French translations and reception of the Declaration of Independence

Journal of American History

Volumn 85, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 1299-1324

  Marienstras, Elise ^a   Wulf, Naomi ^b  

^a UNIVERSITÉ PARIS DESCARTES   (France)

^b UNIVERSITÉ PARIS EST CRÉTEIL   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33749866184     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2568254     Document Type: Article

References (158)

1. France-Amérique - 1776-1789-1917, Déclaration d'indépendance. Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme [. . .]. Message du président Wilson (Declaration of Independence. Declaration of the Rights of Man [. . .]. Message by President Wilson), trans. into French P. H. Loysen, trans. into English J. H. Woods (n.p., 1918), 2-3.
2. Translations into English from French sources, unless otherwise identified, were done by Elise Marienstras and Naomi Wulf. Some eighteenth-century translations of the Declaration of Independence may have escaped the attention of compilers, and some publications have not survived; nonetheless, we can say that the bulk of the translations was made between 1776 and 1783, providing chronological evidence of the thesis of American influence on the French Revolution. On the publication in French of American declarations and constitutional documents, see Durand Echeverria, "French Publications of the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitutions, 1776-1783," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 47 (no. 4, 1953), 313-38;
3. Gilbert Chinard, "Notes on the French Translations of the 'Forms of Government or Constitutions of the Several United States,' 1778 and 1783," Yearbook of the American Philosophical Society (1943), 88-106;
4. Bernard Faÿ, Bibliographie critique des ouvrages français relatifs aux Etats-Unis, 1770-1800 (A critical bibliography of French works relating to the United States, 1770-1800) (Paris, 1924).
5. On the attitude of members of the French National Assembly toward the American Revolution, see Edna Hindie Lemay, "Lafitau, Démeunier, and the Rejection of the American Model at the French National Assembly, 1789-1791," in Images of America in Revolutionary France, ed. Michèle R. Morris (Washington, 1990), 174.
6. On the anthropological and mythical approach to America by French eighteenth-century philosophes, see Michèle Duché, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des lumières: Buffon, Voltaire, Rousseau (Anthropology and history in the era of the Enlightenment: Buffon, Voltaire, Rousseau) (Paris, 1971);
7. Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society (Princeton, 1957).
8. The most acute observer of French mentalités at the time of the American Revolution was Condorcet. [Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet], "L'Influence de la révolution d'Amérique sur l'opinion et la législation de l'Europe" (The influence of the American Revolution on opinion and legislation in Europe), in Recherches historiques et politiques sur les Etats-Unis de l'Amérique septentrionale . . . par un citoyen de Virginie. Avec quatre lettres d'un bourgeois de New Haven (Historical and political research on the United States of North America . . . by a citizen of Virginia. With four letters from a townsman of New Haven), ed. Filippo Mazzei (4 vols., Paris, 1788), IV, 213.
9. David P. Geggus, "The Effects of the American Revolution on France and Its Empire," in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 519;
10. Marcel Gauchet, "Droits de l'homme" (Rights of man), in Dictionnaire critique de la révolution française (A critical dictionary of the French Revolution), ed. François Furet and Mona Ozouf (Paris, 1988), 686.
11. The debates of the National Assembly have never been published in their entirety. Most of them were transcribed from notes and published by the eighteenth-century periodical Le Moniteur (Paris),
12. and again in the Archives Parlementaires (Archives of parliament), ed. Jérôme Madival and Emile Laurent (Paris, 1862, 1875).
13. For some of the most significant debates, see François Furet and Ran Halévi, eds., Les Orateurs de la révolution française (Orators of the French Revolution) (Paris, 1989).
14. Stéphane Rials wrote that "the French and the American declarations are like twins." See Stéphane Rials, La Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (The declaration of the rights of man and the citizen) (Paris, 1988), 355-69.
15. See also Denis Lacorne, "Essai sur le commerce atlantique des idées républicaines" (An essay on the Atlantic trade in republican ideas), in Les Politiques du mimétisme institutionnel: La greffe et le rejet (The politics of institutional mimicry: Graft and rejection), ed. Yves Mény (Paris, 1993), 44-48;
16. and the speeches by the French constituents Trophime-Gérard comte de Lally-Tollendal and Jean Joseph Mounier, in Furet and Halévi, eds., Orateurs de la révolution française, 374-76, 883.
