French Revolution (International Law)

Introduction

The French Revolution is not a strictly national phenomenon confined within the boundaries of the kingdom of France. On the one hand, it is part of a chain of revolutionary movements in Europe (such as the Belgian, Liège, Genevan, and Batavian revolutions); on the other, it has a universal and cosmopolitan dimension that was immediately clear to all contemporaries. Finally, because France was a central actor within the diplomatic European order at the end of the 18th century, its revolution was bound to have important consequences on western European geopolitics (and also in America due to its colonies) and on the law of nations, as it was commonly admitted as well. The revolutionary decade (1789–1799) witnessed a twofold evolution: First, the debates on the rights of nations became increasingly present in the writings of philosophers, jurists, and legislators, and also in the public sphere, through the press, theater, images, and the like. Secondly, “regenerated France” proclaimed its intention to rethink to reform the law of nations by making the principle of popular sovereignty a normative one. But, as France was also involved in diplomatic relations of the time, revolutionary France was also obliged to get along with the rules and treaties of the ancien régime. This resulted in a permanent contradiction between the proclaimed principles and the obligation to deal with the kings and princes of Europe. This contradiction has often been interpreted in black-and-white terms: principles versus realpolitik. In the early 20th century, a neo-Kantian interpretation insisted on the radicalness of the proclamation of revolutionary principles within the sphere of the law of nations, while a “realist” interpretation (in the international relations theories sense) defended on the contrary the idea that revolutionary principles were merely a form of justification of the spirit of conquest proper to France. If this dispute has not disappeared from current interpretations, academic works of the end of the 20th century and of the beginning of the 21st century try to understand how revolutionaries sought to reconcile universal brotherhood and national interest.

General Overviews

The historiography of the French Revolution in international relations can be divided into three periods: the first one begins at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century with the beginnings of diplomatic history. The major work of this period is Sorel 1885–1904. The second period lies in the 1950s with the publication of the series Histoire des Relations Internationales adapted by Pierre Renouvin for his collection published by the prestigious Presses Universitaires de France (Fugier 1954). The change of terms was conceived as an effort to get over the traditional diplomatic history per se. Godechot 1956 was also published in this period. It is still one important milestone of French historiography. A new period begins with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the return of a more structural approach of the concept of international order. Schroeder 1994 is emblematic of this approach, and it has provoked many debates among academics. Black 2002 and Bois 2003 are two later syntheses conceived for undergraduates. The French Revolution is included in an analysis of the long term from the Treaty of Westphalia to the Congress of Vienna for Black and from the Peace of Utrecht to the Congress of Vienna for Bois.

Black, Jeremy. European International Relations, 1648–1815. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
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Black’s approach is deliberately pragmatic and historic. Black is rather suspicious of theories of international relations (notably Schroeder’s) and seeks to reevaluate the importance of the events and of contingencies in the evolution of international structures during the French Revolution.
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Bois, Jean-Pierre. De la paix des rois à l’ordre des empereurs, 1714–1815. Paris: Seuil, 2003.
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Jean-Pierre Bois is particularly attentive to the question of peace and to the continuities with and inheritances from the ancien régime in revolutionary France’s foreign policy. He deals also with the philosophical and juridical debates about political conceptions of relations between peoples in the modern era. The long 18th century is considered here as the moment of transition from a world dominated by the interests of princes and dynasties to a world in which nations appear as the subjects of real international relations.
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Fugier, André. La Révolution française et l’Empire napoléonien. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954.
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André Fugier wrote this volume on French Revolution and the First Empire in the series Histoire des Relations Internationales directed by Pierre Renouvin. He insists on economical and demographic forces and on the strategic stakes posed by the Revolution in Europe. This collection was an important one in the historiography of international relations until the 1980s.
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Godechot, Jacques. La Grande Nation: L’expansion révolutionnaire de la France dans le monde de 1789 à 1799. Paris: Aubier, 1956.
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This book was for a long time one of the few works on the international dimension of the French Revolution. Godechot develops here his thesis of an Atlantic revolutionary “wave” that provoked in the 1950s a debate, at times very intense, with, among others, Albert Soboul, who accused Godechot of underestimating the exceptionality of the French Revolution in the cycle of revolutions of the 18th century.
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Schroeder, Paul W. The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.
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Paul Schroeder’s synthesis was written during the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It presents the revolutionary period in a long-term perspective from the end of the Seven Years’ War to the revolutions of 1848. This allows him to consider international transformations in a more structural approach compared to the old diplomatic history.
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Sorel, Albert. L’Europe et la révolution française. 8 vols. Paris: Plon, 1885–1904.
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Albert Sorel was a disciple of the antirevolutionary writer Hippolyte Taine. He sees in the French Revolution’s foreign policy the continuation of monarchical traditions and in the revolutionary spirit an avatar of the spirit of the Crusades. Sorel’s conservative interpretation has had an enormous influence on international relations historiography. One can still see this influence in the works of the Furetian school.
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Journals

