Charles Walton

Historical debate over the political clubs of the French Revolution over the past two centuries has turned on the question of whether factionalism grew out of their democratic principles or from external circumstances. This chapter suggests that neither ideology nor circumstances can fully account for this radicalization. Instead, the conditions of a ‘weak state’ must be addressed. When authorities were unable or unwilling to implement legislation or to respond to demands coming from society, the clubs often intervened, militating for action to be taken. Tax collection and the crisis of subsistence constituted two crucial issues that the state failed to managed. The clubs, which were divided on these issues, found themselves debating them in a context in which no legal limits on slander (another state weakness) existed. Unchecked calumny poisoned intra and inter-club relations and contributed to factionalism.

ABSTRACT In his study on the French Revolutionary theatre, the author discusses the controver-sies and conflicts which surfaced in 1789 and 1790 over performances of Marie-Joseph Chénier's play 'Charles IX ou la Saint-Barthélemy'. The tragedy depicts the court intrigues ...

ABSTRACT In his study on the French Revolutionary theatre, the author discusses the controver-sies and conflicts which surfaced in 1789 and 1790 over performances of Marie-Joseph Chénier's play 'Charles IX ou la Saint-Barthélemy'. The tragedy depicts the court intrigues ...

This article traces the concept of reciprocity from its emergence in French philosophy during the Enlightenment to its recent growth in the humanities and social sciences. After charting the term’s accelerated use in French and English in the modern period, the article shows how its meaning has continually wavered between exchange equivalence (barter) and generosity and obligation (the gift, the Golden Rule). During the Enlightenment, these meanings converged in efforts to naturalize commerce and justify liberal economic reforms. A free-market society, it was argued, would be fair and bountiful. Upon the failure of such reforms in the early French Revolution, reciprocity and its new synonym “fraternity” became detached from economic liberalism. As capitalism became increasingly associated with wealth inequality in the nineteenth century, reciprocity became the watchword of capitalism’s critics, who tried to conceptualize social bonds in terms other than those offered by Homo economi...

Despite the rise of ‘human rights’ histories in recent decades, the subset of social rights has been largely neglected. To the degree that social rights—to subsistence, work and education—are acknowledged, they tend to be treated as ‘second-generation rights’—as midtwentieth-century additions to the corpus of civil and political rights stretching back to the eighteenth century. This article shows that debates over social rights also stretch back to that period. The author discusses why historians of the French Revolution have largely neglected social rights. One reason has to do with post-Cold War conceptions of human rights, which stress their liberal rather than socio-economic content. Another has to do with the recent tendency to subsume the ‘social’ within late eighteenth-century liberal political economy. In their effort to recast revolutionaries as ‘social liberals’—as espousing free markets and social welfare—historians have obscured deep tensions over social rights and the obligation, or ‘duty’, to finance them.

This essay examines how the thesis of 'circumstances' in studies of the French Revolution has often been invoked to challenge the 'determinism' of theory-based  interpretations and metanarratives of the event. Yet, more recent invocations of 'circumstances', when combined with emotions-history, run the risk of lapsing into a kind of determinism themselves. They also run the risk of depleting accounts of the Revolution of the ethical agency of historical actors. Once the Revolution becomes the story of unforeseen circumstances, unintended consequences and unwilled emotions, it becomes difficult to discern any connection between ethical choices and historical consequences. How might the two be reconnected in historical analyses?

This essay traces the concept of reciprocity from its emergence in the Enlightenment to its recent growth in the social sciences. After charting the term’s accelerated use in French and English in the modern period, the author shows how its meaning has continually wavered between exchange equivalence (barter) and generosity/obligation (the gift, the Golden Rule). During the Enlightenment, these meanings converged in efforts to naturalize commerce and justify liberal-economic reforms. A free-market society, it was argued, would be fair and bountiful. Upon the failure of such reforms in the early French Revolution, reciprocity and its synonym “fraternity” became detached from economic liberalism. As capitalism became increasingly associated with profit and wealth inequality in the nineteenth century, reciprocity became the watchword of capitalism’s critics, who tried to conceptualize social bonds in terms other than those offered by homo œconomicus.

This essay examines the motivations and political implications of patriotic giving in the French Revolution. It shows how the breakdown of financial and political trust in 1789 generated the civic impulse to give. An alternative to compulsory taxes, which the state was too weak to collect effectively, patriotic giving would, it was hoped, mitigate both financial and subsistence crises while renewing social bonds. The voluntary status of giving, however, led to intense moral scrutiny. Initially a sign of civic virtue, patriotic giving eventually became a requirement for voting in 1790. During the Terror, it signaled one’s loyalty to the Revolution.

This pioneering volume explores the long-neglected history of social rights, from the Middle Ages to the present. It debunks the myth that social rights are ‘second-generation rights’ that appeared after the Second World War as additions to a rights corpus stretching back to the Enlightenment. Not only do social rights extend that far back; they arguably predate the Enlightenment. In tracing their long history across various global contexts, this volume reveals how debates over social rights have often turned on deeper struggles over social obligation – over determining who owes what to whom, morally and legally. In the modern period, these struggles have been intertwined with questions of freedom, democracy, equality and dignity. Many factors have shaped the history of social rights, from class, gender and race to religion, empire and capitalism. With incomparable chronological depth, geographical breadth and conceptual nuance, Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History sets an agenda for future histories of human rights.