17. This reflection on influences and filiation is as old as the French Revolution itself. For the main historiographical debate, see Georg Jellinek, "La Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen" (The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen), Revue du droit politique et de la science politique (Paris), 18 (1902), 385-400;
18. Emile Boutmy, "La Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen et M. Jellinek" (The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and Mr. Jellinek), Annales des sciences politiques (Paris), 17 (1902), 415-43.
19. For an argument that "there is an obvious filiation from the American to the French declarations, although the one is not a reproduction of the other," see Marcel Gauchet, La Révolution des droits de l'homme (The revolution of the rights of man) (Paris, 1989), 54.
20. For attempts, on the occasion of the French Revolution bicentennial in 1989, to revise the thesis of the exceptionalism of the French Revolution, see Lacorne, "Essai sur le commerce atlantique des idées républicaines";
21. Gauchet, Révolution des droits de l'homme;
22. Rials, Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 357.
23. See also Christine Fauré, ed., Ce que déclarer des droits veut dire: Histoires (What it means to declare rights: Histories) (Paris, 1997), 17-47;
24. Philippe Raynaud, "La Révolution américaine" (The American Revolution), in Dictionnaire critique de la révolution française, ed. Furet and Ozouf 860-70.
25. CNRS, ed., "La Révolution américaine et l'Europe" (The American Revolution and Europe), Colloques internationaux du CNRS (Paris) (no. 577, 1979), 369-419. Several scholars infer from the duc de La Rochefoucauld's signed translation of various constitutional documents that he was also the translator of the Declaration of Independence.
26. On these translations, Echeverria and Chinard are the most serious bibliographers. There is no indication of date or place in the translation systematically attributed to Jefferson in Rials, Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 492-95,
27. nor in the following works, which repeat the attribution: Blandine Barret-Kriegel, Les Droits de l'homme et le droit naturel (The rights of man and natural right) (Paris, 1989), 107-11;
28. Gordon S. Wood, La Création de la république américaine (The creation of the American republic), trans. François Delastre (Paris, 1991), 733-36;
29. Carl N. Degler et al., Histoire des Etats-Unis. La pratique de la démocratie (History of the United States: The practice of democracy), trans. Michel Deutsch (Paris, 1980), 649-50;
30. and the United States Information Agency (USIA) pamphlet, La Déclaration d'indépendance. La constitution des Etats-Unis d'Amérique (The Declaration of Independence. The United States Constitution) (n.p., n.d., no translator).
31. (Gazette de Leyde), Nouvelles politiques publiées à Leyde, ou Nouvelles extraordinaires de divers endroits (1760-1810), Aug. 30, 1776;
32. Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique (11 vols., Anvers-Paris, 1776-1779), Tome I, Cahier no. 7, 88-95;
33. Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique Tome IX, 169-77. Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique have been bound in eleven volumes;
34. one set is at the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, and a second at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. Depending on the binding, the numbering of pages and format differ; some volumes are bound and pages numbered by "cahiers," others by "tomes." We have used the set at the Bibliothèque Nationale (call number 2366A1). See Paul L. Ford, "Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique, " Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 13 (1889), 222-26.
35. See Peter M. Ascoli, "American Propaganda in the French Language Press during the American Revolution," in Révolution américaine et l'Europe, ed. CNRS, 292-93;
36. Lemay, "Lafitau, Démeunier, and the Rejection of the American Model," 173.
37. Chinard, "Notes on the French Translations," 90.
38. It is not clear whether La Rochefoucauld was the translator of the declaration as well; see Denis Lacorne, L'Invention de la république. Le modèle américain (The invention of the republic: The American model) (Paris, 1991), 79;
39. Rials, Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 357.
40. [Régnier] Recueil des loix constitutives des colonies angloises, confédérées sous la dénomination d'Etats-Unis . . . Auxquelles on a joint les Actes d'Indépendance, le Confédération [sic] & autres actes du Congrès . . . dédié à Monsieur le Docteur Franklin. A Philadelphie et se vend à Paris, rue Dauphine (Collection of the constitutional laws of the English colonies, federated under the name United States . . . together with the Declarations of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and other acts of Congress . . . dedicated to Dr. Franklin in Philadelphia and sold in Paris, rue Dauphine) (Paris, 1778), 3-6.
