Historians have in recent years become increasingly involved in bringing together the experience of Europeans, and indeed people all over the world, during the Age of Revolution (1750-1850). To be sure, Robert Palmer and Jacques Godechot introduced an Atlantic dimension to the map in the 1960s. However, the reception of their work was somewhat mixed and the French Revolution, like contemporary events elsewhere, was subsequently studied from an internal point of view for the most part. Yet this was to ignore its transnational dimension, which is now attracting renewed interest and forms the subject of the essays collected in this volume. Above all, the expansion of la Grande Nation after 1795 had a direct impact on neighbouring territories, integrating some areas of the Low Countries, the Rhineland, and Alpine territory into the French Republic while proclaiming Sister Republics elsewhere. However, revolutionary expansionism was by no means a one-way process, especially at the outset, when the affiliated peoples along the eastern border of France, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, were allowed significant latitude in the regimes they created. There was, as a result, considerable interaction between the experiments conducted in these Sister Republics and developments in the metropole, which offer the potential for a fascinating study in transnationalism.

The three chapters in this section focus on a particular aspect of this phenomenon, namely that of constitution-making in the Dutch, Swiss, and Neapolitan Republics, together with the parliamentary practices that accompanied it. There were, of course, substantial differences between these three, diverse locations, above all in so far as the Neapolitans were still in the process of discussing a document when their short-lived republic was curtailed in 1799 and the old monarchy restored. In the Dutch and Swiss Republics, by contrast, constitutions were elaborated, although in both cases the French were to impose their own versions later. Nonetheless, in all three instances, constitutional cultures emerged which, though they were influenced by developments in France, would also carry an indigenous character. Conversely, the experiments in the Sister Republics, which often bore a more authoritarian stamp than the French Constitution of the Year III (1795), fed into the subsequent Constitution of the Year VIII (1799) on which the Napoleonic Consulate was based.

In June 1789 deputies at the Estates General seized power and, in the name of the people, proclaimed a new parliament, the National or Constituent Assembly. This declaration of popular sovereignty placed the issue of who should vote, and how they should do so, at the heart of the political agenda. The prospect of direct democracy had been raised in 1789, but it was generally acknowledged that the size of the country necessitated a representative system of some sort. The sovereignty of the people was accordingly translated into the election of legislators and administrators. The intricacies of the franchise question provoked some acrimonious debate in the Assembly between 1789 and 1791 for, as Montesquieu had remarked, ‘the laws which establish the right of suffrage are fundamental to any state’. The conflict over restrictive measures has, however, been misconstrued by many historians, while their impact and application also require a comprehensive reassessment.

In a report which he presented to the newly created Comité de Constitution, towards the end of July 1789, the influential abbé Sievès suggested drawing a distinction between ‘active citizens’, who would vote and ‘passive citizens’, who would not.

The cahiers de doléances, or lists of grievances, drafted in the towns and villages of France during the spring of 1789, have attracted a great deal of attention from historians, unlike the elections to the Estates General which accompanied them. Yet these elections were of great moment, not only because they mobilised the French people in an unprecedented fashion and created the first generation of revolutionary leaders, but also on account of their legacy to the electoral practice and procedure of the Revolution itself. This has rarely been recognised, since the last Estates General met for only two months before it was transformed into a National Assembly and consigned to the past. Contemporaries were naturally loath to acknowledge any influence of the old régime upon the new and sedulously cultivated the myth of the Revolution as a fresh start. In fact, there was a strong electoral tradition to draw upon for, even during the age of absolutism, elections had persisted at the local, if not central level. A careful study of the poll of 1789 helps to demonstrate the extent to which, in the words of François Furet, ‘the ancien régime influenced the Revolution via the Estates General’.

In the first place, the franchise for the final Estates General provoked disagreements which anticipated the famous suffrage debate of succeeding years. The three orders might continue to meet separately, in time-honoured fashion, but all tax-payers were given the vote. Many of them used it, though there were considerable variations in turnout from one community to another.

