld inequality on behalf of the nobility and bred the discontent evident in the French Revolution. These findings will alter the way scholars think about the Old Regime society and state and should therefore find a large market among graduate students and professors of European history.
Ch a pter 1 REVOLUTION to combat divorce.” At least, that’s what a blogger at Dose Nation said we were doing when we first started writing about the chemical enhancement of love and relationships. The blogger was referring to an interview we’d done with The Atlantic, where we argued that certain psychoactive substances, including MDMA—the key ingredient in the party drug Ecstasy—might help some couples improve their connection if used in the right way. The truth is, we were not promoting the use of MDM A outright. We were calling for research into this
10 Aestheticising revolution Allan Antliff War is a State activity which does not characterize a transitory and circumscribed period of its action but has been the very essence of its structure for as long as we know during the whole course of exploitation. Alfredo Bonanno1 In August 1914, America’s best-known English-language anarchist journal, Mother Earth, responded to the outbreak of the First World War with a cover illustration by the modernist artist Man Ray. ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Government’ were depicted as two heads of the same beast ripping ‘humanity
10 Parallel revolutions: seventeenth-century England and eighteenth-century France Introduction The French revolutionaries were keen to demonstrate the epoch-changing nature of the events in which they were involved. It was they who invented the term ancien régime, in order to distinguish the period before 1789 from that which followed. Similarly, their attempts to draft a new constitution, to change the dating system and calendar, and to rationalise weights and measures were all designed to reflect the fact that the events of 1789 had ushered in a new era
predictably massive) penis breaks out of his trousers at a genteel tea party and erotic chaos ensues: ‘Round and round I went, faster and faster, shoving in and out, fucking the entire company one by one.’ 3 Akbar liked to see himself as ‘the Groucho Marx of erotica’. 4 Girodias viewed the New York Olympia Press as a venture of the sexual revolution, which made clear the role of his earlier work in the heritage of that revolution. As he wrote in 1970 in the midst of his brief New York undertaking, ‘Our primary
revolution’, no less. The divergence in these views proceeds from different understandings of the nature of Carolingian society and government. If one thinks of that government as relatively centralized and as one that maintained order through effective public institutions, then, logically, the crumbling of the centre would lead to the demise of the public and the rise of private power and institutions. The weaker in society would fall into the grasp of warlords, and near anarchy would follow. This, essentially, is the view of the ‘feudal revolution’ around the
Based on award-winning research, Love and Revolution brings classical and contemporary anarchist thought into a mutually beneficial dialogue with a global cross-section of ecological, anti-capitalist, feminist and anti-racist activists – discussing real-life examples of the loving-caring relations that underpin many contemporary struggles. Such a (r)evolutionary love is discovered to be a common embodied experience among the activists contributing to this collective vision, manifested as a radical solidarity, as political direct action, as long-term processes of struggle, and as a deeply relational more-than-human ethics. The theory developed in this book is brought to life through the voices of Tom at the G20 protests in Toronto, Maria and her permaculture community in Mexico, Hassan on the streets in Syria, Angelo and his comrades occupying squares in Brazil, Dembe and his affinity group in Kampala, and many more. Love and Revolution provides an essential resource for all those interested in building a free society grounded in solidarity and care, and offers a timely contribution to contemporary movement discourse.
Seventeenth-century England saw the Puritan upheaval of the 1640s and 1650s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. These crises often provoked colonial reaction, indirectly by bringing forth new ideas about government. The colonies' existence was a testament to accumulated capital and population and to a widespread desire to employ both for high and mundane ends. The growth of population and production, the rise of new and the decline of old trades were important features of 17th-century American and English history. This book presents a study that brings attention back to a century when the word imperialism had not even been coined, let alone acquired the wealth of meanings it has now. The study covers the North American and West Indian colonies as well as England. Research on American sources concentrated on the main settlements of Massachusetts, Virginia, Barbados and Jamaica, their public records, printed and manuscript correspondence and local and county records. Lesser colonies such as New York, Carolina and the New England fringe settlements they have their own stories to tell. The study firstly rests on the proposition that England's empire was shaped by the course of English politics. Secondly, it argues that although imperial history was marked by tension between colonial resistance and English authority. Finally, the broad view is taken of the politics of empire aims to establish a general framework for understanding seventeenth-century colonial history. Attention has also been paid to the political writings and the "non-colonial" activities of governments and politicians.
6 The road to revolution: Russia, 1916–17 This war is the crucifixion of the youth of the world.1 Before 1916, there were relatively few British women working in Russia, certainly away from the major cities. Florence Farmborough’s involvement as a ‘sister of mercy’ from as early as 1915 was quite unusual and her active work at the front particularly so. Mary Britnieva, as an Anglo-Russian, was in a slightly different position, but both were long-term residents of the country. Whereas Serbia had been only too pleased to welcome all the various British hospital
MUP FINAL PROOF – <STAGE>, 08/01/2013, SPi 7 Fergus Campbell: Land and Revolution revisited The book Land and Revolution examines the development of the land question, and its relationship to the evolution of nationalist politics, in Ireland between the fall of Parnell in 1891 and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921.1 The book tells the story of nationalist politics and radical agrarian activity in the west of Ireland largely through a detailed case study of east Galway between the early 1890s and 1921. Although other case studies are introduced from