Jacobinism

Vollständiger bibliographischer Hinweis:
„Erregung an der Erziehung. Sade und die Jakobiner“, in: Bettine Menke, Thomas Glaser (Hgg.), Experimentalanordnungen der Bildung. Exteriorität – Theatralität – Literarizität. München: Fink 2014, S. 89-109
Abstract:
Sowohl Michel Le Peletiers Entwurf eines Plan d’éducation nationale als auch
die fiktive Broschüre innerhalb des Dialogs des Marquis de Sade La Philosophie dans le boudoir ou Les Instituteurs immoraux „Francais, encore un effort si vous voulez être républicains“ streben an, die Revolution zu radikalisieren. Doch während Le Peletiers posthum (Sommer 1793) publik gemachter Entwurf einem künftigen Dekret über das Bildungswesen dienen soll und sich damit eindeutig einer Logik der Institution, das heißt des Gründungsakts und der Fortdauer einschreibt, verweigert sich der 1795 veröffentlichte Sade’sche Dialog dieser Logik vehement. Gerade die Sade’sche Haltung zur Institutionalität macht die Schrift in der politischen Landschaft der Revolution einzigartig. Sades Beitrag zur Französischen Revolution als ‚Erneuerung der Menschheit‘ besteht weder nur in der Einführung einer konsequenten Unsittsamkeit, noch lediglich in kühnen, radikaldemokratischen Positionen zur Todesstrafe, zum Insurrektionsrecht und zur Volkssouveränität. Vielmehr wird hier die Arbeitshypothese aufgestellt, wonach Sades philosophischer Dialog die jakobinische, von der Aufklärung geschulte Programmatik mit ihrer eigenen Inkonsequenz konfrontiert: Wenn Sade sich besonders heftig darüber empört, dass unter der Jakobinerherrschaft nicht dem Atheismus, sondern dem Être suprême Feiern gegeben werden, dann aus der pauschalen Überzeugung heraus, dass die Umsetzung einer demokratischen Praxis ein Zusammenspiel der Vernunft und der Sinne erforderlich macht, das den vollen Einsatz der Körper verlangt.

Hervé Leuwers, Camille et Lucile Desmoulins. Un rêve de république, Paris, Fayard, 2018, 456 pages.
Sortie le 24 janvier 2018
Présentation et extraits sur le site de l'éditeur :
http://www.fayard.fr/camille-et-lucile-desmoulins-9782213693736

As a part of a broader investigation on political sociability in the first Cisalpine Republic (1797–99), the essay reconstructs the organization of the constitutional circles, patriotic societies which were promoted by some of the leading exponents of the Italian republican movement, and formed a network over the whole Cisalpine territory. By analyzing the different statutory models and their circulation, the essay outlines the characters of the new democratic and politicized sociability, and delineates the fundamental part played by the circles within the patriots’ pedagogic project. The debate on the circles’ statutes, which focuses principally on three topics (the role of the moderators in directing the circles’ activities, the political instruction of the people, and the part which Catholicism and priests play in republican pedagogy), can shed new light on the actual nature and the distinctive features of the Italian patriotic movement.

This article aims to analyze the Reign of Terror,
most radical period of French Revolution. In the
pages that follow, we will try to understand the process
that allowed the positive perception of “Terror”
created by the revolutionaries. This article was built
through the comprehensive reading of the classic
literature of the orthodox interpretation of the
French Revolution, Lefebvre and Soboul, and some
Maximilien Robespierre speeches. With those sources,
we will discuss that historical and very specific
context.

This paper revolves around James Gillray -a political caricaturist of the 18th century- along with his views and portrayals of the French Revolution and it's protagonists, followed by his contribution to the then circulated Anti Jacobin newspaper.

This article explores one of the most salient and glaring contradictions that strikes anyone who views the European Enlightenment from the vantage point of the colonies: how did European thinkers of this period reconcile their reflections on liberty and on sovereignty with the larger national projects that implicitly or explicitly favored territorial expansion, a commitment to increasing colonial commerce, and ultimately a desire for territorial empire? While considering this, I do not however wish to overlook a radical thread of Enlightenment thought which understood the potential upheavals represented by the “rights of man” in the colonies. I take the cases of India and St Domingue/Haiti to reflect on the brief window of time when there seems to have been a conceptual openness to the project of following the emancipatory aims of Enlightenment thought wherever it might lead. With regard to the intention of this published volume, my aim is to situate India in a relational field of colonial spaces of the Enlightenment by considering it in contrast to St Domingue/Haiti—restoring the significance of the “two indies”—especially within the thought of the British parliamentarian and political thinker Edmund Burke, whose impeachment effort against the head of the East India Company was famous in the 1790s. However, in order to understand what political transformations Burke deemed possible or impossible, I briefly locate his thoughts contrapuntally against a contemporary speech by the Haitian general who fought alongside Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Baptiste Belley.

