John Bew
Chaos Theories
Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789–1848
By Adam Zamoyski
William Collins 569pp £30 order from our bookshop
‘Everything has changed in our civilisation; it has made much fortunate progress, but it has also left us some new vices’, wrote Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s former police chief, with some pessimism, after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. It was ‘no longer possible to govern men in the same manner’, he feared, and he was not the only one to have such concerns. Across Europe, a whole generation of the political and social elite was permanently scarred by the events of the French Revolution and its aftermath. Long after the defeat of Napoleon, these elites remained terrified by the prospect of disorder, radicalism and anarchy. In this elegant and panoramic survey of Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Russia, Adam Zamoyski explores this state of terror using a wide selection of manuscript sources, state papers, diplomatic correspondence and diaries. These abound ‘in imagery of volcanic eruption engulfing the entire social and political order’ and express ‘an almost pathological dread that dark forces were at work undermining the moral fabric on which that order rested’.
Some of these dangers were genuine. Other threats – such as the activities of Carbonari, secret societies and Freemasons – were deliberately inflated in order to provide governments with the pretext for repression. This ‘phantom terror’ had
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw