The Republican Restoration

The French revolutionary wars upended not just Europe’s old monarchies, they also spelt the end of the few remaining republics. The Swiss republics’ fall in 1798 confirmed the fears of those who since the middle of the century had issued warnings about an impending revolution and who called, with increasing urgency, for reforms. The lectures will focus on three eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century thinkers who stood out for the perspicacity of their analysis of European politics and who, in different ways, attempted to establish a new science of politics that would help to stabilize monarchies and secure the position of small republics.