Tuesday, June 25, 2013
5.59 (PC Hoofthuis)
Between 1828 and 1830 French historian François Guizot held at the Sorbonne a course on European civilization. Soon turned into a book and translated in many different languages, it is now considered a fundamental text in the history of the idea of Europe. In it the notion of European civilization was used to describe a process of gradual emancipation of man on the one hand, and, on the other, of development of social relation fostering and preserving individual freedom. It was a process as much as it was a cultural and political notion. Importantly such concept was juxtaposed to what might be defined a specific European ‘historicity’, a specific way of tying together past, present and future and making sense of them that was understood to be essentially European. Tightly connected to such an interpretation of European civilization was the notion of revolution. Tellingly, the notion of civilization was used by Guizot and the other doctrinaires to deny that the French Revolution was a caesura depicted, on the contrary, as the consequence of the centuries that had preceded it. It was a turning point not only of French history but of European history. From Guizot’s point of view, as a civilization Europe was precisely the conjugation of change and tradition, of revolutions and of continuities. Underlying such combination was a complex balance and tension that the historian had to grasp. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the idea of European civilization and the notion of revolution in the writings of Guizot, highlighting the originality of his point of view in shaping a specific European historicity. It will do so by taking into account his courses on French and European civilization on the one hand and his writings on the American, French and English Revolution on the other.