En 1789, la Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen proclame la liberté d’expression, de religion et d’opinion. Les révolutionnaires abolissent la censure, tandis que la France paraît s’engager dans le chemin du pluralisme religieux et des libertés civiles. Quatre ans plus tard, le pays entre dans une période de terreur politique. Des milliers de personnes sont arrêtées et exécutées pour leurs opinions, leurs écrits ou leurs paroles jugés injurieux au nouveau régime.
  Charles Walton retrace ici les origines, les mécanismes et les enjeux de cette tragédie. Remontant dans l’Ancien Régime, il montre qu’alors même que les premiers avocats de la liberté de la presse songent à abolir la censure avant publication, l’opinion continue de penser qu’un discours calomnieux constitue un crime majeur, voire une trahison s’il porte atteinte à l’honneur de l’autorité souveraine ou aux valeurs collectives sacralisées, comme la religion ou l’esprit public. Après 1789, avec la disparition des institutions chargées de réglementer l’honneur et la moralité, la calomnie se répand, devient une arme politique et une source de préoccupation grandissante. Les luttes pour instituer des limites légales et morales s’intensifient. En 1793 et 1794, elles mènent à l’exécution de « calomniateurs », mais aussi à un travail zélé de « régénération » des moeurs. Signe de la recomposition permanente d’un débat autour de la notion d’opinion policée, à la fois synonyme de police et de civilisation de l’expression publique.
  Au terme de cette analyse de la manière dont les révolutionnaires ont revisité l’héritage culturel et politique de l’Ancien Régime, Charles Walton éclaire de manière originale, non seulement la Révolution française et les origines de la Terreur, mais aussi les paradoxes historiques impliqués par la mise en oeuvre de la liberté d’expression.

The famous clash between Edmund Burke and Tom Paine over the Enlightenment’s “evil” or “liberating” potential in the French Revolution finds present-day parallels in the battle between those who see the Enlightenment at the origins of modernity’s many ills, such as imperialism, racism, misogyny, and totalitarianism, and those who see it as having forged an age of democracy, human rights, and freedom. The essays collected by Charles Walton in Into Print paint a more complicated picture. By focusing on print culture—the production, circulation, and reception of Enlightenment thought—they show how the Enlightenment was shaped through practice and reshaped over time.

These essays expand upon an approach to the study of the Enlightenment pioneered four decades ago: the social history of ideas. The contributors to Into Print examine how writers, printers, booksellers, regulators, police, readers, rumormongers, policy makers, diplomats, and sovereigns all struggled over that broad range of ideas and values that we now associate with the Enlightenment. They reveal the financial and fiscal stakes of the Enlightenment print industry and, in turn, how Enlightenment ideas shaped that industry during an age of expanding readership. They probe the limits of Enlightenment universalism, showing how demands for religious tolerance clashed with the demands of science and nationalism. They examine the transnational flow of Enlightenment ideas and opinions, exploring its domestic and diplomatic implications. Finally, they show how the culture of the Enlightenment figured in the outbreak and course of the French Revolution.

Aside from the editor, the contributors are David A. Bell, Roger Chartier, Tabetha Ewing, Jeffrey Freedman, Carla Hesse, Thomas M. Luckett, Sarah Maza, Renato Pasta, Thierry Rigogne, Leonard N. Rosenband, Shanti Singham, and Will Slauter.

In the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, French revolutionaries proclaimed the freedom of speech, religion, and opinion. Censorship was abolished, and France appeared to be on a path toward tolerance, pluralism, and civil liberties. A mere four years later, the country descended into a period of political terror, as thousands were arrested, tried, and executed for crimes of expression and opinion. 
In <I>Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution<$>, Charles Walton traces the origins of this reversal back to the Old Regime. He shows that while early advocates of press freedom sought to abolish pre-publication censorship, the majority still firmly believed that injurious speech–or calumny–constituted a crime, even treason if it attacked the honor of sovereign authority or sacred collective values, such as religion and civic spirit. 
With the collapse of institutions responsible for regulating speech, honor and morality in 1789, calumny proliferated, as did obsessions with it. Drawing on wide-ranging sources, from National Assembly debates to local police archives, Walton shows how struggles to set legal and moral limits on free speech led to the radicalization of politics, and eventually to the brutal liquidation of “calumniators” and fanatical efforts to rebuild society’s moral foundation during the Terror of 1793-1794.
With its emphasis on how revolutionaries drew upon cultural and political legacies of the Old Regime, this study represents a vital contribution to the understanding of [sheds new light on] the origins of the Terror and the French Revolution, as well as the history of free expression.

This pioneering volume explores the long-neglected history of social rights, from the Middle Ages to the present. It debunks the myth that social rights are ‘second-generation rights’ that appeared after the Second World War as additions to a rights corpus stretching back to the Enlightenment. Not only do social rights extend that far back; they arguably predate the Enlightenment. In tracing their long history across various global contexts, this volume reveals how debates over social rights have often turned on deeper struggles over social obligation – over determining who owes what to whom, morally and legally. In the modern period, these struggles have been intertwined with questions of freedom, democracy, equality and dignity. Many factors have shaped the history of social rights, from class, gender and race to religion, empire and capitalism. With incomparable chronological depth, geographical breadth and conceptual nuance, Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History sets an agenda for future histories of human rights.