Originally published on September 9, 2020 (Episode 176)
Introduction
In 1763, James Boswell was accompanied by his new friend Samuel Johnson to Harwich, from which the young Scot then traveled to Utrecht in the Netherlands. There he was supposed to study law, which he did with great energy. But he just as energetically chased prostitutes, proposed marriage to eligible young ladies of fortune, and traveled about Europe making the acquaintance of the great and good.
One of these was Rousseau; and it was he who suggested that Boswell travel to Corsica, and visit the Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli. So Boswell did, and the book he wrote about his experiences and Paoli made Boswell’s career—and made Pasquale Paoli an 18th-century celebrity on either side of the Atlantic.
For David Bell, Boswell’s biography of Paoli is a significant moment of transition. Here was a man engaged in a democratic revolution, at the beginning of an age of revolutions fighting to establish democratic republics in North America, Europe, the Caribbean, and South America. Yet those revolutions were led by leaders who were literally men on horseback, and who had either nascent or actual cults of personality constructed around them by ardent admirers and zealous followers.
As Bell argues, “the history of democracy is inextricable from the history of charisma, its shadow self.”
About the Guest
David A. Bell is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions at Princeton University. A historian of early modern France and the Atlantic world, he has written or co-edited eight books. His most recent book is Men on Horseback: Charisma and Power in the Age of Revolutions (2020), which is the subject of this conversation.
For Further Investigation
James Boswell, An Account of Corsica
David A. Bell, Men on Horseback: Charisma and Power in the Age of Revolutions (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)
David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (Mariner Books, 2008)
David A. Bell, “What Donald Trump and George Washington Have in Common” (Foreign Policy, August 17, 2020)
Listen & Discuss
Do you see charisma as democracy’s ally—or its danger? Share your thoughts in the comments, and pass the episode along to a friend who might enjoy the debate.
Share this post