There are no specific journals dedicated to the subject of international law in the era of the French Revolution. One can find articles on the international aspects of the French Revolution in the Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française or in online journals such as Révolution-française.net. The Journal of the History of International Law contains valuable articles on the history of the law of nations in a legal and historical perspective.

Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française.
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Published four times a year by the Société des Études Robespierristes since 1908, founded by Albert Mathiez, the Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française is the only academic journal entirely dedicated to the study of the revolutionary period broadly considered (1750–1830).
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Journal of the History of International Law.
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This journal publishes articles, comments, and reviews on the history of international law mainly from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 19th century.
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Revolution-française.net.
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Revolution-francaise.net is an online journal directed by a group of French academics interested in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Its approach insists on the actuality of the political reflections of that period. In this online journal can be found academic studies, sources, announcements, and links to other websites on the French Revolution.
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Primary Sources

Primary sources on international relations and on debates about the law of nations during the Revolution are very numerous. One can find several references in Marc Belissa (Belissa 1998 and Belissa 2006, both cited under French Revolution and International Law).

Anthologies

One of the most important collections of treaties and diplomatic texts in the 18th century is Martens 1791–1801, which has many editions. Two collections published in the 20th century, Godechot 1964 and Merle 1966, provide many interesting texts for undergraduates.

Godechot, Jacques, comp. La pensée révolutionnaire en France et en Europe, 1780–1799. Paris: Armand Colin, 1964.
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Jacques Godechot was one of the most important historians of the French Revolution from the 1950s until his death in 1989. He was particularly interested in the international dimension of the French Revolution and in its place in what he called the “wave of Atlantic democratic revolutions” of the 1770s to the 1820s. This collection presents French texts as well as Dutch and Italian texts translated into French.
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Martens, Georg Friedrich, comp. Recueil des principaux traités d’alliance, de paix, de trêve, de neutralité, de commerce, de limites, d’échange conclus par les puissances de l’Europe tant entre elles qu’avec les puissances et états dans d’autres parties du monde depuis 1761 jusqu’à présent. 7 vols. Göttingen, Germany: Dieterich, 1791–1801.
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After diplomatic service in several states, Martens became a professor of public law at the University of Göttingen in 1781. He published numerous books on the law of nations, the most important of which is the Recueil des principaux traités. It contains the text of most treaties and acts of 18th-century international law along with interesting commentary.
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Merle, Maurice, ed. Pacifisme et internationalisme, XVIIe–XXe siècles. Paris: Armand Colin, 1966.
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Maurice Merle’s anthology contains texts about international law and the philosophy of the relations between peoples from Grotius until the beginning of the 20th century. A collection easily readable by undergraduates.
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Political and Philosophical Writings

Political, juridical, and philosophical texts related to the question of international law during the French Revolution are extremely numerous. One can find a list in Belissa 1998 and Belissa 2006, both cited under French Revolution and International Law. In this section, Kant 2003 and Gentz 1997 are at the origin of a European debate on war, peace, and law. Burke 1991 is an example of the reflections on international law in the period of the Directory. See also the Avalon Project—18th Century Documents: 1700–1799.

Avalon Project 18th—Century Documents: 1700–1799.
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This website from Yale Law School contains a wealth of primary sources related to law and diplomacy, especially in the American context.
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Barère, Bertrand. La liberté des mers, ou Le gouvernement anglais dévoilé. 3 vols. Paris, 1798.
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A former member of Comité de Salut Public, Barère here not only develops a criticism of international practices of England, he also presents a global theory of the liberty of the seas and of peaceful relations between peoples. The book can be found in the Maxwell collection on the French Revolution; it is therefore available on microfilm.
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Burke, Edmund. The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke. Edited by Paul Longford. Vol. 9, The Revolutionary War, 1794–1797. Edited by R. B. McDowell. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
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It is not Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution that is interesting here but the Letters on a Regicide Peace, written between 1795 and 1797. These letters can be seen as the counterrevolutionary vision of the transformations provoked by the French Revolution within the public law of Europe.
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Gentz, Friedrich von. De la paix perpétuelle. Translated and edited by Mouchir Basile Aoun. Paris: Centre de Philosophie du Droit, 1997.
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This book is Gentz’s conservative answer to Kant. He participates in the debate on perpetual peace to defend the idea that the maintenance of peace through natural law is impossible. He thinks that the mechanisms of the balance of power can play a pacifying role in relations between peoples.
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Kant, Immanuel. To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. Translated by Ted Humphrey. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003.
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Zum ewigen Frieden is a main text of the Enlightenment debate on the law of nations and international law. Published in 1795 when Prussia signed the Treaty of Basel with the French Republic. It summarizes and analyzes the important stakes of international relations in the revolutionary period. The text was immediately translated in French and English and is the origin of a European debate on the subject.
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Reference Works

The Dictionaries and Atlases in this section are helpful reference works dedicated to the French Revolution.

Dictionaries

It is noteworthy that the two major dictionaries dedicated to the French Revolution contain no articles about international law or diplomacy. Neither Furet and Ozouf 1989 nor Soboul 1989 seems to be particularly interested in the international dimensions of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, one can find in them some valuable articles on other subjects related to it.

Furet, François, and Mona Ozouf, eds. A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
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Originally published in 1988, this dictionary contains some articles that address the international aspects of the Revolution (i.e., Denis Richet on limits).
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Soboul, Albert, ed. Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989.
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Some articles concern war (by Jean-Paul Bertaud) and the international dimension of the French Revolution.
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Atlases

Two atlases are of interest. Bertaud 1989 is dedicated to the question of armies and war during the Revolution. Beaurepaire and Marzagalli 2010 has a wider European scope.

Beaurepaire, Pierre-Yves, and Silvia Marzagalli. Atlas de la Révolution française: Circulations des hommes et des idées, 1770–1804. Paris: Autrement, 2010.
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A cultural approach to the international dimensions of the French Revolution by two specialists of the 18th century.
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Bertaud, Jean-Paul. L’armée et la guerre. Atlas de la Révolution Française 3. Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1989.
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This book is the third volume of the Atlas de la Révolution Française series published by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. A very useful book.
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International Relations Theory

International relations specialists are generally not very interested in periods before the 19th century. Armstrong 1993, Osiander 1994, and Bukovansky 2002 are exceptions. They propose global analyses that replace the revolutionary phenomenon in the longue durée of structural change with international orders. It is therefore not astonishing that those works were published after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the question of the “new international order” was at the center of intellectual debates.

