By R.W. Morrell
The Transatlantic Republican, Thomas Paine And The Age Of Revolutions. Bernard Vincent. 178pp. Paperback. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2005. ISBN90-420-16140. 05.00
Professor Bernard Vincent is France’s leading authority on Thomas Paine, and in this book he brings together a collection of his published essays on many of the ideas, work and influence of Thomas Paine. All but one originally appeared in English, the exception being ‘La strategie du temps clans Common Sense’ which has been translated into English for this book under the title ‘The Strategy of Time in Common Sense’.
The author provides an interesting introduction entitled ‘Storming the “Bastille of Words”: Tom Paine’s Revolution in Writing’, in which he discusses Paine style of writing and expression, showing how he was able to express himself so easily, noting Benjamin Franklin’s observation that “Others can rule, many can fight but only Thomas Paine can write for us the English tongue”. Professor Vincent draws attention to the from which Paine drew his inspiration, for example the theatre with comments such as “the puppet show of stale and aristocracy” and his description of “mixed government” as a “pantomimical contrivance”. It is easy to overlook the fact that these comments may hint at Paine having an interest in the theatre, thereby adding something to what we know of him as an individual. Professor Vincent also describes him as “a Freudian before Freud.
Commenting on The Age of Reason, the author correctly points out that it was not the first critique of the bible to have been published during “the Age of Enlightenment”, but it was, he states, the first to have been written in such simple and direct language, “larded with wit, humour, verve, cheek (with at times a touch of demagoguery), a clever mixture of popular common sense and scientific analysis that could easily be grasped by the mass of ordinary people – those precisely whom the Bible and the established Churches had always endeavoured to reach out to control”. Here I might have gone further, for Paine’s criticism of Christian claims in particular was perhaps the most detailed since that of Celsus, in the second century, and as in the case of Paine’s book the church sought to ban his True Doctrine.
The book is divided into two thematic parts, the first a series of essays with the general title of ‘Paine America and France’, the subjects being in addition to the translated French essay, ‘Thomas Paine, the Masonic Order, and the American Revolution’, which originally appeared in the Bulletin of the Thomas Paine Society in1988; ‘From Fact to Myth: The Americans in Paris during the French Revolution’; ‘Paine’s “Share” in the French Revolution’; ‘Thomas Paine, the Louisiana Purchase and the Rights of Man’, and finally, ‘A National of Nowhere: The Problem of Thomas Paine’s American Citizenship’.
The second part is on ‘Paine and the Enlightenment’, with essays on ‘Thomas Paine and the Issue of Universal Suffrage’; ‘A Quaker with a Difference: Tom Paine’s Republican Rhetoric of War and Peace’; ‘From the Rights of Man to the Rights of God: Thomas Paine’s Ultimate Challenge’ and ‘A Pioneer with a Difference: Thomas Paine and Early ‘American Studies”.
This last I found of particular interest both in its discussion of the drift away from an emphasis in France on English, or British studies, to one on American studies, going on to compare four writers who had “studied America long before we (his emphasis) did or before ‘American Studies’ even existed, these being Crevecoeur, Paine, Rayne! and Tocqueville, with the conclusion that “only Thomas Paine stands out as a real pioneer or founder of what we now call ‘American Studies’.
The scope of the book ensures that it prompts its readers to re- think at times their opinions on several of Paine’s ideas, which is all to the good. For me not the least of these is the suggestion that Rights of Man is a religious book, made in the essay, ‘From the Rights of Man to the Rights of God: Thomas Paine’s Ultimate Challenge’, and the extent to which religious imagery pervades Paine’s writing from Common Sense onwards. The author holds that while The Age of Reason is depicted as a blasphemous work it is really “a book on blasphemy”, a notion I would dispute in light of the framework into which blasphemy historically slots and the definitions involved. I suppose it all depends on what is meant by blasphemy. There is an error in this essay, for Paine was not charged with high treason but with seditious libel.
This book was both stimulating and a pleasure to read for the author writes extremely well. Almost Painite in style, I am tempted to say. His essays are fully referenced with his notes being placed below the pages to which they apply rather than at the end of each essay, or, as is usually the case, at the rear of the book. I always find bibliographies of value as they alert me to other publications, and there is a good one in this book. There is also a very good index. If I have a complaint it is the use of the abbreviated ‘Tom’, which in the 189) century was used as a means of insulting an individual, hence its use by several of Paine’s critics in works attacking him as also in some of the Gillray caricatures.