Bolcer 1 Emily Bolcer Professor Carter-David Historiography Revision 29 November 2013 The French Revolution definitely influenced British people such as Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas about their government. Their ideas have influenced many different historians to review their works and see how the British were exactly influenced by the French Revolution. Emma Macelod’sBritish Attitudes towards the French Revolution, Michael S. C. Smith’sThe French Revolution, British Cultural Politics, and Recent Scholarship across the Disciples, Daniel O’Neill’sJohn Adams and Mary Wollstonecraft on the French Revolution and Democracy, and Katherine Binhammer’sMarie Antoinette was ‘One of Us’: British Accounts of the Martyred Wicked Queenall show British reactions towards the French Revolution through their scholarly articles. It has been widely accepted that Thomas Paine wrote his pamaphlet,The Rights of Man in response to Edmund Burke’sReflections on the Revolution in France.Edmund published his pamphlet in 1790 and discussed his conservative view towards the revolution and favored loyal views to the British Monarchy. One year later, Thomas Paine published his pamphlet, opposing Burke’s views and stating that it was the right of the people to revolt against their king if they felt he was doing an unjust job of keeping them protected. He goes on to list 31 points to prove his argument. Macelod states in her article that this assumption has been challenged by many different historians. She states, “Burke had written his tract for an elite readership and had never intended it to be a blueprint for a popular movement,” (Macelod, 693).She continues to discuss how Paine never would have read something of Burke’s caliber. If Paine and Burke weren’t
Bolcer 2 writing in response to one another, were their articles merely coincidental? In her scholarly monograph,The British Monarchy and the French Revolution, shows that Paine and Burke were working together.She shows that Burke wrote hisReflectionsin response to Dr. Richard Price’s
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