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14 results

  • The Ruins: Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires (Paris, 1791)

  • Constantin Volney
  • Edited and translated by Colin Kidd, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Translated by Lucy Kidd
  • Book:
    Volney: ‘The Ruins' and ‘Catechism of Natural Law'
    Published online:
    08 February 2024
    Print publication:
    15 February 2024, pp 1-150

  • Summary

    A major work of French political thought from the early years of the French Revolution, which uses an oriental dream-tale as a vehicle for discussing the rise and fall of civilisations, the progress and corruptions of the human mind, the conceptual misunderstandings which underpin superstition and the political dangers which arise from them. The book involves several dramatic scenes, including an argument between the ordinary people and the elite, and a debate among the leaders of all the world’s religions which exposes the flaws in their respective systems. Volney couches his political theory in an accessible literary form that, in translation, proved highly influential among Anglo-American radicals in the following century.

Volney: ‘The Ruins' and ‘Catechism of Natural Law'
  • Constantin Volney
  • Edited and translated by Colin Kidd
  • Translated by Lucy Kidd
  • Published online:
    08 February 2024
    Print publication:
    15 February 2024
  • Volney was once as influential as Tom Paine, and the author of one of the most popular works of the French Revolutionary era. The Ruins of Empires makes an argument for popular sovereignty, couched in the alluring and accessible form of an Oriental dream-tale. A favourite of both Thomas Jefferson, who translated it, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the Ruins advances a scheme of radical, utopian politics premised upon the deconstruction of all the world's religions. It was widely celebrated by radicals in Britain and America, and exercised an enormous influence on poets from Percy Bysshe Shelley to Walt Whitman for its indictments of tyranny and priestcraft. Volney instead advocates a return to natural precepts shorn of superstition, set out in his sequel, the Catechism of Natural Law. These days Volney enjoys a high profile in African-American Studies as a proponent of Black Egyptianism.