Armstrong, David. Revolution and World Order: The Revolutionary State in International Society. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
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David Armstrong studies the way in which revolutions (from the American Revolution to the Chinese Revolution of 1949) modify the international order in which they occur and how revolutionary leaders as leaders of powers in the diplomatic game try to occupy a space in an order they reject a priori.
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Bukovansky, Mlada. Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
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International relations theory specialist Mlada Bukovansky focuses on the two great revolutions of the 18th century and studies their impact on the conceptions of international legitimacy. She answers the question: How can a revolutionary state opposed to the consensus more or less tacitly accepted by other states achieve recognition by the international society?
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Osiander, Andreas. The States System of Europe 1640–1990: Peacemaking and the Conditions of International Stability. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.
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Osiander deals with the forms that assured stability in international systems and societies in a longue durée perspective from the end of the Thirty Years’ War to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The chapters on the Westphalian myth, Peace of Utrecht, and Congress of Vienna contain helpful observations for the comprehension of structural change provoked (or not) by the revolutionary period.
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General History of the Law of Nations

The history of the law of nations in the early modern period is today a largely neglected topic by specialists of international law, who rather prefer the contemporary period. That is why the general histories of the law of nations cited here are old works: Wheaton 1865, Redslob 1923, and Ruyssen 1961. The issues those works dealt with were centered on the idea of “progress” in international law in a somewhat teleological perspective. Their content is nonetheless still useful because they give references to original primary sources, which are sometimes difficult to access.

Redslob, Robert. Histoire des grands principes du droit des gens depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à la veille de la Grande Guerre. Paris: Rousseau, 1923.
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Robert Redslob (b. 1882–d. 1962) was an Alsatian specialist in public international law and teacher at the Academy of International Law of The Hague. His Histoire des grands principes is emblematic of the way the history of the law of nations was conceptualized between the two world wars.
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Ruyssen, Theodore. Les sources doctrinales de l’internationalisme. Vol. 3, De la Révolution française au milieu du XIXe siècle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961.
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Theodore Ruyssen (b. 1868–d. 1967) approaches the question of “internationalism” as a neo-Kantian philosopher and pacifist activist. He was in favor of the League of Nations. The third volume of the Sources doctrinales deals with the revolutionary period and the 19th century. The issues involved here are a bit out of date, but the references to original texts make this book still useful.
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Wheaton, Henry. Histoire des grands progrès du droit des gens depuis la paix de Westphalie. 4th ed. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1865.
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An American diplomat, Henry Wheaton wrote a general history of the law of nations in the mid-19th century. The book is organized in chronological chapters and contains many extracts and analyses of juridical works not easy to access.
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The French Revolution and International Law

The question of the effect of the French Revolution on the principles of the law of nations has long been discussed. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, one can define two major interpretations: Sorel’s insists on the continuity between the ancien régime and the French Revolution, and the neo-Kantian interpretation defends the idea of a rupture between the two eras. In this second school of thought, one can place Nys 1896, Aulard 1921, and Mirkine-Guetzévitch 1929. Besides Sorel 1885–1904 (cited under General Overviews), Guyot 1977, on the Directory and peace, is one of the classics of the historiography on the French Revolution in the field of international relations. More recently, Leuwers 1993 studies the tensions between proclamations of peace and the shift of France’s foreign policy to a new conception of the raison d’État. Klaits and Hatzel 1994 is a collection of contributions by jurists and political philosophers on the international impact of the French Revolution. Belissa 1998 and Belissa 2006 try to present a new global interpretation of the issues of the law of nations in the 18th century and in the French Revolution. Edelstein 2008 deals with the revolutionary interpretation of the law of nations since Grotius and conceptions of foreign and civil war. Jacobs, et al. 2008 deals with political and legal aspects of the relations between revolutionary and Napoleonic France and its so-called satellite states.