Satanic Karl Marx was a British Agent and the Communist takeovers of Russia by the Bolshevics and British Agents Lenin and Stalin and China by the Red Guards and Satanic 33rd Degree Freemason, Yale Educated Mao.. killed 160 million people in the 20th century..

In this book we see the British East India Company, the British Venetian Empire, the British American Empire and the Phoenician Aristocratic Politicians who have run the World for 10,000 years

Protect Yourself against the Satanic Science of Energy Blockages with The Energy Enhancement Streaming Video Meditation Course. Innoculate yourself Against Globalism by Downloading.. Energy Enhancement Books - Against Satanism in 4 Volumes by Satchidanand.

Hervé Leuwers, Robespierre, Paris, Pluriel, 2016.
En librairie le 25 mai 2016.

Extrait 1 – Introduction
Extrait 2 – L’impossible rencontre entre Robespierre et le roi à l’issue du sacre (extrait du chapitre 1)
Extrait 3 – La terreur et la vertu. Une interprétation du discours du 17 pluviôse an II - 5 février 1794 (extrait du chapitre 21)

Review by Malcolm Crook (French History, 2015, vol. 9, issue 3)

Compte rendu par Jean Bart (AHRF, n° 2015-2)

L'opera di Francesco Mario Pagano può essere studiata sotto diversi aspetti: quello del teorico dei diritti umani che interpreta le libertà e i doveri dell'uomo sotto una prospettiva nuova, ispirata a principi aristotelici costituisce l'oggetto di questo lavoro, che si articola utilizzando soprattutto quelle che furono le principali opere politiche di Mario Pagano (I saggi politici e la Dichiarazione dei diritti e doveri dell'uomo, del cittadino, del popolo, e de' suoi rappresentanti). Tale studio segue tre direttrici: il confronto con i testi costituzionali francesi del periodo rivoluzionario; il rapporto fra diritti e doveri; il riconoscimento filosofico e giuridico dei diritti economici e sociali. Ne deriva una lettura particolare del pensiero di Pagano, la quale cerca di mettere in evidenza tanto l'originalità della sua opera di costituzionalista quanto le tendenze antindividualistiche ed aristoteliche del suo pensiero; una lettura che tenta altresì di ridimensionare l'immagine del Pagano rivoluzionario "moderato" per proporne una diversa che metta invece in luce gli aspetti "progressisti" del suo pensiero.

Debates over ‘modernity’ have been central to the development of historical-sociological approaches to International Relations (IR). Within the bourgeoning subfield of International Historical Sociology (IHS), much work has been done to formulate a historically dynamic conception of international relations, which is then used to undermine unilinear conceptions of global modernity. Nevertheless, this article argues that IHS has not proceeded far enough in successfully remedying the problem of unilinearism. The problem remains that historical narratives, informed by IHS, tend to transhistoricise capitalism, which, in turn, obscures the generative nature of international relations, as well as the fundamental heterogeneity of diverging paths to modernity both within and beyond western Europe. Based on the theory of Uneven and Combined Development, Political Marxism, and Robbie Shilliam’s discussion of ‘Jacobinism’, this article first reinterprets the radical multilinearity of modernity within western Europe, and then utilises this reinterpretation to provide a new reading of the Ottoman path to modernity (1839–1918). Such a historical critique and reconstruction will highlight the significance of Jacobinism for a more accurate theorisation of the origin and development of the modern international order, hence contributing to a deeper understanding of the international relations of modernity.

