The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848

Israel universalizes the Enlightenment Revolution tying American and French and all of Europe's political revolts from ours to 1848 quoting Jfferson to his 1826 death and Lafayette and American free thinkers and literati as well as French, other Europeans, in their correspondence and publications. The author is so detailed and will give you AHA moments...we did not recognize Haiti until 1862.....Jefferson fearful of domestic slave riots like Haiti and protective of his fellow slaveholders fell from Universal Enlightenment Values extending the American inaction on slavery.Lincoln is quoted in an 1855 letter to conclude this history depressed that America had come under the spell of Know Nothingism which is against the universal value of equality of all humankind! European and Latin revolutions are covered tied to the Enlightenment radical thinking. Read as much of Israel on the Enlightenment as you can, his research and insights are terrific.

Instead of viewing the American Revolution from a purely domestic perspective, Jonathan Israel, in ‘The Expanding Blaze’ chooses instead to focus on the relatively neglected theme of its “social, cultural, and ideological impact on the rest of the world” up to and including the Revolutions of 1848.The charge of relative neglect is justified given that the concept of the ‘Atlantic Revolution’ only emerged with the publication in 1959 of ‘The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800” and because few followed in R. R. Palmer’s footsteps.In doing so, Israel contends that the American Revolution “proved fundamental to the shaping of democratic modernity” insofar as it “commended the demolition” of the three pillars of the ancien regime by its challenges to monarchy, aristocracy and religious authority and by its creation of a new kind of polity “embodying a diametrically opposed social vision built on shared liberty and equal civil rights.”There is obviously much in what Israel says, as the American revolutionaries were often publicly revered by their would-be imitators; the Statue of Liberty, the gift of the French people to the American people, is the most obvious and abiding expression of this sense of indebtedness, which is also manifest in the way in which the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was modelled on the 1776 Declaration of Independence, and not just because Jefferson assisted Lafayette.But Israel goes further, following Henry F. May’s ‘The Enlightenment in America’, in claiming that the American Revolution provided two sets of exemplars for their trans-Atlantic followers. Thus Franklin, Jefferson and Paine – the “architects of the radically reforming American Revolution” - provided inspiration for those who admired the American Revolution in its “universalizing, secularizing, and egalitarian aspects”, whilst Adams, Hamilton, Morris, Jay, and, to a certain extent, Washington - the men associated with defence of the pre-Revolution status quo - provided a similar function for conservative or ‘aristocratic’ republicans.It is true that the impact of the American Revolution was wider ranging geographically and longer lasting than the seventeenth-century English revolutions of 1640-1660 and 1688 because in the meantime Israel's 'enlighteners' predisposed the transatlantic intelligentsia towards embracing radical change. But this also illustrates the fact that transatlantic influence flowed in both directions. As Israel himself states “American ‘moderates’ exalted Locke, the legacy of the Glorious Revolution, and especially British ‘mixed government’ as the proper ground-plan for America and all societies”.In short, Israel’s book effectively regards the ‘cultural turn’ of the late twentieth century as an intellectual cul-de-sac, intelligently expands upon the work of Palmer and May, puts the role of ideas centre stage and successfully breathes life back into the concept of the ‘Atlantic revolution’ or ‘revolutions’.If the book has a fault it lies in Israel’s very emphasis on the ideological. He asserts, for example, that the ideologies directing revolutionary upheaval “far more often mold and exploit than derive from social or economic pressures” so that revolutions “are not shaped by sociability or general attitudes but by organized revolutionary vanguards … as a means of capturing, taking charge of, and interpreting the discontent generated by social and economic pressures”. This is true as far as it goes but it does not take account of all the factors in play.At the risk of sounding schematic, a successful revolution, like the American, has at least three preconditions, namely, the delegitimation of the existing regime; the legitimation of the revolutionary position; and the construction of a force outside the control of the state.Intellectuals are clearly crucial to the first two of these processes (which are effectively mirror images of one another) but anyone wishing to be more than an armchair revolutionary must then get their hands dirty, although constructing a force outside the control of the state is made immeasurably easier if the would-be revolutionary can exploit the very international dimension to which Israel draws so much attention. That is to say, this becomes much more straightforward if one can enlist practical assistance from some foreign power or powers. In the case of the Bolshevik revolution that help was provided by Germany (funding and transporting Lenin and helping to delegitimize the existing regime on the battlefield). In the case of the American Revolution the rebels received invaluable aid from the French, Dutch and Spanish.So, yes, Israel sheds much new light on the way in which the American Revolution provided the ideological underpinning for a whole host of revolutionary movements but in the final analysis the reason why the Irish revolutionaries failed and the Greek revolutionaries succeeded lies not in the ideological sphere but in the fact that French intervention in the former case proved less effective than British intervention in the latter. A book which discusses Greek Independence without discussing the Battle of Navarino Bay is one that is missing a trick, however commendable it may be in other respects.