Aulard, Alphonse. “La société des nations et la Révolution française.” In Etudes et leçons sur la Révolution Française. Vol. 8. By F. A. Aulard, 135–159. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1921.
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This text is one of the numerous articles written by Alphonse Aulard on the subject of peace and the Revolution. It must be read in the context of post–World War I Europe and the creation of the société des nations.
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Belissa, Marc. Fraternité universelle et intérêt national, 1713–1795: Les cosmopolitiques du droit des gens. Paris: Kimé, 1998.
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This book is a shortened version of Belissa’s doctoral dissertation. It employs historical, philosophical, and juridical perspectives in dealing with the theories and practices of the relations between individuals from the Abbé de Saint-Pierre to Kant. The book insists on the political use of the ideas of the Enlightenment in the American and French Revolutions and examines their foreign policies in the continuity of 18th-century debates.
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Belissa, Marc. Repenser l’ordre européen, 1795–1802: De la société des rois aux droits des nations. Paris: Kimé, 2006.
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In this book drawn from the author’s habilitation thesis, Marc Belissa focuses on the Directory and Consulate periods. He approaches the question of European order redefined by the French Revolution. The author explores theories and geopolitical conceptions of the time.
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Edelstein, Dan. “War and Terror: The Law of Nations from Grotius to the French Revolution.” French Historical Studies 31.2 (Spring 2008): 229–262.
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-2007-021Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article explores the revolutionary interpretation of the natural law of nations and its relations with Terror.
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Guyot, Raymond. Le Directoire et la paix en Europe. Geneva, Switzerland: Slatkine-Megariotis, 1977.
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Originally published in 1911 (Paris: Alcan). An opponent of Sorel, Guyot can be considered a member of the republican school of Alphonse Aulard. Despite its publication date, it is still a very important work for the study of international relations during the underestimated but nevertheless central period of the Directory, in which a large number of treaties were signed between France and European powers.
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Jacobs, Beatrix, Raymond Kubben, and Randall Lesaffer, eds. In the Embrace of France: The Law of Nations and Constitutional Law in the French Satellite States of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Age (1789–1815); Acts of the International Conference Held at Tilburg University on 27 and 28 April 2006. Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos, 2008.
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This book contains contributions by several specialists on the legal consequences of the relations between France and the sister republics, or satellites states. in the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods.
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Klaits, Joseph, and Michael Hatzel, eds. The Global Ramifications of the French Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
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This edited collection contains contributions presented at the conference organized in November 1989 by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ West European Studies Program in Washington, DC. The contributions deal with the international impact of the French Revolution from the perspective of political philosophy and law.
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Leuwers, Hervé. “Révolution et guerre de conquête: Les origines d’une nouvelle raison d’État (1789–1795).” Revue du Nord 75.299 (January–March 1993): 21–40.
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This article deals with the debates about wars of conquest between 1789 and 1795, from the proclamation of the Assemblée Constituante of the 22th of May 1790 to the war of conquest of the Thermidorians.
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Mirkine-Guetzévitch, Boris. “L’influence de la Révolution française sur le développement du droit international dans l’Europe orientale.” Recueil des Cours 22 (1928): 299–457.
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This article by a Russian jurist and disciple of Aulard is focused on the impact of French principles of international law in Eastern Europe from the end of the 18th century to the 19th century.
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Nys, Ernest. “La Révolution française et le droit international.” In Études de Droit International et de Droit Politique, Vol. 1. By Ernest Nys, 318–346. Brussels: A. Castaigne, 1896.
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This article by Ernest Nys is a classic. This Freemason and Belgian jurist published a great deal in the 1890s and 1910s. His approach is typically neo-Kantian.
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Peace

The question of the effects of the French Revolution on conceptions of peace has been a subject of debates since 1789. Chevalley 1912 deals with Abbé Grégoire’s proclamation of a new law of nations in 1793 and 1795. Kant’s Zum ewigen Frieden (Kant 2003, cited under Political and Philosophical Writings), published in 1795, can be considered the end of the Enlightenment debate on peace and a reflection on the effects of the Revolution on human history and on peace efforts. It initiated a wide European debate, discussed in Losurdo 1983, Ferrari and Goyard-Fabre 1998, and Belissa 2005. Arcidiacono 2011 places Kant’s project in a wider analysis of the different conceptions of peacebuilding from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Boris Mirkine-Guetzévitch (b. 1892–d. 1955) published several articles on this topic in the journal La Révolution Française (Mirkine-Guetzévitch 1929, Mirkine-Guetzévitch 1931, and Mirkine-Guetzévitch 1937).