En la primera etapa de la revolución española, entre 1808 y 1814, se atisban entre los llamados liberales posiciones que van desde la moderada anglofilia hasta la democracia o incluso cierta simpatía por el jacobinismo, que nunca aparece expresamente como republicana. Es posible, por tanto, encontrar ya un liberalismo de izquierda, que será más importante en el Trienio Liberal. Durante los seis años que median entre el golpe de Fernando VII y la revolución de 1820 algunos liberales evolucionarán hacia posturas conciliadoras con la monarquía y los privilegiados y otros se reafirmarán en sus posiciones próximas a la democracia o incluso se radicalizarán. Pronto se producirá la escisión del liberalismo en dos grandes corrientes, moderados y exaltados, en absoluto homogéneas y tampoco estancas.
Los llamados exaltados, la izquierda liberal, se van a definir por su defensa de la Constitución de 1812, frente a la inclinación de muchos moderados a reformarla para acercarla a la Carta francesa de 1814 y hacerla más aceptable para las potencias europeas, los estamentos privilegiados y la familia real española. También por la reivindicación de las libertades de expresión y reunión, la intransigencia frente a la reacción y una mayor sensibilidad social. Que tuviesen como bandera la Constitución de Cádiz los convierte en partidarios del sufragio universal masculino y los aproxima a posiciones más democráticas que liberales, en algún caso criptorrepublicanas, aunque es difícil encontrar un republicanismo explícito antes de 1823.

Hervé Leuwers, « Danton et Robespierre. Le duel réinventé », dans Michel Biard et Hervé Leuwers (dir.), Danton. Le mythe et l’histoire, Paris, Armand Colin, 2016, p. 141-153

Danton et Robespierre ; deux noms que l’on rapproche ou, plutôt, que l’on oppose. Pour un large public, ils sont des personnalités contraires, deux voies pour la Révolution, deux incarnations possibles de la République. Beaucoup voient en eux les acteurs de l’un des grands duels politiques de l’histoire. Entre Danton et Robespierre, il faut choisir ! Au début du XXe siècle, l’historien Alphonse Aulard reliait sa république à Danton, et son élève Albert Mathiez, à Robespierre. En 1988, à l’entrée du spectacle « La liberté ou la mort », Robert Hossein proposait de choisir un badge : Louis XVI, Robespierre, Danton… Et, sur scène, Jean Negroni, qui avait incarné le Robespierre de La Terreur et la vertu (Stellio Lorenzi, 1966), donnait la réplique à Bernard Fresson, dont la voix faisait résonner l’opposition irréductible entre les deux hommes.
Et pourtant, ce n’est qu’après la mort de Danton, et plus encore après celle de Robespierre, que les deux personnages se figent en deux figures irréconciliables par leur manière d’être, leurs discours, leurs prises de position ; ils se transforment en deux visages de la Révolution, et leurs relations en un duel mythique. Les conventionnels mémorialistes, puis les historiens et politiques du XIXe siècle vont accompagner et conforter cette « recomposition narrative » (Antoine de Baecque), particulièrement sous la Troisième République. Les figures du corrompu et de l’Incorruptible, de l’expansif et du retenu, du pragmatique et du dogmatique, du jouisseur et de l’ascète, de l’humain et de l’inhumain (selon les points de vue), deviennent des lieux communs du débat historiographique et politique. Les relations entre Robespierre et Danton ont pourtant longtemps été plus complexes qu’on ne l’imagine.

Hervé Leuwers, « Robespierre. La tentation de l’autobiographie », dans Michel Biard, Philippe Bourdin, Hervé Leuwers, Yoshiaki Ômi (dir.), L’écriture d’une expérience. Histoire & mémoires de conventionnels, Paris, SER, 2016, p. 17-26.

Pour interpréter le parcours de Robespierre, l’historien n’est pas seulement confronté à des explications héritées des années 1790-1794, qui le présentent comme ambitionnant le pouvoir suprême et seul vrai responsable de la Terreur. Il a hérité d’interprétations, certes, mais aussi de questions qui, souvent, sont reproduites sans que l’on s’interroge sur leur signification. L’une d’elles concerne l’homme. Comment ne pas s’étonner que, plus que pour tout autre acteur de la Révolution, l’historiographie insiste particulièrement sur son caractère, sa psychologie, son histoire familiale, par des analyses qui, ces dernières années, ont fait une large place à la psychanalyse ? Tout s’expliquerait par la disparition des parents, par l’enfance malheureuse, par l’histoire personnelle ou le tempérament ? Pourquoi cet intérêt pour la personnalité de Robespierre ? Il ne s’agit pas d’écarter la question, car elle a sa légitimité et peut aider à comprendre le personnage, mais de se demander pourquoi elle est posée avec autant de force ; il s’agit de remonter à son origine. Loin d’être proposée par les historiens, ne leur serait-elle pas imposée par les contemporains de Robespierre et les premiers récits biographiques que lui ont consacrés Proyart, Galart de Montjoie ou Le Moyne des Essarts aux lendemains mêmes du 9 thermidor ? N’apparaîtrait-elle pas avant même 1794, dans le regard de ceux qui s’étonnent de l’intérêt que montre Robespierre à écrire sa propre histoire ?

