Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

WARby such intellectual support, and honoured eminent foreign sympathizersand those whom it believed to stand for its principles bygranting them honorary French citizenship,* neither a Beethoven nora Robert Burns were of much political or military importance inthemselves.Serious political philo-Jacobinism or pro-French sentiment existed inthe main in certain areas adjoining France, where social conditionswere comparable or cultural contacts permanent (the Low Countries,the Rhineland, Switzerland and Savoy), in Italy; and for somewhatdifferent reasons in Ireland and Poland. In Britain 'Jacobinism' wouldundoubtedly have been a phenomenon of greater political importance,even after The Terror, if it had not clashed with the traditional anti-French bias of popular English nationalism, compounded equally ofJohn Bull's beef-fed contempt for the starveling continentals (all Frenchin the popular cartoons of the period are as thin as matchsticks) and ofhostility to what was, after all, England's 'hereditary enemy', thoughalso Scotland's hereditary ally.f British Jacobinism was unique in beingprimarily an artisan or working-class phenomenon, at least after thefirst general enthusiasm had passed. The Corresponding Societies canclaim to be the first independent political organizations of the labouringclass. But it found a voice of unique force in Tom Paine's 'Rights ofMan' (which may have sold a million copies), and some politicalbacking from Whig interests, themselves immune to persecution byreason of their wealth and social position, who were prepared to defendthe traditions of British civil liberty and the desirability of a negotiatedpeace with France. Nevertheless, the real weakness of British Jacobinismis indicated by the fact that the very fleet at Spithead, which mutiniedat a crucial stage of the war (1797), clamoured to be allowed to sailagainst the French once their economic demands had been met.In the Iberian peninsula, in the Habsburg dominions, Central andEastern Germany, Scandinavia, the Balkans and Russia, philo-Jacobinism was a negligible force. It attracted some ardent young men,some illuminist intellectuals and a few others who, like IgnatiusMartinovics in Hungary or Rhigas in Greece, occupy the honouredplaces of precursors in the history of their countries' struggle fornational or social liberation. But the absence of any mass support fortheir views among the middle and upper classes, let alone their isolation* To wit Priestley, Bentham, Wilberforce, Clarkson (the anti-slavery agitator), JamesMackintosh, David Williams from "Britain, Klopstock, Schiller, Campe and AnarcharsisCloots from Germany, Festalozzi from Switzerland, Kosziusko from Poland, Gorani fromItaly, Cornelius de Pauw from the Netherlands, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, TomPaine and Joel Barlow from the USA. Not all of these were sympathizers with the Revolution.t This may not be unconnected with the fact that Scottish Jacobinism was a very muchmore powerful popular force.79