Dictatorship in history and theory : Bonapartism, Caesarism, and totalitarianism / edited by Peter Baehr, Melvin Richter.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Baehr, P. R. (Peter R.)

Richter, Melvin, 1921-2020.

Series:

Publications of the German Historical Institute

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dictatorship--History.

Dictatorship.

Dictatorship--Europe--History.

Authoritarianism--History.

Authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism--Europe--History.

History.

Europe.

Physical Description:

xi, 308 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : German Historical Institute ; Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Summary:

This book is unusual in bringing together the work of historians and political theorists under one cover to consider the subject of nineteenth- and twentieth-century dictatorships. A distinguished group of authors examine the complex relationships among nineteenth-century democracy, nationalism, and authoritarianism, paying special attention to the careers of Napoleon I and III and of Bismarck. An important contribution of the book is consideration not only of the momentous episodes of coup d'etat, revolution, and imperial foundation that the Napoleonic era heralded, but also the contested political language with which these events were described and assessed. Political thinkers were faced with a battery of new terms -- "Bonapartism," "Caesarism," and "Imperialism" among them -- with which to make sense of their era. In addition to documenting the political history of a revolutionary age, the book examines a series of thinkers -- Tocqueville, Marx, Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt -- who articulated and helped to reshape our sense of the political.

Contents:

Part I. Bonapartism to its contemporaries

1 From Consulate to Empire: Impetus and Resistance / Isser Woloch 29

2 The Bonapartes and Germany / T. C. W. Blanning 53

3 Prussian Conservatives and the Problem of Bonapartism / David E. Barclay 67

4 Tocqueville and French Nineteenth-Century Conceptualizations of the Two Bonapartes and Their Empires / Melvin Richter 83

5 Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: Democracy, Dictatorship, and the Politics of Class Struggle / Terrell Carver 103

6 Bonapartism as the Progenitor of Democracy: The Paradoxical Case of the French Second Empire / Sudhir Hazareesingh 129

Part II. Bonapartism, Caesarism, Totalitarianism: Twentieth-Century Experiences and Reflections

7 Max Weber and the Avatars of Caesarism / Peter Baehr 155

8 The Concept of Caesarism in Gramsci / Benedetto Fontana 175

9 From Constitutional Technique to Caesarist Ploy: Carl Schmitt on Dictatorship, Liberalism, and Emergency Powers / John P. McCormick 197

10 Bonapartist and Gaullist Heroic Leadership: Comparing Crisis Appeals to an Impersonated People / Jack Hayward 221

11 The Leader and the Masses: Hannah Arendt on Totalitarianism and Dictatorship / Margaret Canovan 241

Part III. Ancient Resonances

12 Dictatorship in Rome / Claude Nicolet 263

13 From the Historical Caesar to the Spectre of Caesarism: The Imperial Administrator as Internal Threat / Arthur M. Eckstein 279.

Notes:

Some articles previously presented at the Hunter College conference, 1999.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0521825636

0521532701

OCLC:

52134632

Online:

Publisher description