Popular Justice or Why Were There No Sans-Culottes in America?

• Authors: Paweł T. Dobrowolski
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

The article applies a comparative perspective to assess the onset of the two ‘successful’ eighteen-century revolutions – the American and the French. The Boston events of March 1770 are compared with those of Paris in July 1789: in both cases ‘the people’ faced the soldiers, riots and politically generated violence led to bloodshed, but the subsequent actions of the insurgents showed a marked difference in understanding the sense of justice and the ways of promoting revolutionary discourse. Boston patriots relied on the English-based system of common law, were ready to condemn their own radicals and did not wish plebeian justice to prevail. They hoped for a perestroika, not for a revolution. The French – finding no culprits to condemn, and having as of yet no legal institutions of their own to use – were willing to disregard the legal continuity of the state and to search for more radical solutions.

Keywords

PL

Revolution; Boston; Paris; massacre; Bastille; violence

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla PAN w Warszawie
• Journal: Kwartalnik Historyczny
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 124
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2017

online

2017-11-02

Contributors

author

Paweł T. Dobrowolski

Identifiers

DOI

10.12775/KH.2017.124.SI.1.02