Howard G. Brown: A nation compromises its democratic ideals in an effort to safeguard them. Sound familiar? But it was France
[Howard G. Brown is a professor of history at the State University of New York at Binghamton and the author of Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression From the Terror to Napoleon (University of Virginia Press, 2006).]
Extremist violence threatened liberal democracy, posing grave challenges for a political class riven by systemic corruption and bitter partisanship. Leaders resorted to whatever tactics could help them retain power, regardless of the consequences to the political system. Citizens quickly grew disillusioned by democratic politics, and voter participation declined at each election. The government, fearing that mere policing could not preserve the republic from threats to its security, turned to the army. A prolonged regional insurgency, fueled by a heavy-handed military occupation, grew ever more vicious and bloody. Foreign elements eager to see the regime fail took the opportunity to foster an all-out civil war. At the same time, the government and the media turned the possibility of violence against ordinary people into a pervasive climate of fear. To counter the threat to individual and collective security, the government resorted to a range of exceptional measures that infringed civil liberties and violated the Constitution. In the process, the steadily expanding power of the state was used to consolidate major changes in the social and political order.
While that account may sound familiar today, those events actually occurred more than 200 years ago, during one of the most neglected periods in modern French history — the years of France's first constitutional republic, from 1795 to 1804. What people know about the French Revolution is generally limited to the years 1789 to 1794 — the fall of the Bastille; "liberty, equality, fraternity"; a short-lived constitutional monarchy; the trial and execution of Louis XVI; foreign war against the monarchies of Europe; civil war in the Vendée; and, above all, the Terror of 1793-94, when thousands of supposed counterrevolutionaries were sent to the guillotine. Even better known is the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, the military genius who came to power in 1799, steadily concentrated authority in his person, and emerged as emperor in 1804.
Because it falls between the thrill of revolutionary idealism and the glory of Napoleonic conquest, France's failed effort to establish liberal democracy in the late 1790s has been generally ignored, even by historians. Yet it is the decade between Robespierre's bloody reign of virtue and Napoleon's bloodier reign of military prowess that reveals the true difficulties inherent in trying to preserve the principles of liberal democracy and the rule of law in a republic threatened by extreme violence. It is the nature of France's first constitutional republic — its struggle to reconcile liberty with security and to defend a liberal democratic constitution while at the same time violating it — that deserves our attention today.
It is especially instructive to note parallels between America's growing role since September 11 as the world's policeman and efforts made to establish a liberal democracy in France in the decade after the Terror. Such a comparison draws attention to the cover that the "state of exception" (as Carl Schmitt and Georgio Agamben have termed skirting the rule of law in times of emergency) can provide for consolidating a new political order. Such a comparison should also alert us to the possible hazards of shifting the sources of political legitimacy from popular participation and the rule of law to defense of the homeland and personal safety. The consequence could well be a form of "security state" more characteristic of an authoritarian regime based on national plebiscites than a representative democracy based on the rule of law.
France's fledgling republican government may have been better equipped to bring order to France in the late 1790s than the U.S. government is able to act as the antiterrorist policeman of the new world order. Nonetheless, the disparities are not as great as they may at first appear. France was a vast, populous, and diverse country in the 18th century. Even sensational news took at least four days to spread from Paris to the Pyrenees. France also consisted of highly distinctive regions, whether considered economically, linguistically, or culturally. Once revolutionaries had abolished noble lordships, dispossessed the Roman Catholic Church, and overthrown the monarchy, their attempt to impose the "one and indivisible republic" provoked a combination of foreign war, civil strife, and economic chaos not seen in Europe for 150 years. The trauma of the Terror in 1793-94 and the wave of revenge killings that followed in 1795 left the country in tatters and politicians with few means to stitch it together again....
The American republic is more robust and will not experience a similar fate anytime soon. That is no reason, however, to ignore the threat posed to liberal democracy by repeated recourse to exceptional measures in the name of homeland security. Holding prisoners in legal limbo for years, sending defendants before special military tribunals, conducting warrantless surveillance of phone calls — all actions undertaken without legislative or judicial oversight — are the sort of emergency measures that any democracy has reason to fear. Being oblivious to hypocrisy and history alike entails grave risks; it could well allow a permanent "state of exception" to be used to consolidate a more authoritarian world order at the expense of genuine liberal democracy.
