Books by Paul Cheney
Combining the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, Atlantic history, and the history of the... more Combining the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, Atlantic history, and the history of the French Revolution, Paul Cheney explores the political economy of globalization in eighteenth-century France.
The discovery of the New World and the rise of Europe's Atlantic economy brought unprecedented wealth. It also reordered the political balance among European states and threatened age-old social hierarchies within them. In this charged context, the French developed a "science of commerce" that aimed to benefit from this new wealth while containing its revolutionary effects. Montesquieu became a towering authority among reformist economic and political thinkers by developing a politics of fusion intended to reconcile France's aristocratic society and monarchical state with the needs and risks of international commerce. The Seven Years' War proved the weakness of this model, and after this watershed reforms that could guarantee shared prosperity at home and in the colonies remained elusive. Once the Revolution broke out in 1789, the contradictions that attended the growth of France's Atlantic economy helped to bring down the constitutional monarchy.
Drawing upon the writings of philosophes, diplomats, consuls of commerce, and merchants, Cheney rewrites the history of political economy in the Enlightenment era and provides a new interpretation of the relationship between capitalism and the French Revolution.
Papers by Paul Cheney
Modern Intellectual History, 2021
This critical essay explores the work of István Hont. Members of the Cambridge school eschewed th... more This critical essay explores the work of István Hont. Members of the Cambridge school eschewed the term “capitalism” as an anachronistic description of the contexts that informed early modern politico-economic thought, preferring instead the ostensibly more neutral “commercial society.” But Hont's understanding of the latter was nevertheless quite present-minded and politically charged. Hont drove nineteenth- and twentieth-century economic theory back into eighteenth-century models, and his view of the economy that gave rise to them was informed by concerns in the 1980s and 1990s over the competitiveness of advanced capitalist nations in the face of low-cost insurgents such as China.
This essay first explores two contexts that have transformed the way that the international histo... more This essay first explores two contexts that have transformed the way that the international history of the French Revolution has been written over the last thirty years and which have recently provoked so many historians to take a global turn in their research and teaching at the expense of strictly national historiography. First, political relations between France and the Anglo-American world in the 1980s made the older, regnant model of Franco-American sister revolutions, inherited from R. R. Palmer, less plausible; this development sent historians looking for other models that would make the Revolution seem more immediately relevant to students and readers. Second, transformations in the global economy since the 1970s have put globalization on the agenda in a particularly striking manner. These same forces have transformed the economies within academia in ways that have favored teaching and publishing global history. This essay closes with some reflections on the difference between critical and naively enthusiastic approaches to the subject of globalization, and some recommendations on paths for future research on the French Revolution.
numéro spécial de La Révolution française : Cahiers de L'Institut d'histoire de la Révolution fra... more numéro spécial de La Révolution française : Cahiers de L'Institut d'histoire de la Révolution française (co-dirigé avec Manuela Albertone)
Radical History Review, 2013
Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, 2013
William and Mary Quarterly, 2006
Dix Huitième Siècle, 2001
Book Reviews by Paul Cheney
Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2021
H-France Reviews, 2021
Review of Allan Forrest, The Death of the French Atlantic: Trade, War, and Slavery in the Age of ... more Review of Allan Forrest, The Death of the French Atlantic: Trade, War, and Slavery in the Age of Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020
Journal of Modern History 91.1, 2019
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Books by Paul Cheney
The discovery of the New World and the rise of Europe's Atlantic economy brought unprecedented wealth. It also reordered the political balance among European states and threatened age-old social hierarchies within them. In this charged context, the French developed a "science of commerce" that aimed to benefit from this new wealth while containing its revolutionary effects. Montesquieu became a towering authority among reformist economic and political thinkers by developing a politics of fusion intended to reconcile France's aristocratic society and monarchical state with the needs and risks of international commerce. The Seven Years' War proved the weakness of this model, and after this watershed reforms that could guarantee shared prosperity at home and in the colonies remained elusive. Once the Revolution broke out in 1789, the contradictions that attended the growth of France's Atlantic economy helped to bring down the constitutional monarchy.
Drawing upon the writings of philosophes, diplomats, consuls of commerce, and merchants, Cheney rewrites the history of political economy in the Enlightenment era and provides a new interpretation of the relationship between capitalism and the French Revolution.
Papers by Paul Cheney
Book Reviews by Paul Cheney
The discovery of the New World and the rise of Europe's Atlantic economy brought unprecedented wealth. It also reordered the political balance among European states and threatened age-old social hierarchies within them. In this charged context, the French developed a "science of commerce" that aimed to benefit from this new wealth while containing its revolutionary effects. Montesquieu became a towering authority among reformist economic and political thinkers by developing a politics of fusion intended to reconcile France's aristocratic society and monarchical state with the needs and risks of international commerce. The Seven Years' War proved the weakness of this model, and after this watershed reforms that could guarantee shared prosperity at home and in the colonies remained elusive. Once the Revolution broke out in 1789, the contradictions that attended the growth of France's Atlantic economy helped to bring down the constitutional monarchy.
Drawing upon the writings of philosophes, diplomats, consuls of commerce, and merchants, Cheney rewrites the history of political economy in the Enlightenment era and provides a new interpretation of the relationship between capitalism and the French Revolution.