The Citizenship Experiment: Contesting the Limits of Civic Equality and Participation in the Age of Revolutions

For a more recent version of this publication, please see: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/37837 - This dissertation deals with the question how Americans, Frenchmen, and Dutchmen reconsidered their ideas and ideals of citizenship during the immediate aftermath of the Haitian Revolution and the Terror in Jacobin France; and how, consequently, a shared, transatlantic, revolutionary citizenship discourse diverged into nationalized conceptions of citizenship. In the opening years of the 1790s, there was a convergence of citizenship ideals held by Americans, Dutchmen, and Frenchmen who felt part of a revolutionary movement which seemed to transcend their own situation. The momentous and, to many, shocking events of the Terror in Jacobin France and the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue raised questions about equality and participation which led many to reconsider the desirability of some of the more radical principles of revolutionary citizenship. The slave revolt in Saint-Domingue and the Terror became transnationally shared points of reference, colouring events at home, and influencing a range of arguments in domestic political debates. This experience shattered the ideological unity of an Atlantic revolutionary movement – and moment – and led to a divergence and nationalization of citizenship discourses.The Haitian Revolution incited the invocation of a discourse of civilizational progress and backwardness to circumvent and counter the invoked logic of the rights of man and citizen. Many of these civilizational arguments for exclusion crystallized in the 1790s, precisely because it was in this decade that citizenship was redefined in a universalistic and egalitarian key. The exclusion of certain groups from citizenship required justifications responsive to the revolutionary principle of the equal rights of man. Saint-Domingue became, and would long remain, a key reference point in such schemes of argumentation. It was widely invoked as the ultimate proof that citizenship should not be attributed to those who are not (yet) civilized or enlightened. The French ‘experiment’ with universalism on Saint-Domingue contributed to a picture of the French Revolution as a revolution run wild, preaching radical and civilizational equality. These sentiments towards French radicalism contributed to the falling apart of transatlantic citizenship ideals once shared. The Terror in Jacobin France led many to substantially reconsider the revolutionary, democratic-republican ideal of participatory citizenship. American Federalists, French Thermidorians, as well as a considerable number of Batavian revolutionaries came to hold deep suspicions about politicized popular societies. They feared a faction-ridden citizenry, and sought to exclude certain social classes from participation in politics. In their view, popular societies were an infringement on the principle of the indivisible unity of the people. By the end of the 1790s, the American and Dutch publics began to disassociate themselves from a French and transatlantic ideal of revolutionary citizenship and articulate more nationalized models of citizenship. Explicating the interaction between the American, French, and Dutch national communication communities and the Terror and the Haitian Revolution implies a reconsideration of the age of revolutions as a turning point in the history of citizenship. The 1790s were a breeding ground for a set of arguments for limited citizen participation and the danger of factional popular societies, exclusive imperial citizenship based on civilizational inequality, and the idea that nation-states should follow their own path in devising their citizenship arrangements and regimes. This set of arguments has long shaped debates about the idea and ideal of citizenship.