41. See Chinard, "Notes on the French Translations," 94;
42. Echeverria, "French Publications of the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitutions," 316-17.
43. Lacorne, Invention de la république, 78;
44. Rials, Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 357.
45. Michel René Hilliard d'Auberteuil, Essais historiques sur la révolution de l'Amérique septentrionale. Bruxelles. Se trouve à Paris . . . (Historical essays on the revolution of northern America. Brussels. Found in Paris . . .) (2 vols., Brussels, 1782), 293-301.
46. See Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (27 vols., Princeton, 1950- ), X, 3ff.
47. Louis-Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld d'Enville, Constitutions des treize Etats-Unis de l'Amérique, à Philadelphie et se trouve à Paris, 1783 (The constitutions of the thirteen United States of America, in Philadelphia and to be found in Paris, 1783) (Paris, 1783). Rials calls this publication "the 4th edition of La Rochefoucauld's translations," attributing the earlier anonymous translations to La Rochefoucauld.
48. See Rials, Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 444, 495n.
49. Jean-Nicolas Démeunier, Encyclopédie méthodique (A methodical encyclopedia) (4 vols., Paris, 1784-1786), II, 357-59;
50. Jean-Nicolas Démeunier, Essai sur les Etats-Unis d'Amérique (An essay on the United States of America) (Paris, 1786);
51. Jean-Nicolas Démeunier, L'Amérique indépendante ou les différentes constitutions des treize provinces qui se sont érigées en républiques sous le nom d'Etats-Unis de l'Amérique (Independent America or the different constitutions of the thirteen provinces that established themselves as republics under the name United States of America) (Ghent, 1790);
52. Boyd, ed., Papers of Thomas Jefferson, X, 3-35;
53. Lacorne, Invention de la république, 79-80,
54. Lemay, "Lafitau, Démeunier, and the Rejection of the American Model," 175.
55. Mazzei, ed., Recherches historiques et politiques sur les Etats-Unis, I, 245-52.
56. Gabriel Bonnot, abbé de Mably, Observations sur le gouvernement et les loix des Etats-Unis de l'Amérique du Nord (Observations on the government and laws of the United States of North America) (Amsterdam, 1784).
57. Mably's book is described as written "very strictly from the point of view of the moralist." See Fay, Bibliographie critique des ouvrages français relatifs aux Etats-Unis, 24.
58. See the thorough comparative study, Echeverria, "French Publications of the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitutions," 326-38.
59. Julian Boyd, The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text as Shown in Facsimiles of Various Drafts by Its Author (Princeton, 1945), 19-23;
60. Carl L. Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York, 1922);
61. Carl Becker, La Déclaration d'indépendance (The Declaration of Independence), trans. Marie-France Bertrand and Marvin Holdt (Paris, 1967), 197-259;
62. La Rochefoucauld, Constitutions des treize Etats-Unis;
63. Mazzei, ed., Recherches politiques et historiques sur les Etats-Unis;
64. Démeunier, Encyclopédie méthodique.
65. A main source, at least for La Rochefoucauld's translation and for that in the Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique, was The Remembrancer; or, Impartial Repository of Public Events, printed for John Almon; reprinted from newspapers and other articles relating to the American Revolution (1775; London, 1782); see Echeverria, "French Publications of the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitutions," 316.
66. Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, June 19, 1802, as quoted by Albert Blaustein, "The Influence of the United States Constitution Abroad," in Focus, le temps des Constitutions (Focus, the era of constitutions), ed. Ambassade des Etats-Unis en France (Paris, 1987), 49;
67. Michel Vovelle, "De l'Ambiguïté des modèles. La Révolution française devant l'histoire et dans l'imaginaire" (On the ambiguity of models. The French Revolution in history and in imagination), Focus, le temps des Constitutions (Focus, the era of constitutions), ibid., 13.
68. Most declarations of rights and constitutions adopted in Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were modeled on the French declarations of 1789, 1791, and 1795 rather than on the 1776 American one. In 1790 a member of the National Assembly said, "The American laws only build the constitution for one particular member of that society; but the Declaration of the [French] National Assembly protects the rights of every man under every government." See [Sylvain Maréchal, ed.,] L'Ami de la révolution (The friend of the Revolution), quoted by Gauchet, Révolution des droits de l'homme, 57.