Arcidiacono, Bruno. Cinq types de paix: Une histoire des plans de pacification perpétuelle (XVIIe–XXe siècles). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2011.
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A book written by a specialist of international relations history and professor in Geneva. Arcidiacono presents an analytic history of projects of universal peace since the 18th century. He defines five types of peace—five ways to deal with the problem of its construction.
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Belissa, Marc. “Kant idéaliste? Le débat sur la paix perpétuelle, 1795–1801.” Revolution-française.net, November 2005.
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An article on the debate initiated by Kant’s Zum ewigen Frieden (Kant 2003, cited under Political and Philosophical Writings). The author puts the project in context and critiques the idea of a utopian text detached from the diplomatic and political realities of 1795.
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Chevalley, L. La déclaration du droit des gens de l’abbé Grégoire. Le Caire, France: Paul Barbey, 1912.
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This little book (129 pp.) is the only treatment of the declaration of the law of nations of the Abbé Grégoire presented to the National Convention in 1793 and 1795. It is a very important text for understanding revolutionary conceptions of the law of nations. The author’s approach is more legal than historical.
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Ferrari, Jean, and Simone Goyard-Fabre, eds. L’Année 1796: Sur la paix perpétuelle de Leibniz aux héritiers de Kant. Paris: Vrin, 1998.
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A collection of papers edited by two specialists of the political philosophy of peace in the early modern period. Kant’s treatise is placed in its political and philosophical context (notably in the German-speaking world). The authors take interest also in the reception of the text in France and elsewhere in Europe.
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Losurdo, Domenico. Autocensura e compromesso nel pensiero politico di Kant. Naples, Italy: Bibliopolis, 1983.
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The author studies the way that Kant developed his revolutionary thought while avoiding Prussian censorship. A convincing exercise of deciphering and a deep political vision of Kant’s texts.
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Mirkine-Guetzévitch, Boris. “La Révolution française et l’idée de renonciation à la guerre.” La Révolution Française 82 (1929): 255–265.
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An opponent of the Sorelian tradition, Mirkine-Guetzevitch sees in the French Revolution the moment of the affirmation of a pacific international public law based on the natural law of nations.
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Mirkine-Guetzévitch, Boris. “La Révolution française et les projets d’union européenne.” La Révolution Française 84 (1931): 322–332.
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An article dedicated to the debates about the ideas of European federation or confederation during the French Revolution.
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Mirkine-Guetzévitch, Boris. “Les principes de la Révolution: II. La Révolution et la paix.” La Révolution Française, new ser., 10 (1937): 74–77.
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In this article, the Russian jurist examines the relations between natural rights theories in international law and the proclamation of principles of peace during the Revolution.
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War

The nature of the French revolutionary wars is an important topic in historiography. A good introduction to these debates can be found in Blanning 1986. A more cultural and less geopolitical approach can be found in Bell 2007.

Bell, David. The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
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In this book, David Bell analyzes the transformation of 18th-century cultures of war in the revolutionary period. He uses the controversial concept of “total war” to explain that the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods witnessed a paradigmatic change in the way contemporaries conceived of war.
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Blanning, T. C. W. The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars. London: Longman, 1986.
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Timothy Blanning’s synthesis sums up the 19th and 20th centuries interpretations of the impact of revolutionary wars and their ideological or geopolitical meaning.
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Réunions

The question of annexation of territories (or of the réunions, to use the term current during the French Revolution) is one of the most important in the revolutionary debates on the public law. There are, however, very few works on the subject. Clere 1992 is a case study of one of the first debates about the rights of peoples during the Revolution. Mazauric and Rothiot 2007 contains contributions that deal about limits in a wider geographical scope (the northern and eastern borders of France). Kubben 2011 is a book that analyzes Franco-Batavian relations between 1795 and 1803 from a legal standpoint.

