Mirabeau atelier

The Mirabeau atelier was an advocacy group in pre-revolutionary France for the thought of Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, consisting of sympathetic thinkers and writers. Israel called it Mirabeau's "high-powered anti-aristocratic crypto-republican French-Swiss propaganda machine". The atelier played a significant role in August 1789 in drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Courrier de Provence

This newspaper for Mirabeau's views was initially (10 May to 25 July 1789) issued under the title Lettres du comte Mirabeau à ses commettants. It followed Les États généraux that had been suppressed after two issues. The sequel Courrier de Provence ran to 1791, and Étienne Dumont and Jacques Antoine Du Roveray were on the editorial staff. Dumont and Du Roveray, both Genevan exiles, were Bowood circle members who travelled to Paris from London in March 1789. Dumont later wrote of the Genevan atelier as comprising also Étienne Clavière and the pastor Étienne-Solomon Reybaz.

Arthur McCandless Wilson in reviewing L'Atelier de Mirabeau (1962) by Jean Bénétruy, about the Genevan group, describes a division of labour: Clavière on finance; Du Roveray liaison with abolitionists of the Société des amis des Noirs; Dumont and Reybaz with facility for publicity and speechwriting. They were joined on the Courrier by the economist Jean-Baptiste Say.

Speech writers and authors of position papers

Based on research of François Victor Alphonse Aulard, Mirabeau was supported, besides the Genevans, by Alexandre Cazeau de Roumillac (the soi-disant Marquis de Caseau), Jean-Joachim Pellenc [fr] and Antoine-Adrien Lamourette.

The original and covert use by Mirabeau of the Genevan group evolved after the storming of the Bastille. A disillusioned Dumont returned to London in early 1790. In correspondence with Samuel Romilly, he revealed the technique of "faiseurs" operating in mutual ignorance employed by Mirabeau in a cell-like system, for drafting. The overt entourage of Mirabeau also contributed, notably Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, alongside the allies Dominique Joseph Garat and the Comte de Volney. The entourage was closely related to the continuing salon of Claude Adrien Helvétius, run by his widow Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius.

The secrecy led defenders of Mirabeau's reputation in the 19th century to discount passages in Dumont's memoirs dealing with the atelier. Scholarly work by Aulard and Philippe Plan (Un Collaborateur de Mirabeau, 1874, on Reynaz) began to turn the tide.

Notes

  1. 1 2 Sorkin, David (5 June 2018). The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna. Princeton University Press. p. 283. ISBN 978-0-691-18818-8.
  2. ↑ Israel, Jonathan (2019). The Enlightenment that Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748-1830. Oxford University Press. p. 509. ISBN 978-0-19-873840-4.
  3. ↑ Baker, Keith Michael (1998). Kates, Gary (ed.). The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies. Psychology Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-415-14490-2.
  4. ↑ Théobald, Gérard (29 April 2014). La Liberté est ou n'est pas... (in French). Editions Publibook. p. 769. ISBN 978-2-342-02233-9.
  5. ↑ La Révolution française (in French). Vol. I. 1881. p. 187.
  6. ↑ Whatmore, Richard. "Duroveray, Jacques-Antoine (1747–1814)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/98252. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  7. ↑ Whatmore, Richard (31 July 2012). Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain, and France in the Eighteenth Century. Yale University Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-300-18357-3.
  8. ↑ Wilson, Arthur M. (1963). "Review of L'Atelier de Mirabeau: Quatre proscrits genevois dans la tourmente révolutionnaire". The Journal of Modern History. 35 (3): 297–298. ISSN 0022-2801.
  9. ↑ Israel, Jonathan (2019). The Enlightenment that Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748-1830. Oxford University Press. p. 375. ISBN 978-0-19-873840-4.
  10. ↑ Stephens, Henry Morse (1892). Mirabeau. Vergniaud. Gensonné. Guadet. Louvet. Cambon (in French). Vol. 1. Clarendon Press. pp. 43–45.
  11. ↑ Blamires, C. (10 July 2008). The French Revolution and the Creation of Benthamism. Springer. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-230-22772-9.
  12. ↑ Bénétruy, J. (1962). L'atelier de Mirabeau: quarte proscrits genevois dans la tourmente révolutionnaire (in French). A. et J. Picard. p. 479.
  13. ↑ Blamires, C. (10 July 2008). The French Revolution and the Creation of Benthamism. Springer. pp. 132–135. ISBN 978-0-230-22772-9.
  14. ↑ Stephens, Henry Morse (1892). Mirabeau. Vergniaud. Gensonné. Guadet. Louvet. Cambon (in French). Vol. 1. Clarendon Press. p. 46.