Thomas Paine and the French Revolution

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   • Carine Lounissi

   Pages 1-32

3. The Revolution of 1789 in Rights of Man: Republican or Democratic Revolution?

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 33-34

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   2. Debating the Legitimacy of the French Revolution

      • Carine Lounissi

      Pages 35-63

   3. Narrating the French Revolution

      • Carine Lounissi

      Pages 65-95

4. Paine and the Creation of the French Republic (May 1791–December 1793)

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 97-98

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   2. Paine and the Abolition of the French Monarchy

      • Carine Lounissi

      Pages 99-131

   3. Paine in the Convention

      • Carine Lounissi

      Pages 133-167

   4. Paine’s First ‘Girondin’ Moment?

      • Carine Lounissi

      Pages 169-214

5. Paine, Critic or Propagandist of the French Republic? (January 1794–September 1802)

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 215-220

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   2. Paine in the Aftermath of Thermidor (November 1794–August 1795)

      • Carine Lounissi

      Pages 221-251

   3. Paine in the Republic of the Year III (September 1795–November 1799)

      • Carine Lounissi

      Pages 253-292

   4. Bonaparte’s France and the End of the Revolution

      • Carine Lounissi

      Pages 293-308

6. Conclusion

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 309-309

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   2. Conclusion

      • Carine Lounissi

      Pages 311-316

7. Back Matter

   Pages 317-321

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This book explores Thomas Paine's French decade, from the publication of the first part of Rights of Man in the spring of 1791 to his return trip to the United States in the fall of 1802. It examines Paine's multifarious activities during this period as a thinker, writer, member of the French Convention, lobbyist, adviser to French governments, officious diplomat and propagandist. Using previously neglected sources and archival material, Carine Lounissi demonstrates both how his republicanism was challenged, bolstered and altered by this French experience, and how his positions at key moments of the history of the French experiment forced major participants in the Revolution to defend or question the kind of regime or of republic they wished to set up. As a member of the Lafayette circle when writing the manuscript of Rights of Man, of the Girondin constellation in the Convention, one of the few democrats who defended universal suffrage after Thermidor, and as a member of the Constitutional Circle which promoted a kind of republic which did not match his ideas, Paine baffled his contemporaries and still puzzles the present-day scholar. This book intends to offer a new perspective on Paine, and on how this major agent of revolutions contributed to the debate on the French Revolution both in France and outside France.

• Rights of Man
• republicanism
• French Constitution
• Girondins
• 'The Terror'
• American revolution

• University of Rouen , Rouen, France

  Carine Lounissi

Carine Lounissi is Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Rouen, France, and a member of the LARCA research team at Paris Diderot University. Her research interests are the intellectual history of the revolutionary era, and more specifically transatlantic circulations of ideas. 

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