David A Bell
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 273570 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | David A Bell |
| NOMBRES | David A |
| APELLIDO | Bell |
| FIRMA | BELL D A |
| AFILIACIONES | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0300-7756 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 46 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 27 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 46 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1978 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
Reflections on the U.S. Presidential Election of 2024
During the 2024 US presidential campaign, I wrote a series of 22 columns for the Tocqueville 21 website chronicling events and providing commentary. In this essay I reflect back both on the columns, and on the election itself. I note that I, like most commentators, by focusing on the “horse race” aspects of the election, failed to anticipate the radical nature of Trump’s second term in office, and offer an explanation for why and how this radical…
The Age of Trump and Musk
« La guerre totale, cadeau empoisonné des Lumières »
Bourgeois Enlightenment revivified
This article, inspired by Colin Jones’ ‘Bourgeois revolution revivified’, calls on historians to pay renewed attention to the social and economic contexts of the French Enlightenment, and its relationship to the rise of commercial capitalism. It criticizes influential works in the ‘social history of ideas’ for placing too much emphasis on the compatibility of the Enlightenment and Old Regime social structures, and instead suggests that French Enl…
Hervé Drévillon, Penser et écrire la guerre. Contre Clausewitz, 1780-1837, Paris, Passés composés, 2021, 352 p
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
For a New Social History of the Enlightenment
Despite the voluminous work devoted to the “social history of Enlightenment ideas” since the 1970s, surprisingly little has been done to integrate its findings into general interpretations of this moment in intellectual history. Attempts to understand the Enlightenment as a long-term global phenomenon have made it difficult to situate it within any social context other than that of globalization. This essay makes the case for relating the Enlight…
The Atlantic Revolutions
In 1775, the Atlantic world was utterly dominated by four monarchies: those of Great Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal. Between them, they largely controlled the seaways. They laid claim to vast territories, including most of the two American continents. They mustered the region’s strongest land armies. Their subjects carried out nearly all of its most dynamic economic activity, much of which was supported by slave labor. Only a tiny percentag…
Tocqueville, Napoleon, and History-Writing in a Democratic Age
In Democracy in America, Tocqueville posited a contrast between the way history is written in “aristocratic” and “democratic” ages. In the former, historians tend to assign great weight to the actions of individuals; in the latter, they privilege great impersonal forces that act upon the mass. The essay examines Tocqueville’s views of Napoleon Bonaparte in light of these reflections. It concludes that despite his occasional vulnerability to the l…
The French Revolution, the Vendée, and Genocide
The Vendee is the name of a small river in western France. From its source near the village of L’Absie, it meanders some fifty miles southwest through lush fields and pastures before emptying into
The French Revolution and Napoleon
It would be hard to imagine a better book for introducing undergraduates to the French Revolution and Napoleon. The authors, Lynn Hunt and Jack R. Censer, manage to pack an enormous amount into a relatively slim volume, including the fruits of recent research that puts the subject into a global context. Better yet, they manage to do so without sacrificing clarity. Excellent timelines and maps are also available to help students navigate through t…
Le centenaire de Daniel Bell
Revolutionary France and the Origins of Nationalism. An Old Problem Revisited
Anders Engberg-Pedersen. Empire of Chance
The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon
Questioning the Global Turn
Editorial| February 01 2014 Questioning the Global Turn: The Case of the French Revolution David A. Bell David A. Bell Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google French Historical Studies (2014) 37 (1): 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-2376501 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation David A. Bell; Questioning the Global Turn: The Case of the French Revolution. French …
From Valmy to Waterloo
Despite the mountains of scholarship published on the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, a concise, readable and reliable survey of the experiences of the French population in wartime has been lacking. Marie-Cécile Thoral has now rectified this situation in her modest, but useful and instructive volume. Drawing principally on printed memoirs, correspondence and diaries, Thoral illuminates the experiences of both soldiers and civilians, wit…
Homage to Christian Delacampagne
