ABSTRACT
Modernity, freedom, and revolution are an inextricably interwoven nexus in the eighteenth century, as Hannah Arendt states in her famous book On Revolution. In that era, the emergence of the modern conception of freedom coincides with the genuinely new idea of revolution – as the overthrow of traditionally legitimized authority and oppression, and the establishment of a realm of freedom.1 In sharp contrast, servitude or slavery as the ownership of persons stands as a metaphor for the condition to be overcome. According to the dominant narrative, liberation from this form of subordination manifest in absolutism and feudalism is commonly read as the beginning of political modernity, deeply anchored in Western civilization. In his impressive The Age of Democratic Revolution, Robert R. Palmer integrates the revolutionary upheavals in Western Europe and North America, arguing that the American Revolution and the French Revolution together herald the idea of democracy based on human equality.2 This novel approach traces the movement of political ideas and movements across the Atlantic, giving a foundation for the concept of Atlantic history.
