Abstract
This paper examines the effects and the legacy of the American Revolution in France from a number of angles, from the late-eighteenth century to the present day: these include the impact of the American Revolution on the French Revolution itself; its place in French political debate; and its gradual decline in French memory and historiography after the French Revolution itself was no longer central to political life. The paradoxical conclusion of the paper is that, although the American Revolution did inaugurate the Age of Revolution, it only briefly served as a major common reference for French revolutionaries and their political heirs; nor was it recognized as significant by later French historians or deemed worthy of research by them. Not only was the American Revolution considered a minor event, it was also constantly instrumentalized in French political and historiographical debates on the true meaning of the French Revolution. The only group currently maintaining a vivid interest in the American Revolution, the French Sons of the American Revolution, focus in fact on the War of Independence in which their forbears fought alongside the Patriots. However, examining them in a transatlantic perspective, most specifically with an emphasis on slavery (which had not been done by previous Atlantic scholars), would be a way to bring together research on the two revolutions and move beyond past controversies.
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This is the case in particular of David Barry Gaspar, and David Patrick Geggus whose most recent publications on the subject include Gaspar and Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time. The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997)
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© 2006 Simon P. Newman
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Rossignol, MJ. (2006). The American Revolution in France: Under the Shadow of the French Revolution. In: Newman, S.P. (eds) Europe’s American Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288454_3
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