Homage to Christian Delacampagne David A. Bell (bio) Christian Delacampagne was an unusual—and unusually fortunate— appointment for Johns Hopkins. Most of our faculty have spent nearly all their professional lives toiling away within academia on a relatively narrow range of subjects. Christian certainly had all the academic credentials one could want, not to mention an enviably long and varied teaching experience. But he had spent most of his car…
Art and Land in New Zealand
Michel Chaloult, Les « Canadiens » de l’expédition Lewis et Clark, 1804-1806
Michel Chaloult, Les « Canadiens » de l’expédition Lewis et Clark, 1804-1806 : la traversée du continent, Sillery, Septentrion, 2003, 189 p.. An article from journal Recherches sociographiques (Volume 48, Number 2, mai–août 2007, pp. 11-191), on Érudit
Malesherbes et Tocqueville
Je me propose d'examiner ici un coup d'État français. C'est un coup d'état qui est attendu depuis plusieurs années, à la suite de longs conflits entre le pouvoir exécutif et les soi-disant représèntants du peuple. Il est médité, préparé et exécuté par le chef de l'État lui-même contre les représentants du peuple. Il est suivi par l'exécration quasiuniverselle du chef de l'État par l'opinion publique. Néanmoins, après un certain temps, le coup d'E…
Napoleon in the Flesh
Napoleon in the Flesh David A. Bell (bio) "The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom and was finishing his toilet. Uttering little snorts and grunts, he presented now his stout back, now his plump hairy chest to the flesh-brush with which a valet was rubbing him down. Another valet, with his finger over the mouth of a bottle, was sprinkling eau-de-Cologne on the Emperor's pampered person . . ."1 There is something about Tolstoy's descript…
Class, consciousness, and the fall of the bourgeois revolution
The Marxian vulgate, which long dominated the historiography of the French Revolution, and which was broadly accepted in the social sciences, is no longer sustainable. But newer attempts to frame the issue of class in entirely linguistic terms, producing the claim that France had no bourgeoisie because few people explicitly described themselves as “bourgeois,” are not entirely convincing. The Revolution brought into being, and helped to sustain, …
L’invention de la société
Parler d'« invention » de la société peut surprendre, du moins d'un point de vue de sens commun. Pourtant la société est bien une création socio-historique, esquissée au xviie siècle et couronnée au xviiie siècle. Elle fait partie de ces entités qui adviennent à l'existence à travers les concepts utilisés pour les désigner. Le terme désigne un regroupement déterminé par la volonté humaine, qui ne peut se transformer en corps politique que par un …
The Cult of the Nation in France
Using 18th-century France as a case study, David Bell offers an alternative argument about the origins of nationalism. Before the 18th century, the very idea of nation-building - a central component of nationalism - did not exist. During this period, leading French intellectual and political figures came to see perfect national unity as a critical priority, and so sought ways to endow all French people with the same language, laws, customs, and v…
Le caractère national et l'imaginaire républicain auXVIIIesiècle
sL'article traite de la conception du caractère national que l'on avait au XVIIIesiècle, et de ses implications sur la Révolution française. Il soutient d'abord que la rhétorique révolutionnaire relative àl'' homme nouveau ' était souvent centrée sur le concept d'un ' peuple neuf ', présenté en opposition avec un ' ancien peuple ' spécifiquement français. Ces vues se fondaient sur une science, née au siècle des Lumières, qui attribuait le caractè…
Questioning the Global Turn
Editorial| February 01 2014 Questioning the Global Turn: The Case of the French Revolution David A. Bell David A. Bell Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google French Historical Studies (2014) 37 (1): 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-2376501 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation David A. Bell; Questioning the Global Turn: The Case of the French Revolution. French …
The "Public Sphere," the State, and the World of Law in Eighteenth-Century France
On 20 July 1735 a small pamphlet was published illegally in Paris under the title An Amnesty Granted to the Lawyers.' The Parisian Order of Lawyers, which enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for haughtiness at the time, had just suffered a ritual humiliation in the Parlement (high court) af ter a dispute over protocol with several young magistrates. The Amnesty, whose author probably belonged to the law clerks' raucous Kingdom of the Basoche, spok…
Class, consciousness, and the fall of the bourgeois revolution
The Marxian vulgate, which long dominated the historiography of the French Revolution, and which was broadly accepted in the social sciences, is no longer sustainable. But newer attempts to frame the issue of class in entirely linguistic terms, producing the claim that France had no bourgeoisie because few people explicitly described themselves as “bourgeois,” are not entirely convincing. The Revolution brought into being, and helped to sustain, …
Le caractère national et l'imaginaire républicain auXVIIIesiècle
