'Deux Nations Malheureusement Rivales': les Francais en Grande-Bretagne, les Britanniques en France, et la construction des identites nationales pendant la Revolution francaise

Abstract

This article explores the presence of British expatriates in revolutionary France, as well as the inverse movement of French people to Britain in the 1790s. It investigates how personal, political and cultural ties in both directions sought, first of all, to reconcile ideas of citizenship and of the 'patrie' with the universalist implications of the 'rights of man'. This process became harder and harder to sustain with radicalisation of the Revolution in France and the outbreak of the war between the two countries in 1793. The result was a hardening of national identities, emphasised by the arrest of British subjects in France during the Terror, the proscription of 'French' ideas in Britain at the same time and the flight of English and Scottish Catholic clergy to Britain.