As is often true of my reviewing efforts, I read this book in combination with another book, R.R. Palmer's The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, also published by Princeton University Press.In Setting the World Ablaze, John Ferling invoked metaphors of pyrotechnics when discussing the American War of Independence and they are indeed appropriate figures of speech. The Boston Massacre on December 16, 1773, served as the "spark" and various real or perceived grievances served as "kindling." Over time, more than 200,000 lives and countless acres of property were consumed or severely damaged. The "firestorm of destruction" extended from New England through Pennsylvania to East Florida in the south, and, to Saint Louis in what was then referred to as Upper Spanish Louisiana in the west.Derek Beck makes equally effective use of these and other metaphors in his latest book, Igniting the Revolution, by implication and explication as he examines a two-year period that evolves from the Boston Massacre to a cluster of events in the British  Expedition to Lexington on April 19, 1775.Jonathan Israel also makes brilliant use of pyrotechnical metaphors when tracing the process by which thirteen colonies eventually achieved their independence from what was then the most powerful nation in the western hemisphere.  His scope, however, seems wider than Ferling's and Beck's as well as Rick Atkins' in The British Are Coming. The Age of Revolution was by no means limited to Colonial America. This is clearly indicated by the subtitle of The Expanding Blaze: "How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848." That is why I read his book in combination with Palmer's.Consider these lines that Israel cites from one of Philip Freneau's poems (dated March 1790):"From that bright spark which first illumed these lands,See Europe kindling, as the blaze expands,Each gloomy tyrant, sworn to chain the mind,Presumes no more to trample on mankind:Even pitent Louis trembles on his throne,The generous prince who made our cause his own,..."Freneau correctly suggests much wider and deeper impact -- and significance -- of events in the colonies that, even today, few people now realize.Now consider very carefully these observations, shared in his brilliant Introduction: "Challenging the three main pillars of the Old World ancien régime -- monarchy, aristocracy, and religious authority -- the Revolution altered, though not without massive resistance, the character of the religious authority and ecclesiastical involvement in politics, law and institutions,, and weakened, even if it did overthrow, the principle of 'aristocracy.' Its political and institutional innovations grounded a wholly new kind of republic embodying a diametrically opposed social vision built on shared liberty and equal rights." Except, of course, for almost all of those who were not white European males.These are among the subjects of greatest interest to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Israel's coverage.o The origins of what he characterizes as "democratic modernity"o Major early indicators of what led to the Declaration of Independenceo The defining characteristics of what Israel characterizes as "revolutionary constitutionalism"o Whether pr not Benjamin Franklin was an "American icon"o The issues associated with Black "emancipation"o The issues associated with "expropriation" of Native Americanso The issues associated with "dispossession" of Whiteso What Israel characterizes as "Canada: An Ideological conflict"o John Adams' "American Revolution"o Thomas Jefferson's "French Revolution"o The merging "party system" in the 1790so The significance of the Haitian Revolutiono The unique significance of Napoleon, Spain, and the Americas": 1808-1815o The Revolution of 1848: Republicanism versus Socialismo Currents and cross-currents in America's foreign relations (1848-1852)Let's return to Israel's Introduction: "The American Revolution, then, had a dual trajectory and in this respect formed part of a wider transatlantic revolutionary sequence, a series of revolutions in France, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Haiti, Poland, Spain, Gredece, and Spanish America...The endeavors of the Founding Fathers and their followers abroad prove the deep interaction of the American Revolution and its principles with the other revolutions, substantiating the Revolution's global role less as directly intervening force than inspirational motor, the primary model, for universal change"The Expanding Blaze truly is a brilliant examination of what Jonathan Israel so aptly characterizes as "the crucible of demographic modernity."Bravo!

Has a clear thesis, on the role of ideas in revolutions, as opposed to social or economic conditions. A bit lacking in philosophy for my taste - how DID Jefferson's writings change from 1787 to 1800, for example - but still a great book.A straight read.