THE GENEVANS AFTER ROUSSEAU, 1762-1802

Between the 1760s and the 1780s, leaders of a Genevan political movement calling themselves 'représentants', who were seeking to make their state more democratic recognized that city-republics such as their own were no longer genuinely independent. The international world was dominated by commercial monarchies enjoying access to public credit, which in turn facilitated the establishment of huge mercenary armies. Small republics could no longer defend themselves, and were falling prey to monarchies motivated by Realpolitik. The Genevan radicals' mentor, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published his reform proposals for civil peace and the survival of small republics in 1764 as 'Lettres écrites de la montagne'. At this point the Genevan représentants rejected Rousseau's ideas, and decided that the balance of power between small and large states had to change if their republic was to survive. This necessitated the reform of the French and British empires, because these powers were perceived by the Genevans to dominate international relations in western Europe.

Remarkably, many of the Genevans became prominent in both Britain and in France, and were in the forefront of reform politics in the following decades. In the early 1780s they were supported by Lord Shelburne, especially when he was Prime Minister in 1782-3, in an attempt to transform Ireland economically by establishing a 'new Geneva' at Waterford. Their plan was to turn idle Catholic peasants into industrious Protestant artisans by involving them in a watch-making industry led by expert Genevan entrepreneurs. Subsequently, the Genevans sought to persuade British ministers to dismantle the 'mercantile system' of economic controls over empire trade. The culmination of their campaign in the Calonne and Pitt ministries was the 'Eden' Treaty with France in 1786, which was seen as a major step in protecting the interests of small commercial republics by uniting the economic interests of Britain and France.

In the 1780s, the Genevan radicals who lived in Britain were closely co-ordinating their strategies with fellow représentants in Paris. The latter group was led by the wealthy merchant Etienne Clavière, who had left Geneva in 1782. Clavière then employed Gabriel-Honoré Riqueti de Mirabeau and Jacques-Pierre Brissot to foster his various projects for commercial cosmopolitanism, in part through the influential 'Société des Amis des Noirs' and 'Société Gallo-Américaine'. When the revolution commenced in France, Clavière and two other Genevans, Jacques-Antoine Duroveray and Etienne Dumont, became part of what contemporaries called the 'atelier de Mirabeau', which was responsible for writing many of the great orator's speeches in the National Assembly, in addition to editing his journal, the Courier de Provence. After Mirabeau's death in April 1791, Clavière helped Brissot to forge the party of the Gironde in the Constituent Assembly, in the process greatly influencing the politics of well-known supporters of the revolution, such as Tom Paine and the Marquis de Condorcet. Clavière became the last finance minister of the French monarchy and the first of the new French republic before dying during the Terror. Etienne Dumont, by contrast, fled France for London, where he became closely involved, through the Shelburne circle, with Jeremy Bentham. Dumont made Bentham famous by taking his disorganized manuscripts and editing and translating them. The first fruit of their collaboration was the 'Traité de Législation civile et pénale' (1802), which became a founding text of philosophic radicalism.

The Genevan radicals' contribution to Euruopean intellectual history has never been recognized, although their influence ranged from the free trade, anti-Catholic, reform Protestant, and anti-slavery movements, to revolutionary French republicanism and British utilitarianism.