69. For the meaning of humanité, see Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française (7 vols., Paris, 1958), s.v. "humanité."
70. e Série, VIII, 221.
71. For other examples of this political conception, see Pierre-Victor Malouet, Archives parlementaires, ibid., 322-23;
72. Gaucher, Révolution des droits de l'homme, 75.
73. See the "Proposed Declarations of Rights Drawn by the Marquis de Lafayette and by Dr Richard Gem," in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Boyd, XIV, 438-39.
74. Jean-Paul Rabaut de Saint-Etienne, Archives parlementaires, VIII 452.
75. Malouet quoted by Rials, Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 367.
76. Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique, tome I, cahier no. 7.
77. For translations of the Virginia Bill of Rights into French, see La Rochefoucauld, Constitutions des treize Etats-Unis;
78. Mazzei, ed., Recherches politiques et historiques sur les Etats-Unis.
79. Both are based on the first draft of June 1, 1776, which originally contained eighteen articles. Unlike the Declaration of Independence, whose translations were never used directly in the drafting of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, two of these articles served as sources for articles VIII and X of the French declaration. See Chinard, "Notes on the French translations," 98-108.
80. Mazzei, an Italian-born "citizen of Virginia," was aware of the difficulty of translating the phrase "the people." Introducing his French translation of the Virginia Bill of Rights, he wrote: "'lorsqu'on dit le peuple de Virginie, le peuple de Pennsylvanie etc., on entend les habitant dont il s'agit et de même on dit indifféremment les citoyens, les habitans ou le peuple des Etats-Unis" (When the word people of Virginia, of Pennsylvania etc., is used, it means inhabitants; similarly, one can indifferently say the citizens, the inhabitants, or the people of the United States). See Mazzei, ed., Recherches historiques et politiques sur les Etats-Unis, iv-v.
81. Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique, tome I, cahier no. 7, tome IX.
82. La Rochefoucauld, Constitutions des treize Etats-Unis.
83. Gaucher, Révolution des droits de l'homme;
84. Furet et Halévi, eds., Orateurs de la révolution française, ix-xcvii;
85. Keith Baker, "Constitution," in Dictionnaire critique de la révolution française, ed. Furet and Ozouf, 535-42.
86. La Rochefoucauld, Constitutions des treize Etats-Unis.
87. Morton White, The Philosophy of the American Revolution (New York, 1978), 225.
88. The four translations are: La Rochefoucauld, Constitutions des treize Etats-Unis;
89. Mazzei, ed., Recherches historiques et politiques sur les Etats-Unis;
90. [Régnier], Recueil des loix constitutives des colonies angloises;
91. Hilliard d'Auberteuil, Essais historiques sur la révolution de l'Amérique. Gazette de Leyde uses Maître suprême for "Natures God."
92. French critics of the American declaration and its translations observe rightly that the Jefferson text contained many repetitions and that the style of the French declaration was somewhat clearer. See Boutmy, "Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen et M. Jellinek," 426.
93. Two different conceptions of rights coexisted in French eighteenth-century culture: "civil rights," "which are determined by men's rights," and "natural rights," which belong to natural law; see Barret-Kriegel in Droits de l'homme et le droit naturel, 72.
94. On the theories of rights enunciated by Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Honoré comte de Mirabeau, and Jean-Joseph Mounier, see Rials, Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 385-94.
95. White, Philosophy of the American Revolution, 142-229;
96. Lucien Jaume, Les Déclarations des droits de l'homme (The declarations of the rights of man) (Paris, 1989), 43-46;
97. Gauchet, Révolution des droits de l'homme, 24.
98. See the classic work, Robert Mauzi, L'Idée du bonheur dans la littérature et la pensée françaises au XVIIIe siècle (The idea of happiness in eighteenth-century French literature and thought) (Paris, 1994).
99. Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique, tome I, cahier no. 7, tome IX;
100. [Régnier], Recueil des loix constitutives des colonies anglaises;
101. Mazzei, ed., Recherches historiques et politiques sur les Etats-Unis.
102. Mazzei, ed., Recherches historiques et politiques sur les Etats-Unis, I, iii;
103. Condorcet, Influence de la révolution, ibid., IV, 238.
104. La Rochefoucauld, Constitutions des treize Etats-Unis.
105. Edouard Laboulaye, De la Constitution américaine et de l'utilité de son étude (Of the American Constitution and the advantage of studying it) (Paris, 1850), 20.