Antonio Gramsci's notion of " passive revolution " has often been understood as a distinctive historical narrative, political concept, or theory of state formation. This article proposes to consider it instead as a " heuristic formula " within the " lexical architecture " of the Prison Notebooks. Based upon a diachronic and contextualist analysis of the usage of the formula, I argue that Gramsci's research on passive revolution emerged as a critical element within the development of his own distinctive conception of the " sublation " and " actualization " of the slogan of " the revolution in permanence. " Attending to this dialectical relationship allows the political and strategic dimensions of passive revolution to be highlighted, and suggests new paths of research for the debate about its analytic fertility and contemporary relevance.

Patriotic banquets, a massive phenomenon in revolutionary France, obtain an appreciable diffusion south of the Alps and emerge as an instrument to promote fraternity among the citizens. On the basis of a wide range of sources, the article reconstructs the genesis and the circulation of a particular kind of banquets in Emilia and Romagna in 1797-98. These banquets, where the poor sit at the table next to their benefactors, are an original creation of local Jacobins and arouse enthusiastic feelings in the participants. Commenting on them, patriots express different opinions: the constitutionalist Compagnoni criticizes them as an unrealistic attempt to resolve the social question; others, like Massa, emphasize their role in producing consensus and in marking the difference between the new and the ancient regime. The definition of the religious phenomenon formulated by Albert Mathiez in his study about French revolutionary cults allows us to read these ritual occasions as germinal moments of a revolutionary faith. Besides, these banquets are a testimony of the effort made during the Triennio to develop an original Italian way to revolution, not passively copied from the French model.

This book offers a radical reinterpretation of the development of the modern world through the concept of Jacobinism. It argues that the French Revolution was not just another step in the construction of capitalist modernity, but produced an alternative (geo)political economy – that is, 'Jacobinism.' Furthermore, Jacobinism provided a blueprint for other modernization projects, thereby profoundly impacting the content and tempo of global modernity in and beyond Europe. The book traces the journey of Jacobinism in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. It contends that until the 1950s, the Ottoman/Turkish experiment with modernity was not marked by capitalism, but by a historically specific Jacobinism. Asserting this Jacobin legacy then leads to a novel interpretation of the subsequent transition to and authoritarian consolidation of capitalism in contemporary Turkey. As such, by tracing the world historical trajectory of Jacobinism, the book establishes a new way of understanding the origins and development of global modernity.

The study of revolutions is at the forefront of the growing field of International Historical Sociology (IHS). As IHS scholars have sought to uncover the spatio-temporally changing character of international relations, they have come a long way in overcoming ‘unilinear’ and ‘internalist’ conceptions of revolutionary modern transformation. In this article, I re-evaluate the extent to which the IHS of ‘bourgeois revolutions’ has succeeded in remedying unilinear conceptions of the transition to modernity. I argue that ‘consequentialist’ approaches to the study of bourgeois revolutions tend to obscure the radically heterogeneous character of revolutionary transformations both within and outside Western Europe. Drawing on Political Marxism and Robbie Shilliam’s discussion of Jacobinism, I first provide a non-consequentialist reading of the revolutions of modernity within Western Europe, and then utilize this reinterpretation to provide a new interpretation of the Turkish revolution (1923-1945). My aim is to demonstrate that a non-consequentialist conception of ‘bourgeois revolutions’ will enable us to historicize and theorize more accurately the co-constitution of international relations and revolutionary processes; hence providing a stronger foundation for the IHS of modern revolutions.

