How to make a revolution without firing a shot: Thoughts on the Brissot-Chastellux polemic (1786-1788)

This article proposes an examination of Jacques-Pierre Brissot's rebuttal of the marquis de Chastellux's writings on America in the context of Brissot's activities at the Gallo-American Society, themselves part of a larger plan to stimulate changes within French society. Brissot employed the trope of America to prepare the reading public for his own ambitious political agenda of revolution by means of domestic and international commerce. I hasten to mention that this article will in no way reopen the 'Darnton debate' which turned Brissot into a byword for 'Grub Street' politics of resentment. Robert Darnton's brilliant essay on Brissot, as a case study on the dynamics of the High/Low Enlightenment, remains as riveting now as it was at the time of its publication. The present article, however, seeks to sidestep the Darnton debate altogether and focus instead on the clash of ideas occasioned by Brissot's angry open letter to Chastellux.