The Age of Revolutions

“A persuasive and inspired contribution to perennial historical debates.”

“A tremendous achievement that will shape scholarly and public debate for decades to come.”

“Between 1760 and 1825, two generations of revolutionaries challenged old inequalities in Europe and the Americas. A fascinating book about the individual trajectories and the generational divides that contributed to this decisive era in the history of equality.”
 

“A highly engaging narrative, at once laudable for its wide geographic coverage and provocative for its original structural interpretation of revolution.”

“The Age of Revolutions offers a vivid and insightful account of an era that did much to create the world we live in today. Drawing on a remarkable range of historical sources, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal carefully traces how radical ideas, political movements, and counter-revolutionary reactions flourished within and between societies. He makes clear the ambiguity of historical outcomes. Even as mass activism emerged on the world stage, setting the stage for revolutions to come, elements of old regimes—notably slavery—survived, mocking the new language of equal rights. As a result, Perl-Rosenthal shows, subsequent generations throughout the Atlantic world had to continue the revolutionary project.”
 

“A fascinating, multifaceted history that manages to be both thorough and humane, one that can guide us through turbulent conversations about revolution, social change, and the meaning of our country’s origins."

“This is an important and sweeping study of this critical period of political change that shows revolution was not something confined to Europe and the new United States, but a slow process that changed the political landscape of much of the Atlantic Ocean region.”

“A well-researched, well-written, and thoughtful presentation that asserts that revolutionaries were challenged by creating and sustaining mass political movements. Give to readers curious about world history and current affairs.”

“In this magisterial survey of the Age of Revolutions, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal ranges boldly across time and space, exploring familiar sites like Philadelphia and Paris alongside others less known, like Indigenous Peru or Hasidic Poland. Grounded in archives in multiple languages on three continents, this extraordinarily ambitious book challenges traditional ways of thinking about revolutionary change. An impressive accomplishment.”
 

“Nathan Perl-Rosenthal delivers a beautifully written and deeply considered account of the Atlantic Age of Revolutions. His stands with the best new work on this key era, highlighting the long fights that give rise to political change, the ironies and illiberalism that characterize such fights, and the legacies they bequeath. Both panoramic and granular, The Age of Revolutions makes one really feel and experience the fraught changes seen by the many ages and stages, and most especially the diverse people, that made revolution.”
 

“Nathan Perl-Rosenthal’s book is a tour de force of originality and erudition. A vivid new interpretation, in elegant prose, of the generations who transformed the Atlantic world and founded new nations on the American continent. From the independence of the United States to the emancipation of Haiti and Peru, without omitting the political eruptions in Europe, the book synthesizes the latest research and develops new interpretations in accessible, elegant prose. Weaving together famous episodes and little-known characters and events, The Age of Revolutions makes an argument about the limits of the revolutions’ emancipatory and egalitarian character. Vividly describing individual trajectories, with an extraordinary mastery of facts and historiography, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal draws a new map of the revolutionary Atlantic, stretching from the Netherlands to the Andes, via Paris, Saint-Domingue, and Philadelphia.”