Revolutionary Ideology: The Case of the Marian Exiles

Michael Walzer

American Political Science Review, 1963, vol. 57, issue 3, 643-654

Abstract: In the history of political thought, revolution is a relatively new idea. Rebellion, insurrection, tyrannicide, civil war, resistance: all these have been discussed and debated since the very beginnings of speculation about politics. But the idea that a select group of men might wilfully and systematically employ political violence to effect the moral and social transformation of an established order was literally not conceived until early modern times and did not become a matter of self-conscious speculation until quite recently. The purpose of this essay is to analyze and, in part, to explain one of the earliest appearances of revolutionary thought—among a group of exiled English and Scottish writers in the sixteenth century. It is a case study in the origins (rather than a description of the origin) of a new intellectual style and a new mode of perceiving and responding to the political world. But a new style and a new set of perceptions and responses suggests a new man: the religious exile of the sixteenth century was such a man, an intellectual suddenly set loose from conventional and corporate ties and radicalized, so to speak, by his experience. Hence the nature of the exile and the social character of the exiles must be studied before the new ideas can be fully understood.The writings of the Marian exiles have rarely been accorded such importance as will be attributed to them in this essay. Their work has more often been treated as a minor part of monarchomach literature; more especially, as an anticipation of, or a footnote to, the more important work of the French Huguenots.

Date: 1963
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:57:y:1963:i:03:p:643-654_24

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().