Building an Atlantic Republican Network: Henri Grégoire, the Americas, and the Legacy of the French Revolution

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

Historians who study early-nineteenth-century France have often noted that former French revolutionaries changed their politics, fled the country, or disappeared from public view in the wake of the Revolution's failure. This paper focuses on the revolutionary priest Henri Grégoire, in order to highlight another way in which frustrated republicans channeled their energies in the postrevolutionary years: across the Atlantic, to a new world full of possibilities. After the rise of Napoleon, Grégoire (who had been famous during the Revolution as the "friend of Jews and blacks") increasingly turned his gaze toward the young republics of the Western Hemisphere, especially the United States and Haiti. In the hope that republicanism could be perfected there in order to be reimported to Europe, he shared his views with American counterparts on matters ranging from slavery to agriculture. Despite Grégoire's occasional disagreements with colleagues in the Americas, his relationships with them underscore the existence of a transatlantic support network of republicans in the early nineteenth century.

[WP # 00012]