Introduction

Abstract

One would like to break the mould and be able to say that the conjoining of war and republic in our title is a mere turn of phrase. History, regrettably, seems to show the opposite. This need not be a reason to express indignation, however, or to look only to the counterrevolution for the causes of the conflict that rocked the Atlantic world between 1774 and 1815—accepting that republican war began long before 1792, with the patriots of the New World—or to fix responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities upon the French revolutionaries and their divisions, apportioning blame between Brissot and Robespierre and their respective followers. Let us instead spell out in practical terms the value of historical reflection on the relationship between war and republic at the end of the eighteenth century—a relationship alternatively construed as constitutive, inevitable, and seminal, or, on the contrary, as contingent, avoidable, and pernicious.

Translated from the French by Sylvie Kleinman, revised, with additional material, by Godfrey Rogers.