Regenerating the World: The French Revolution, Civic Festivals, and the Forging of Modern American Democracy, 1793–1795

In the last quarter century, historians of the American Revolution and early republic have returned to the problem of democracy, and the resulting scholarship has fundamentally reshaped the historiographical landscape. Whereas authors in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s emphasized republicanism, liberalism, and the emergence of political parties, many today begin with the supposition that democratic ideas and actions occupied a constitutive role in the United States' founding. Here, Hale seeks a way around those intractable queries and the aforementioned a historical, moralistic strain by employing a definition of democracy that revolves around democratic self-consciousness and a contest over the social order rather than access to political power.