Il triennio 1796-1799 si configura come un periodo di massima importanza nella crisi della società italiana di fine ‘700. Il vento della rivoluzione francese scuote le strutture d’ancien règime nella penisola, introducendovi idealità e istituzioni inedite, e al contempo toccando i nervi scoperti di una società in cambiamento. In questo contesto, la città costituisce il teatro della lotta politica, il luogo dove i patrioti di ogni provenienza geografica si riuniscono per dare vita a programmi riformatori finalizzati a mutare radicalmente il sentire popolare, il vivere collettivo e lo stesso volto urbano. Ma se la città costituisce il centro del potere politico, luogo fisico dove si svolge il dibattito e l’ideazione rivoluzionaria, è nel suo rapporto con la campagna che si gioca il futuro della rivoluzione. Il contrasto fra la realtà urbana, vivificata da energie economiche e intellettuali, e il contado, drammaticamente fermo nella sua staticità, si rivela il problema di fondo dell’azione giacobina. La conciliazione fra il centro e la periferia si gioca non solo sul terreno dell’educazione e del coinvolgimento politico della plebe di campagna, ma anche su quello della critica e del ripensamento dello stesso habitat cittadino. Sulla scorta della critica illuministica alla città che si avvia sulla strada dell’industrializzazione (Rousseau, Morelly, Mercier, Diderot, ecc.), fra i nostri democratici sorge un netto sentimento di ripulsa di fronte all’emergere del “mostro” urbano. Una ripulsa che rivendica il progetto utopico di una città in armonia con l’ambiente naturale, una città che recuperi le virtù del mondo contadino, una città a misura d’uomo fondata sull’eguaglianza e sulla libertà. Non si tratta del semplice sollazzamento filosofico dell’intellettuale, dell’esotica fuga dalla realtà del pensatore, ma dell’attiva reinterpretazione dell’esistente portata avanti da “illuministi che entrano in azione” (Cantimori, 1957). Un razionale progetto politico volto alla “rigenerazione” completa dell’uomo e del suo habitat urbano.

Guglielmo Francesco Galletti († 1798) était un imprimeur, éditeur et journaliste originaire du Piémont actif à Paris pendant la Révolution française. Parmi ses clients il comptait Maximilien Robespierre, Pierre-Antoine Antonelle, Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, Filippo Buonarroti, Edmond Louis Alexis Dubois-Crancé et Charles-Nicolas Osselin. Avec Osselin en novembre 1792 Galletti fonda le „Journal des Lois de la République une et indivisible“. Le „Monitore italiano politico e letterario“, édité en 1793 à Nice par le jacobin piémontais Giovanni Antonio Ranza, publia régulièrement des articles du « Journal des Lois » en traduction italienne. Dans l’an II Galletti publia aussi le „Journal de la Commune“, consacré aux travaux de la première Commune de Paris. Terroriste pendant la Terreur, le « Journal des Lois » devint violemment thermidorien après Thermidor et participa à la campagne de calomnies lancée contre Robespierre et sa « faction anthropophage ». Parmi les rédacteurs du „Journal des Lois“ il y avait probablement Joseph Maria Piccini (Giuseppe Maria Piccinni), fils du célèbre compositeur Niccolò Vito Piccinni. Dans l’an III Galletti polémiqua avec „Le Tribun du Peuple“ de Babeuf. Avec le début du régime du Directoire le quotidien de Galletti changea son nom, en devenant le „Journal des Lois des deux Conseils et du Directoire de la République française“. Après les élections de l’an V, le journal prit le nom de „Le Pacificateur“, auquel collaborèrent Dominique-Joseph Garat et Pierre-Louis Ginguené. Les rédacteurs responsables étaient Galletti et Jean-Baptiste Picquenard, ci-devant secrétaire de la commission civile de Sonthonax à Saint-Domingue et futur auteur du roman historique „Adonis, ou Le bon nègre“. En collaboration avec Agnelli (éditeur à Lugano) et avec Cougnet (éditeur à Nice), en 1797 Galletti lança un nouveau journal, nommé „L’Italiano imparziale. Gazzetta politica e letteraria“ et destiné à diffuser la propagande française dans « Républiques sœurs » d’Italie. Galletti mourut en prairial an VI (1798). Peu après, la publication du Pacificateur cessa. Après la mort de Galletti, l’imprimerie fut dirigée par sa veuve.

Gramsci’s sojourn in the capital of the world revolution in 1922-3 had a profound impact upon both his personal and political lives, constituting a fundamental ‘turning point’ in his maturation as a person and political leader. Drawing upon archival research, this paper aims to reconstruct key moments in the dialogue between Gramsci, the Bolshevik leadership and the wider experiences of the Russian Revolution in 1922-3. It focuses in particular upon the importance of this period for the emergence of a distinctive notion of hegemony as a central dimension of Gramsci’s political thought and practice. While Gramsci’s earlier writings tended to utilise a received meaning of hegemony as a form of political power, the ‘svolta di Mosca’ produced a greater emphasis upon hegemony as a concrete ‘method of political work’. It was in Moscow in 1922-3 that Gramsci discovered the concrete forms of what he had earlier called the ‘vivifying thought’ ‘immanent’ to both Das Kapital and the Russian Revolution. His distinctive elaboration of the notion of hegemony in subsequent years represents a concentration and critical elaboration of these intense experiences.