The National Convention was first and foremost a constituent assembly and, during the three turbulent years of its existence, two Constitutions were drafted. The first, that of 1793 (or Year I of the republican era), was set aside ‘until circumstances permitted’. It was never implemented because when stability of a sort did return, after Thermidor (July 1794), less radical ideas prevailed. A more conservative Constitution, that of 1795 (or the Year III), was devised to replace it. This time the document was put into immediate effect and the Convention finally separated. Between its creation in the summer of 1792 and its dissolution in the autumn of 1795 no legislative elections had taken place in France; only at the local level were a few assemblies convened for municipal and judicial purposes. The electorate was instead given an unprecedented opportunity to participate in two constitutional referenda, the first of which was held in the summer of 1793.

On 21 September 1792, the day after it assembled, the Convention boldly declared: ‘Before it can be put into effect any constitution must be endorsed by the people.’ The idea of a popular consultation had been mooted in the Constituent Assembly by Pétion as early as September 1789. He suggested that the people should be called upon to arbitrate in the case of deadlock between king and assembly, by simply voting in favour of one side or the other. His colleagues were unimpressed and subsequently refused to submit the Constitution of 1791 to the electorate for ratification. Demands for a ‘referendum’ of this sort were supported by conservative deputies like Malouet, but rejected on the grounds that the National Assembly already incarnated the will of the nation.

The first and last legislative elections to be held under the Constitutional Monarchy, during the summer of 1791, produced a poor turnout; thereafter abstention became endemic. It is tempting to blame the electoral system for this disappointing trend. Yet the local elections of 1790 had often attracted a majority of the electorate, especially in rural areas. In 1791, by contrast, the context of disaffection and discontent in which citizens were asked to vote clearly began to take a toll on the level of attendance. Frustrated in their expectations of change and dismayed by the emergence of religious divisions, voters began to desert the polls en masse. Abstention was a product of more than just ignorance or indifference but, before any serious attempt is made to explain why turnout plummeted after 1790, an effort must be made to determine more precisely the degree of participation.

This is far easier said than done, for the historical psephology of the revolutionary period cannot pretend to be an exact science in the same way as contemporary electoral studies. In one respect there are too few statistics: with the exception of the two constitutional referenda (or plebiscites) of 1793 and 1795, no endeavour was made to collect returns at the national level. This is indicative of governmental indifference and ineptitude where the electoral process was concerned, but above all it reflects the practice of indirect elections in which the primary stage was considered a purely local matter. Yet the conservation of relevant procesverbaux in municipal and departmental archives leaves a great deal to be desired. Though fuller documentation is usually available for larger towns, few rural communes have preserved a set of records for the whole decade.

So wrote the acting sub-prefect of Toulon in 1813, in the wake of polls which attracted a mere 5 per cent of the electorate in the naval town. His impression of revolutionary elections was decidedly rose-tinted but, contrary to widely held belief, the Napoleonic régime did not entirely abolish elections; on the contrary, the Constitution of the Year VIII, which was hurriedly issued only a month after Bonaparte came to power, re-instated a broader suffrage. Following revolutionary precedent, this constitutional document was immediately submitted to a referendum, but it was another twelve months before a further round of elections took place. Thereafter the electorate was consulted infrequently and, if the French apprenticeship in democracy and citizenship did not grind to a complete halt, it was severely dislocated under both Napoleon and his Bourbon successors.

The turn of the nineteenth century is thus a good vantage point from which to survey the electoral endeavours of the preceding decade, weighing up what had been achieved against what was left to be desired. The latest rulers of republican France were anxious to demonstrate their popular credentials with a vote on the new Constitution which invited comparison with earlier referenda.

On 11 August 1792 fiscal restrictions on the franchise were swept away along with the Constitutional Monarchy in France. This ‘second revolution’, as historians have dubbed it, ushered in a phase of great political experimentation, yet where voting was concerned the changes were of limited scope and application. Since the celebrated Constitution of 1793 was not actually implemented the suffrage never became universal for adult males; some restrictions persisted and elections above the local level remained indirect. Nor was the renewed turbulence into which the Revolution plunged conducive to high turnout during this period. Nevertheless, two plebiscites or constitutional referenda aside, the primary and municipal elections held in the latter part of 1792 were the most democratic of the decade. Their conduct offers a number of vital insights into the more radical forms of electoral politics that revolutionaries had already been advocating via press and political clubs since 1789.

