Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions by Newman Simon P.; Onuf Peter S.;

Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions by Newman Simon P.; Onuf Peter S.;

Author:Newman, Simon P.; Onuf, Peter S.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2013-04-19T04:00:00+00:00


The Troubled Reception of Thomas Paine in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia

THOMAS MUNCK

HISTORIANS OF IDEAS, and historians of the Enlightenment, have long since recognized the initial impact of Thomas Paine in France, pointing to his multiple election as deputy to the Convention parliament in 1792 as evidence of the extent to which his name and reputation had become well established in France. But we have not had such full accounts of his political role from the perspective of his fellow participants in the new French Republic, nor explanations of why his influence waned so rapidly in 1793. Equally, we lack understanding of why he had little impact in the German-speaking world, and virtually no impact at all elsewhere in continental Europe. The failure of his Rights of Man, in this respect, is particularly surprising, given that much of what he says might seem relevant to political life and social reform in the monarchies of continental Europe. While publication of his The Age of Reason may help to account for the reaction against Paine, especially in the Anglophone world, in the mid–1790s it cannot explain his earlier dwindling influence in France itself, nor the failure of his broader republican arguments to become integrated into the radical political traditions of other parts of Europe.

In seeking a fuller explanation of his uneven reception, we need to keep several obvious but fundamental points in mind. First, we should bear in mind that the deceptively expansive Anglophone book market, first defined by the London–Dublin–Edinburgh triangle, and then extended across the Atlantic, was not particularly well connected to continental Europe until relatively late in the eighteenth century. Since English was not the preferred language of international communication, English texts tended to reach a French audience quite quickly, by means of translation or adaptation, but often remained inaccessible in other language communities for much longer. Before the mid-eighteenth century, translation into German sometimes happened in the first instance via French (as the obvious international language of Enlightenment Europe), and translation into other European languages was often equally circuitous. Although knowledge of English in central Europe improved substantially after mid-century, and the Germans in particular became interested in the work of the Scottish writers, they were more conservative than the French in their choice of reading. This is not the place to discuss eighteenth-century theories and overall patterns of translation, nor to attempt to map in detail precisely how the Enlightenment became accessible to those broader layers of readers who did not have ready access to French or German, let alone to English.1 It is worth noting that despite such language barriers, Enlightenment thinking traveled quite well, and a growing number of readers across at least northwestern and northern Europe gained access to a widening range of ideas from outside their own language community.2 At the same time, we need to keep in mind that the impact of a particular text depended on a great variety of external factors, and that outside its own language area a



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