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The American Conservative Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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The Commune marked a decisive moment in America's historical and political consciousness and in her image of her own revolutionary tradition. The impact of the Commune is best appreciated when the response it evoked is placed in the context of America's reaction to France's revolutionary efforts from the summer of 1789 to the spring of 1968. In these two centuries the prevailing attitude in the United States shifted steadily from an openness toward the necessity of revolutions to a position of fear and dread of this historical action. Americans at all times used the French experience as a mirror to examine their own conflicts and contradictions, their greatest expectations, their gravest anxieties, their receptivity to innovation, and their hostility to change. Each crisis in France polarized opinion in the United States and on some occasions such as the Commune the resulting tensions concretely influenced the course of the nation's history.

Type
Dimensions Internationales de l'Evenement
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1972

References

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page 241 note 2 45th Congress 2nd Session. Senate Executive Document No. 24. Vol. I. Franco-German War and Insurrection of the Commune. Correspondence of Washburne, E. B., Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to France, Washington 1878, p. 157.Google Scholar

page 242 note 1 Ibid., 164.

page 242 note 2 Ibid., 168.

page 242 note 3 Ibid., 209.

page 242 note 4 The most valuable discussion of the Commune and the American press is that of Bernstein, Samuel, “The American Press Views the Commune”, in: Samuel Bernstein, Essays in Political and Intellectual History, New York 1955, pp. 169183.Google Scholar See also Samuel Bernstein, The First International in America, New York 1965, and the earlier contributions by listed, A. Landy in Rougerie, J. and Haupt, G., “Bibliographie de la Commune de 1871”, in: Le Mouvement Social, No 38 (1962), p. 75.Google Scholar

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page 247 note 3 Ibid., 149–150.

page 248 note 1 For American response to the Russian Revolution see Foner, Phillip Sheldon, The Bolshevik Revolution, its impact on American Radicals, Liberals, and Labor, New York 1967Google Scholar, and Christopher Lasch, The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution, New York 1962; and for the Spanish Civil War, Alan Guttman, Wound in the Heart: America and the Spanish Civil War, New York 1962.

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