sL'article traite de la conception du caractère national que l'on avait au XVIIIesiècle, et de ses implications sur la Révolution française. Il soutient d'abord que la rhétorique révolutionnaire relative àl'' homme nouveau ' était souvent centrée sur le concept d'un ' peuple neuf ', présenté en opposition avec un ' ancien peuple ' spécifiquement français. Ces vues se fondaient sur une science, née au siècle des Lumières, qui attribuait le caractè…
For a New Social History of the Enlightenment
Despite the voluminous work devoted to the “social history of Enlightenment ideas” since the 1970s, surprisingly little has been done to integrate its findings into general interpretations of this moment in intellectual history. Attempts to understand the Enlightenment as a long-term global phenomenon have made it difficult to situate it within any social context other than that of globalization. This essay makes the case for relating the Enlight…
The French Revolution, the Vendée, and Genocide
The Vendee is the name of a small river in western France. From its source near the village of L’Absie, it meanders some fifty miles southwest through lush fields and pastures before emptying into
How (and How Not) to Write Histoire Evenementielle
David A. Bell, How (and How Not) to Write Histoire Evénementielle: Recent Books on Eighteenth-Century French Politics, French Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 4, Special Issue: Biography (Autumn, 1996), pp. 1169-1189
In Search of Eighteenth-Century Parisian Public Opinion
Lawyers Into Demagogues
Journal Article LAWYERS INTO DEMAGOGUES: CHANCELLOR MAUPEOU AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF LEGAL PRACTICE IN FRANCE 1771–1789 Get access David A. Bell David A. Bell Yale University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 130, Issue 1, February 1991, Pages 107–141, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/130.1.107 Published: 01 February 1991
The education debate
As one who has deserted pure physics for technology I cannot comment on Brian Woolnough's views on physics teaching in schools ( Physics Bulletin May 1978 p203); but I am concerned about some of the more general points which he introduces. I have no certain knowledge about the general level of school leavers, but I do know that the standards of university entrants have declined in English and in mathematics.
Nation-Building and Cultural Particularism in Eighteenth-Century France
OF ALL THE LEGACIES OF Louis XIV, the most tangible but also in many ways the most problematic were France's territorial gains. Between 1648 and 1697, the kingdom formally acquired large populations that were alien to France in their history, social structure, government, patterns of trade-even in their language and religion. At best, these populations made France an even more diverse patchwork quilt of peoples. At worst, they threatened the secu…
Unmasking a King
Lawyers Into Demagogues
Journal Article LAWYERS INTO DEMAGOGUES: CHANCELLOR MAUPEOU AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF LEGAL PRACTICE IN FRANCE 1771–1789 Get access David A. Bell David A. Bell Yale University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 130, Issue 1, February 1991, Pages 107–141, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/130.1.107 Published: 01 February 1991
The "Public Sphere," the State, and the World of Law in Eighteenth-Century France
On 20 July 1735 a small pamphlet was published illegally in Paris under the title An Amnesty Granted to the Lawyers.' The Parisian Order of Lawyers, which enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for haughtiness at the time, had just suffered a ritual humiliation in the Parlement (high court) af ter a dispute over protocol with several young magistrates. The Amnesty, whose author probably belonged to the law clerks' raucous Kingdom of the Basoche, spok…
Lawyers and Citizens
Not only were lawyers heavily represented among the men who rose to power in France in 1789, to a large extent, they also shapted the evolution of French political culture under the ancien régime. David Bell's new book traces the development of the French legal profession between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution, showing how lawyers influenced, and were influenced by, the period's passionate political and religious conflicts. Bell…
Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1810 . Carla Hesse , Victoria E. Bonnell , Lynn Hunt
Lawyers and Citizens
Revolutionary France, 1770-1880 . François Furet , Antonia Nevill
In Search of Eighteenth-Century Parisian Public Opinion
How (and How Not) to Write Histoire Evenementielle
David A. Bell, How (and How Not) to Write Histoire Evénementielle: Recent Books on Eighteenth-Century French Politics, French Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 4, Special Issue: Biography (Autumn, 1996), pp. 1169-1189
Law and Citizenship in Early Modern France
Scholars of French history have long maintained that the modern French notion of citizenship - including the concept that citizenship endows one with certain civil rights - is a product of the Enlightenment. But this book argues that many of the ideas that found their way into Enlightenment tracts in fact had their roots in the French Renaissance. Wells shows how an understanding of the droit d'aubaine - the legal disabilities of foreign-born res…
