struggle was primarily between a revolutionary French government
and the conservative governments and governing classes of Europe,
with many Frenchmen opposed to the revolution, and many other
Europeans and Americans in favor of it. At a more specialized level,
there has been much research and writing in many countries. There
are, for example, excellent studies of the Jacobin clubs in France, of
the democratic-republican societies in the United States and of the
radical societies in Great Britain, and we know that there were similar
political clubs, at the same time, in Amsterdam, Mainz, Milan, and
elsewhere. But only very recently has Professor Godechot undertaken
to study such clubs as a whole, comparing their membership, their
methods, and their stated aims. In all countries it has been the national
history that has mainly occupied attention. The literature on the French
Revolution is enormous, but most of it is focused on France. Italians
have published abundantly on their triennio, the three revolutionary
years in Italy from 1796 to 1799. Swiss, Belgians, Dutch, Irish, and
many others have provided a wealth of materials on their respective
histories at the time. The years from 1763 to 1800 have always been
a staple of American historiography. But the work has been carried
on in national isolation, compartmentalized by barriers of language
or the particular histories of governments and states. All acknowledge
a wider reality, but few know much about it. This book, in a way, is
simply a putting together of hundreds of excellent studies already in
existence.

Recently, probably because we live in a period of world revolution
ourselves, there has been more tendency to see an analogous phenomenon
at the close of the eighteenth century. Alfred Cobban and David Thom-
son in England have spoken of a kind of Democratic International
at that time, and Louis Gottschalk of Chicago has stressed the idea of
a world revolution of which the American and French Revolutions
were a part. Only certain French scholars in the last decade, Lefebvre,
Fugier, Godechot, have undertaken to develop the idea in detail. ⁵ Godechot's recently published two volumes are a remarkable work,
built upon extensive and difficult researches, and analyzing the revolu-
tionary social classes, organizations, clubs, methods, propaganda de-
vices, ideas, objectives, and achievements with great care. They are

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