5/9/2023 0 Comments The black jacobins review![]() ![]() ![]() The Constitution of 1787 even contrived a euphemistic acknowledgement of slavery. The revolution of, amongst others, American slave-holders enunciated some fine principles but left slavery undisturbed where it really counted, in the plantation zone. The English revolutions actually helped to rivet the chains on some millions of captive Africans. Indeed, if we compare the French Revolutionary record on slavery with the three Anglo-Saxon revolutions preferred by O’Brien then there can be little doubt about the superiority of Jacobinism over Anglo-American liberalism. ![]() The second is that O’Brien is only able to deny the emancipatory legacy of the Revolution by entirely ignoring its impact on the French colonies in particular and on New World slavery in general. The first is quite simply that if the Revolution was as dead as O’Brien claims then it would be unlikely to arouse such an impassioned and comprehensive attack. I would like to offer three objections to the scathing funeral ode pronounced by Conor Cruise O’Brien, “The Decline and Fall of the French Revolution”. ![]()
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