Lawyers and Citizens
Not only were lawyers heavily represented among the men who rose to power in France in 1789, to a large extent, they also shapted the evolution of French political culture under the ancien regime. David Bell's new book traces the development of the French legal profession between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution, showing how lawyers influenced, and were influenced by, the period's passionate political and religious conflicts. Bell…
The Genesis of the French Revolution
The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone 1763–98, Vol. 1: Tone's Career in Ireland to June 1795
Changing Identities in Early Modern France
Changing Identities in Early Modern France offers new interpretations of what it meant to be French during a period of profound transition, from the outbreak of the Hundred Years War in the mid-fourteenth century to the consolidation of the Bourbon monarchy in the seventeenth century. These essays consider a period when medieval notions were gradually giving way to new definitions of the state, society, and family; when dynastic struggles and rel…
History
In the spring of 1984, I came across a blisteringly polemical account of the American historical profession in Harper's magazine. Written by Gertrude Himmelfarb, a distinguished conservative scholar of Victorian Britain, it charged her fellow historians with such obsessive eagerness to uncover the smallest details of everyday life in the past that they had lost sight of the truly important things in history: ideas, politics, war and diplomacy. Hi…
Culture and religion
To many of the eighteenth-century intellectuals known as the philosophes, the story of their age was a story of epic conflict. On the one side stood the defenders of faith and tradition. These, in the story, were the forces of darkness: fanatical, superstitious, irrational, and arbitrary. On the other side stood the philosophes themselves, and like-minded allies. They were the forces of light, or, as they liked to say, of Enlightenment: advocates…
The Unbearable Lightness of Being French
David A. Bell, The Unbearable Lightness of Being French: Law, Republicanism and National Identity at the End of the Old Regime, The American Historical Review, Vol. 106, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 1215-1235
Violence, Terror, and War
Research Article| October 01 2001 Violence, Terror, and War: A Comment on Arno Mayer's The Furies David A. Bell David A. Bell Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google French Historical Studies (2001) 24 (4): 559–567. https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-24-4-559 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation David A. Bell; Violence, Terror, and War: A Comment on Arno Mayer's The Fur…
Canon Wars in Eighteenth-Century France
MLN - Volume 116, Number 4, September 2001 (French Issue)
The Cult of the Nation in France
Using 18th-century France as a case study, David Bell offers an alternative argument about the origins of nationalism. Before the 18th century, the very idea of nation-building - a central component of nationalism - did not exist. During this period, leading French intellectual and political figures came to see perfect national unity as a critical priority, and so sought ways to endow all French people with the same language, laws, customs, and v…
Le caractère national et l'imaginaire républicain auXVIIIesiècle
sL'article traite de la conception du caractère national que l'on avait au XVIIIesiècle, et de ses implications sur la Révolution française. Il soutient d'abord que la rhétorique révolutionnaire relative àl'' homme nouveau ' était souvent centrée sur le concept d'un ' peuple neuf ', présenté en opposition avec un ' ancien peuple ' spécifiquement français. Ces vues se fondaient sur une science, née au siècle des Lumières, qui attribuait le caractè…
L’invention de la société
Parler d'« invention » de la société peut surprendre, du moins d'un point de vue de sens commun. Pourtant la société est bien une création socio-historique, esquissée au xviie siècle et couronnée au xviiie siècle. Elle fait partie de ces entités qui adviennent à l'existence à travers les concepts utilisés pour les désigner. Le terme désigne un regroupement déterminé par la volonté humaine, qui ne peut se transformer en corps politique que par un …
Class, consciousness, and the fall of the bourgeois revolution
The Marxian vulgate, which long dominated the historiography of the French Revolution, and which was broadly accepted in the social sciences, is no longer sustainable. But newer attempts to frame the issue of class in entirely linguistic terms, producing the claim that France had no bourgeoisie because few people explicitly described themselves as “bourgeois,” are not entirely convincing. The Revolution brought into being, and helped to sustain, …
Political science (29 obras) · European Political History Analysis (26 obras) · History (26 obras) · Law (26 obras) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis (24 obras) · Politics (21 obras) · Art (18 obras) · Sociology (15 obras) · Philosophy (14 obras) · Law (11 obras)