Clere, Jean-Jacques. “Le rattachement d’Avignon et du Comtat à la France: Approche juridique (1789–1791).” Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française 290 (1992): 571–587.
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Clere’s article is a good synthetic approach of the question of the réunions from a public law perspective. He analyzes the arguments used by the protagonists of the debate on Avignon between 1790 and 1791.
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Kubben, Raymond. Regeneration and Hegemony: Franco-Batavian Relations in the Revolutionary Era, 1795–1803. Leiden, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 2011.
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A book drawn from a dissertation on the history of international law presented at the University of Tilburg (The Netherlands). Kubben deals with Franco-Batavian relations from a historical and legal point of view. The book contains in particular an analysis of the discussions about the limits of the Batavian Republic.
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Mazauric, Claude, and Jean-Paul Rothiot, eds. Frontières et espaces frontaliers du Léman à la Meuse: Recompositions et échanges de 1789 à 1814; Actes du colloque de Nancy, 25–27 novembre 2004. Nancy, France: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 2007.
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The proceeding of this conference held in Nancy gathers papers from historians, jurists, and linguists on the transformations of borders and on the very conception of “limits” during the French Revolution.
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Neutrality

The questions of neutrality and of the legitimacy of privateering are among the most discussed during the French Revolution, especially from February 1793 onward, when revolutionary France found itself at war with Great Britain. There are, however, no general overviews on the concept of neutrality during this period. DeConde 1966 deals with the question of American neutrality during the Directory period. Le Guellaff 1999 has a wider chronological scope and a more legal approach.

DeConde, Alexander. The Quasi-War: the Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801. New York: Scribner’s, 1966.
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The problem of neutrality concerns in particular the triangular Atlantic relations between France, Great Britain, and the United States. Considering their position vis-à-vis the European war, Americans were obliged to articulate and defend different conceptions of neutrality regarding the nations at war. DeConde’s book deals more specifically with the events of quasi-war between France and the United States during the Directory.
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Le Guellaff, Florence. Armements en course et Droit des prises maritimes, 1792–1856. Nancy, France: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1999.
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A book that deals with the debates about privateering during the French Revolution and on the juridical forms of international maritime legislation.
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Foreigners

From its beginnings the French Revolution considered itself a universal revolution relating to the rights of every man. The foreigners who wanted to witness this astonishing revolution personally were numerous. Some of them, especially Belgian and Dutch refugees, played an important role in the political conflicts of the period. Did the French Revolution undergo an evolution from a “cosmopolitan” phase during which it was open to foreigners to a “xenophobic” phase during the so-called Terror? Mathiez 1918, Wahnich 1997, and Rapport 2000 show that the situation was much more complex than that.

Mathiez, Albert. La Révolution et les étrangers: Cosmopolitisme et defense national. Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1918.
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A classic book in the historiography of the French Revolution. Mathiez studies in particular the legislation applied to foreigners in Year 2 (1793–1794) and the history of the different complots de l’étranger.
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Rapport, Michael. Nationality and Citizenship in Revolutionary France: The Treatment of Foreigners, 1789–1799. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208457.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This book is the most comprehensive in English. It deals with legislation regarding foreigners during the French Revolution and critiques the topos of the xenophobic and nationalistic reaction supposedly characteristic of Year 2 (1793–1794).
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Wahnich, Sophie. L’impossible citoyen: L’étranger dans le discours de la Révolution française. Paris: Albin Michel, 1997.
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This book is focused on the ways revolutionaries attempted to reconcile—with many contradictions—the universal and the national in their relations to foreigners.
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Nation, Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism

The question of the emergence of patriotism and of the rights of nations in the French Revolution has long been a subject of debate, as one can see in Soboul 1973. The French Revolution is not only the moment when the idea of the nation affirms itself as a subject of law. As Gauthier 1992 has shown, revolutionaries tried to reconcile the polis and the cosmopolis. Robespierre’s thought on the universal rights of man is a case study of this tension between the citoyen and the genre humain, as can be seen in Rapport 1996. French historians generally avoid using the word “nationalism” to describe revolutionary political theories. They prefer to use the term “patriotism,” which was the one contemporaries used. Indeed, “nationalism” has a very different sense in French than in English. For the French, the term has to do with theories of national superiority appearing at the end of the 19th century; for the American and the English, it has to do with the process of nation building. Hence, there are misunderstandings between French and Anglophone historians. One can get a sense for these different approaches by comparing Guiomar 2009 and Bell 2001. The definition of nationalism is also an important issue in the British Isles, as one can see in the contributions in Dann and Dinwiddy 1988.

Bell, David A. The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
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David Bell studies the manifestations of the emergence of the national idea in France in particular during the second half of the 18th century and the French Revolution. An important work in the bibliography on the question.
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Dann, Otto, and John Dinwiddy, eds. Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution. London: Ronceverte, 1988.
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A collection of papers around the notion of nationalism in England, Ireland, and France during the revolutionary period. The volume’s introduction by the two editors presents a synthesis of the historiography of the concept of revolutionary nationalism.
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Gauthier, Florence. Triomphe et mort du droit naturel en révolution: 1789–1795–1802. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992.
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Gauthier analyzes the place of natural law in revolutionary political theories. The third part of the book is devoted to the cosmopolitique de la liberté, to the criticism of war of conquest during the French Revolution, and to the colonial question.
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Guiomar, Jean-Yves. L’idéologie nationale: Nation, représentation politique, territorialité. Bécherel, France: Les Perséides, 2009.
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The first edition of this book was published in 1974; it was revised in 2009. Guiomar is interested in the different revolutionary conceptions of the nation and patrie and to their relation with the construction of national territory.
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Rapport, Michael. “Robespierre and the Universal Rights of Man.” French History 10 (1996): 303–333.
DOI: 10.1093/fh/10.3.303Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A case study: Robespierre’s universalist conception of the rights of man. A perspective also found in Belissa 1998 (cited under French Revolution and International Law), Gauthier 1992, and Wahnich 1997 (cited under Foreigners).
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Soboul, Albert, ed. Patriotisme et nationalisme en Europe à l’époque de la Révolution française et de Napoléon. Paris: Société des Études Robespierristes, 1973.
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A collection of contributions presented during the Thirteenth International Congress of Historical Sciences in Moscow in 1970. Albert Soboul’s introduction frames the question of the relations between the national question and social realities. A landmark in the historiography of revolutionary patriotism.
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Diplomacy

There are very few recent works dedicated to the study of the structures of French diplomacy during the Revolution per se. Frey and Frey 1993 and Martin 2012 are exceptions. Rao 1994 is more interested in the political debate about the new diplomatic relations between sister republics.

Frey, Linda, and Marsha Frey. “The Reign of Charlatans Is Over: The French Revolutionary Attack on Diplomatic Practice.” Journal of Modern History 65.4 (1993): 706–744.
DOI: 10.1086/244723Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An article that poses the question of revolutionary debates on diplomacy. The two authors can be included in the Sorelian historiographical tradition.
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Martin, Virginie. “La diplomatie en Révolution: Structures, agents, pratiques et renseignements diplomatiques: L’exemple des diplomates français en Italie, 1789–1796.” 3 vols. PhD diss., Paris I Sorbonne, 2012.
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A doctoral thesis. The author criticizes the ideas of Sorelian historiography about the destruction of the French diplomacy during the Revolution.
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Rao, Ana Maria. “Républiques et monarchies à l’époque révolutionnaire: Une diplomatie nouvelle?” Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française 296 (1994): 267–278.
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In this article, Rao studies the debates during the period of the Directory on the new revolutionary diplomacy, focusing particularly on the neo-Jacobins and the Italian patriots.
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