Revolting places
GEORGE GOODWIN on a book exploring the role three major cities played in producing the 18th century’s revolutions
This book has an excellent introduction, which places Paris, London and New York as commercial centres of the 18th-century transatlantic world and stresses the monumental importance of the Seven Years’ War, for the victorious British empire as well as for the defeated French. For all three featured cities there were severe political consequences, even for New York where victory brought economic dislocation when it ceased being the HQ of Britain’s forces in North America.
Mike Rapport is right to put Paris first in his list of cities in this quasi-comparative history. Whether he refers to the fortress of the Bastille, the open space of the Place de la Revolution or the sections of the Sans Culottes, he demonstrates how Paris’s own cityscape gave oxygen to the spark of revolution.
Rapport’s treatment of London is less successful. He begins by setting up a rather false division at Temple Bar. It certainly marked a point of geographical separation between Westminster and London, but it was far more porous when it came to political activity. As for New York, its importance in the build-up to the American Revolution was episodic and far behind that of Boston and Philadelphia. For the great majority of the war it was occupied by the British and the all-important constitutional convention (May– September 1787) was held in Philadelphia.
Some of the inter-city comparisons at the beginning of chapters don’t quite work, though all should be forgiven for the masterful second half of the book which deals with the revolution in Paris and the reactions to it in the other two cities. Rapport is brilliant at communicating the agitation of contemporaries who had no idea of what would happen next. The dramatic twists and turns in the streets of Paris are described with real narrative skill.
As an aside, so much effort has gone into the illustrations that it is a shame that they are in black and white.