The revolutionary wave of the 1790s subverted long-standing balances of power and forced European intellectuals to rethink the geopolitical arrangement of the continent. Some Italian patriots, while advocating the creation of a unitary state south of the Alps, primarily understood the revolution as a transnational phenomenon and thus regarded the republicanization of the Peninsula as part and parcel of a wider geopolitical transformation, centered around the Mediterranean Basin. This paper deals with the writings of two of these patriots, the Roman Enrico Michele L'Aurora (circa 1760-?) and the Neapolitan Matteo Galdi (1765-1821), who were both in exile in Milan between 1796 and 1799. According to them, the Mediterranean shores were not just peripheral spaces that were being involved in a transformation originated elsewhere. This is not to say that they did not recognize the centrality of France to the whole revolutionary process, but they also viewed the creation of the so-called "sister republics" in the Italian Peninsula as the first step towards a broad geopolitical transformation. From this perspective, the Mediterranean Basin was at the very heart of the revolution. Placing the south of Europe at the center of the emergence of the new post-revolutionary world, L'Aurora and Galdi challenged a long-established hierarchy of civilization that throughout the eighteenth century had defined the very concept of Europe in antithesis to what was regarded as the uncivilized other-the East, but also the European South itself. In their views, it was the South that would eventually revolutionize and regenerate the North. So, while rethinking the revolution as an inherently transnational phenomenon rather than a French-centered event radiating its influence abroad, L'Aurora and Galdi redefined the asymmetrical relationships between European centers and peripheries, and at the same time, they put forward a new form of "cosmopolitan patriotism," which could coexist with the principle of nationality.

After the arrival of the French army south of the Alps in 1796, the entire Italian peninsula was republicanized and the patriots struggled to build popular consensus for the new regimes. In the course of this struggle, the depiction of the stereotypical image of the aristocratic enemy proved to be one of the most powerful tools at their disposal.
Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, my paper analyzes how the patriots created and used this image in the speeches they gave during the meetings of political societies in the Cisalpine Republic. In the eyes of the patriots, the aristocrat was not a member of a specific social class, nor was the term a synonym for noble. Rather, the aristocrat was depicted as the specular opposite of the virtuous patriot. Since he refused to embrace the new ideas, he was considered as the embodiment of the vices that had animated the ancien régime. Thus, whoever rejected or opposed the new regime, even a peasant, could be accused of being an aristocrat. Labeling people as aristocrats became an effective way to stigmatize and exclude them from the social fabric. Even their belonging to the human race was called into question, since they were usually described as monsters, animals, and cannibals.
Evoking the figure of the aristocrat during their speeches, the patriots were able to raise feelings of contempt, hatred, fear, and even conspiracy obsession in their audiences, thus strengthening the loyalty to the republic. Although eventually the patriots failed to stabilize the new regime, my paper sheds new light on the connections between political emotions, revolutionary rhetoric, and popular propaganda.

The production of imagined geographies is widely understood as a tool of colonial power. This paper, analyzing the writings of pro-revolutionary Italian patriots in the 1790s, argues that imagined geographies can also be used to subvert existing hierarchies and to renegotiate the relationship between centers and peripheries. Throughout the eighteenth century, European identity had been defined in antithesis to what was regarded as the uncivilized other—the Orient, but also the European South. After the French army invaded Italy in 1796, Italian patriots, who advocated the creation of a democratic republic in the Peninsula, started to reconsider the role of Italy and the Mediterranean Basin in the revolutionary process. They argued that it was in the Mediterranean that the Revolution would fight its most important battle. This was, of course, the battle for the liberty of navigation and commerce—against the British monopoly of trade—but also the battle of the “peoples of the South” against the “peoples of the North.” Challenging a long-established hierarchy of civilization, Italian patriots argued for the superiority of the South over the North. The peoples of the South were described as the promoters of international cooperation, freedom, and peace, whereas the peoples of the North were characterized by aggressive and exploitative attitudes. Both South and North, for them, were not geographical but cultural definitions—in fact, the South spanned from the Ottoman Empire to the Netherlands, including Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. Producing such a new imagined geography, Italian patriots reconceptualized the Revolution as a worldwide event that would eventually produce the emergence of a new peaceful global order based on the “southern spirit.” The creation of a worldwide federation of nation-states—including an Italian republic—would naturally follow.