The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800

by Conor Cruise O'Brien

Book Overview

As controversial and explosive as it is elegant and learned, The Long Affair is Conor Cruise O'Brien's examination of Thomas Jefferson, as man and icon, through the critical lens of the French Revolution. O'Brien offers a provocative analysis of the supreme symbol of American history and political culture and challenges the traditional perceptions of both Jeffersonian history and the Jeffersonian legacy.

"The book is an attack on America's...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226616533
• ISBN13: 9780226616537
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 386 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

excellent explanation of the contradictions of Jefferson

Washington and Hamilton were the most important founders of our nation. O'Brien explains why Jefferson devoted himself to destroying Hamilton. Loose ends bother me, this book answered those questions. It made sense and was an enjoyable read. A great book that brought me to this one; Alexander Hamilton by Brookhiser.Alexander Hamilton, American

REVIEW OF CONOR O'BRIEN'S THE LONG AFFAIR BY JOHN CHUCKMAN

This is, quite simply, one of the most important books ever written about Jefferson. It redresses the terrible imbalance created by American historians who think of the Founding Fathers as the Twelve Apostles re-incarnated. Critics of the book should understand that O'Brien is a world-class scholar. When O'Brien published "The Long Affair," about Thomas Jefferson and his peculiar admiration for the bloody excesses of the French Revolution, the Sage for Archer Daniels Midland (aka George Will) went into a word-strewn fit over the book. I think Will's excesses speak to the quality of most criticism of the book. Perhaps, the single thing about the book that most upset George was O'Brien's comparison of a statement of Jefferson's to something Pol Pot might have said. Jefferson wrote in 1793, at the height of the Terror, "...but rather than it [the French Revolution] should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is." George wrote off Jefferson's brutal statement as "epistolary extravagance," and attacked O'Brien for using slim evidence for an extreme conclusion about an American "hero." George went so far as favorably to compare the work of Ken Burns with that of O'Brien, calling Burns "an irrigator of our capacity for political admiration," as compared to one who "panders" to "leave our national memory parched." I mean no disparagement of Ken Burns, but he produces the television equivalent of coffee-table books. O'Brien is a scholar, the author of many serious books. The very comparison, even without the odd language, tells us something about George. But language, too, is important. The irony is that George's own words, "irrigator of our capacity for political admiration," sound frighteningly like what we'd expect to hear from the Ministry of Culture in some ghastly place (dare I write it?) such as Pol Pot's Cambodia. But George should have known better. This letter of Jefferson's is utterly characteristic of views he expressed many different ways. Jefferson quite blithely wrote that America's Constitution would not be adequate to defend what he called liberty, that there would have to be a new revolution every 15 or 20 years, and that the tree of liberty needed to be nourished regularly with a fresh supply of patriot blood. Jefferson's well-known sentimental view of the merits of sturdy yeomen farmers as citizens of a republic and his intense dislike for industry and urbanization bear an uncanny resemblance to Pol Pot's beliefs. Throwing people out of cities to become honorable peasants back on the land, even those who never saw a farm, was precisely how Pol Pot managed to kill at least a million people in Cambodia. What is it about many of those on the right relishing the deaths of others in the name of ideology? You see, much like the "chickenhawks" now running Washington, sending others off to die, Jefferson neve

An indictment of Thomas Jefferson's Legacy

Jefferson is one of the most revered fathers of the United States. His sphinx-like profile, while showing some fissure, can still command today great reverence. Most of biographies about him underline the romantic-like élan and the inspiring vision that constitute his legacy, while alluding marginally and with benign neglect to the many inconsistencies that characterize his life. I happened to read this essay, shortly after "American Sphinx" by J.J Ellis: the leaflet on the book promised to mount an indictment of Jefferson's ideal heritage, and the credential of the writer, a former UN official, were flawless. I must admit that the book did exceed the most optimistic expectation. While I cannot agree completely with the indictment and the conclusion (the threat posed by Jefferson legacy to American Civil religion), I did greatly enjoy this reading. It demands respect for the quantity of the documents scrutinized, for the careful philological method used to interpret them, for the sharp logic used in building up the case and for the careful balancing and evaluation of different perspectives. This is a detailed analysis of the political thought of Thomas Jefferson.Not a personal attack to the man: private life and biography enter only when it may be of help in understanding the development of his political ideas. The indictment is focused especially in the exposing of the grand smoke-screen that revolutionary rhetoric offered him to resist the more liberal attitudes of others revolutionary leading figures. In other words Jefferson, more or less knowingly, appropriated of the grand ideals of the Revolution not to further a new order but to rescue the conservative attitudes of the South and in this attempt he helped to create a dangerous compromise, responsible for the Civil War and still present - under different aspects - in the American political thought. This divorce between action and thought permits to account for the apparently "mistakes" of the man Jefferson: his lenient judgement of the French revolution - even in the most bloodied hours of the Terror, his attitudes towards slavery, his many slips both in private life and in the political arena. And that same obscurity is responsible for the romantic aura that still surrounds his myth. A weakness of the book is that is often very "dry" in style: terse, but a bit too concise and uninspiring.This is possibly caused by a rather excessive focusing on the main theme: everything has been developed as in an effort to economy. Biography is almost reduced to mere facts and - as I told before - enters only when that can help to understand Jefferson's political ideas, the Enlightenment ideals and the revolution are narrowed to the theme considered (it is not even mentioned the famous letter about "whether one generation of men has a right to bind another") and there's almost no attempt to psychological analysis. The force of Logic supersedes Rhetoric. Possibly this is a voluntary effort to ex

Unique insights

While researching Edmund Burke and the French Revolution, this book offered wonderful and unique insights into the debate through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson during the heat of the French Revolution (and even some things I did not know about Burke). Instead of just giving a personal interpretation, O'Brien relies heavily on primary sources, letting the reader read what the particular person had to say instead of summarizing (or as some authors do, reinterpreting). This book is essential to understanding either Jefferson or the French Revolution.