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Ed
Extremist violence threatened liberal democracy, posing grave challenges for a political class riven by systemic corruption and bitter partisanship. Leaders resorted to whatever tactics could help them retain power, regardless of the consequences to the political system. Citizens quickly grew disillusioned by democratic politics, and voter participation declined at each election. The government, fearing that mere policing could not preserve the republic from threats to its security, turned to the army. A prolonged regional insurgency, fueled by a heavy-handed military occupation, grew ever more vicious and bloody. Foreign elements eager to see the regime fail took the opportunity to foster an all-out civil war. At the same time, the government and the media turned the possibility of violence against ordinary people into a pervasive climate of fear. To counter the threat to individual and collective security, the government resorted to a range of exceptional measures that infringed civil liberties and violated the Constitution. In the process, the steadily expanding power of the state was used to consolidate major changes in the social and political order.
While that account may sound familiar today, those events actually occurred more than 200 years ago, during one of the most neglected periods in modern French history — the years of France's first constitutional republic, from 1795 to 1804. What people know about the French Revolution is generally limited to the years 1789 to 1794 — the fall of the Bastille; "liberty, equality, fraternity"; a short-lived constitutional monarchy; the trial and execution of Louis XVI; foreign war against the monarchies of Europe; civil war in the Vendée; and, above all, the Terror of 1793-94, when thousands of supposed counterrevolutionaries were sent to the guillotine. Even better known is the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, the military genius who came to power in 1799, steadily concentrated authority in his person, and emerged as emperor in 1804.
Because it falls between the thrill of revolutionary idealism and the glory of Napoleonic conquest, France's failed effort to establish liberal democracy in the late 1790s has been generally ignored, even by historians. Yet it is the decade between Robespierre's bloody reign of virtue and Napoleon's bloodier reign of military prowess that reveals the true difficulties inherent in trying to preserve the principles of liberal democracy and the rule of law in a republic threatened by extreme violence. It is the nature of France's first constitutional republic — its struggle to reconcile liberty with security and to defend a liberal democratic constitution while at the same time violating it — that deserves our attention today.
It is especially instructive to note parallels between America's growing role since September 11 as the world's policeman and efforts made to establish a liberal democracy in France in the decade after the Terror. Such a comparison draws attention to the cover that the "state of exception" (as Carl Schmitt and Georgio Agamben have termed skirting the rule of law in times of emergency) can provide for consolidating a new political order. Such a comparison should also alert us to the possible hazards of shifting the sources of political legitimacy from popular participation and the rule of law to defense of the homeland and personal safety. The consequence could well be a form of "security state" more characteristic of an authoritarian regime based on national plebiscites than a representative democracy based on the rule of law.
France's fledgling republican government may have been better equipped to bring order to France in the late 1790s than the U.S. government is able to act as the antiterrorist policeman of the new world order. Nonetheless, the disparities are not as great as they may at first appear. France was a vast, populous, and diverse country in the 18th century. Even sensational news took at least four days to spread from Paris to the Pyrenees. France also consisted of highly distinctive regions, whether considered economically, linguistically, or culturally. Once revolutionaries had abolished noble lordships, dispossessed the Roman Catholic Church, and overthrown the monarchy, their attempt to impose the "one and indivisible republic" provoked a combination of foreign war, civil strife, and economic chaos not seen in Europe for 150 years. The trauma of the Terror in 1793-94 and the wave of revenge killings that followed in 1795 left the country in tatters and politicians with few means to stitch it together again....
The American republic is more robust and will not experience a similar fate anytime soon. That is no reason, however, to ignore the threat posed to liberal democracy by repeated recourse to exceptional measures in the name of homeland security. Holding prisoners in legal limbo for years, sending defendants before special military tribunals, conducting warrantless surveillance of phone calls — all actions undertaken without legislative or judicial oversight — are the sort of emergency measures that any democracy has reason to fear. Being oblivious to hypocrisy and history alike entails grave risks; it could well allow a permanent "state of exception" to be used to consolidate a more authoritarian world order at the expense of genuine liberal democracy.