It was violence on the streets of Paris, not votes in the ballot box that brought down Louis XVI and the Constitution of 1791. Yet the importance attached to the electoral process was demonstrated by a general anxiety to legitimise the de facto Republic with the election of a new constituent assembly as quickly as possible.The day after the momentous events of 10 August 1792, the rump of 284 deputies, who remained on duty in a Legislative Assembly much-reduced by desertion and resignation, began to prepare for the convocation of a National Convention.

During the Revolution only municipal personnel and justices of the peace were directly elected to their posts. National deputies, like departmental officials and district administrators (until their suppression in 1795), were chosen at electoral colleges by second-degree electors who emanated from primary assemblies in the cantons. This indirect route to high office was a procedure retained from the ancien régime, exemplified by the successive stages of election to the Estates General in 1789. It was, above all, a means of vesting real power in the hands of a political elite which, even in the absence of a fiscal threshold in 1792, was drawn predominantly from wealthier elements of the broad electorate. The relatively small secondary assemblies in the departments were clearly the fulcrum of electoral authority in revolutionary France. Government officials and contenders for higher office alike were especially concerned to secure a favourable outcome at this level. Yet, despite the existence of a good deal of accessible documentation, these all-important departmental colleges have received surprisingly little attention from historians; much remains to be done, as this exploratory survey will suggest.

Departmental assemblies were created on seven occasions during the revolutionary decade, in 1790, 1791, 1792, 1795, 1797, 1798 and 1799. They ranged in size from less than 200 to almost 1,000 members, reflecting the total of enfranchised citizens in each department: the Pyrénées-Orientales hosted the smallest, while the Seine (usually referred to as Paris) housed the largest assembly. In 1790 and 1791 one second-degree elector was awarded for every 100 ayant droit de voter residing in the canton, regardless of actual turnout. In 1792 the total of electors remained static, notwithstanding an extension of the franchise, because there was no time to compile new voter lists.

When I began work on this project several years ago the study of elections was, to borrow the words of François Furet, ‘a poor relation of revolutionary historiography’. Despite the vast amount of time and ingenuity devoted to the franchise and voting during the French Revolution, electoral issues were attracting little attention from scholars, who were otherwise engaged with ideological and cultural matters. Once the development of citizenship was placed on the historical agenda, however, the revolutionary apprenticeship in democracy began to excite much more interest; elections finally began to receive the consideration they deserve. Patrice Gueniffey, a pupil of Furet, has recently published the first monograph on the electoral history of the Revolution and a research group devoted to pursuing the subject further has started to meet on a regular basis in Paris. I may have set out as something of a lone researcher in this area, but I soon encountered a host of fellow-travellers along the way, to whom I owe an enormous debt.

At first sight it seems curious that a country which not only pioneered democratic elections in the modern world, but also initiated their scientific study, should have overlooked this vital phase of its own past for so long. Some early soundings were taken under the aegis of Alphonse Aulard, in the wake of the first centenary of the Revolution and the consolidation of the Third Republic. The elections to the Estates General of 1789 stimulated a good deal of research, as did the creation of the National Convention in 1792 and the constitutional referenda of 1793 and 1795.

The Constitution of 1795 was inaugurated in an inauspicious fashion and enjoyed a charmed existence until it was overturned four years later. This was longer than either of its predecessors, but because the Directory came to an ignominious conclusion historians have been only too willing to write it off as a bad job and to overlook its achievements, especially in the political sphere. The significance of the electoral apprenticeship that was conducted during the second half of the revolutionary decade has largely escaped attention as a result. It is seldom recognised that the franchise remained a very broad one, or that in two of the annual elections which were held the level of participation was reasonably high. An interesting experiment with declared candidatures was also undertaken, despite a dogged reluctance to endorse the existence of parties, which were more effectively organised than ever. If government intervention of the most blatant sort brought the electoral system into disrepute, the unprecedented involvement of the executive was nonetheless a reflection of the crucial role that elections now played in the political process.

The Directory is rarely viewed in a positive light and its electoral contests are usually regarded as fiascos which attracted only a derisory turnout.