29 janvier 2026 à 17h

Richard Whatmore (U. St Andrews): « Free States and fanaticism »

We have lived, perhaps since the French Revolution, in a unique historical era, a situation that our ancestors could not have anticipated, in which free states have become the dominant form of state. Yet the dominion of free states has been accompanied by conflicts and terrors unimaginable by those who lived in former eras.  Free states have been involved in, and continue to foster so regularly, so much war, murder, hell and death. This talk considers the relationship between free states and fanaticism, from the time in the eighteenth century when free states were endangered species, and after.

Anon., Revolution Anniversary or, Patriotic Incantations (1791), © The Trustees of the British Museum