106. René Rémond, Les Etats-Unis devant l'opinion française, 1815-1852 (The United States in French opinion, 1815-1852) (Paris, 1962).
107. René Rémond, Les Etats-Unis devant l'opinion française, 1815-1852 (The United States in French opinion, 1815-1852) Ibid., 521.
108. One of the rare translations was published in Adam Seybert, Annales statistiques des Etats-Unis (Statistical annals of the United States), trans. C. A. Scheffer (Paris, 1820).
109. See also Xavier Eyma, La République américaine. Ses institutions, ses hommes (The American republic: Its institutions, its men) (2 vols., Paris, 1861), I, 131-34).
110. Part of the preamble was translated in Auguste Carlier, La République américaine (4 vols., Paris, 1890), I, 464.
111. Hippolyte Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine (The origins of contemporary France) (1875-1881; 3 vols., Paris, 1986), I, 461;
112. Carlier, République américaine, I, 464-65. France abolished slavery in the French colonies in 1793 and, after Napoleon reestablished it, waited until 1848 to suppress it permanently. The orators of the French National Assembly had not even mentioned the ambiguity of the American declaration in this respect.
113. Eyma, République américaine, I, 131-32.
114. Seven different translations of the Constitution were published between April and September 1848; see Rémond, Etats-Unis devant l'opinion française, 837.
115. Laboulaye, De la Constitution américaine, 9-10;
116. République des Etats-Unis; Sa constitution et les divers amendements depuis son origine (The republic of the United States; Its Constitution and various amendments since its birth) (Paris, 1848);
117. L. P. Conseil, Mélanges politiques et philosophiques extraits des mémoires et de la correspondance de Thomas Jefferson, précédés . . . d'une traduction de la Constitution (Political and philosophical miscellanies drawn from the memoirs and correspondence of Thomas Jefferson, preceded . . . by a translation of the Constitution) (Paris, 1833);
118. Fabius Jalaber, Constitution des Etats-Unis d'Amérique, . . . se vend au profit des ouvriers sans travail (Constitution of the United States of America . . . sold for the benefit of jobless workers) (Nantes, 1848).
119. Passages of the Constitution were translated in Joseph Story, Commentaire sur la constitution fédérale des Etats-Unis (translation of the 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution), trans. Paul Odent (Paris, 1843);
120. Duc d'Ayen, Les Publicistes américains et la constitution des Etats-Unis (American publicists and the Constitution of the United States) (Paris, 1876);
121. Carlier, République américaine, II.
122. For the very short discussion of the American Revolution (in chapter 4), headed "Du principe de la souveraineté du peuple en Amérique" (On the principle of popular sovereignty in America), see Alexis de Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique (On democracy in America) (1832, 1835; Paris, 1952), 55.
123. Françoise Mélonio, Tocqueville et les fiançais (Tocqueville and the French) (Paris, 1993), 11;
124. Alexis de Tocqueville, L'Ancien régime et la révolution (The ancien régime and the Revolution) (Paris, 1856).
125. The title of this subsection draws on a 1988 statement by the French historian and publisher Pierre Nora that a trend of interpretation of the American Revolution, descending from "Montesquieu to Tocqueville to Raymond Aron," had recently replaced the trend from "Rousseau, to Marx, to Jean-Paul Sartre." See Pierre Nora, "Valeur universelle de la constitution des Etats-Unis: La France et l'expérience américaine" (Universal value of the United States Constitution: France and the American experience), in Et la Constitution créa l'Amérique (And the Constitution created America), ed. Marie-France Toinet (Nancy, 1988), 23.
126. François Furet and Denis Richet, La Révolution française (The French Revolution) (Paris, 1973).
127. See Jacques Portes, Une Fascination réticente: Les Etats-Unis dans l'opinion française, 1870-1914 (A reluctant fascination: The United States in French opinion) (Nancy, 1990), 158-59;
128. Boutmy, "Déclaration des droits de l'homme," 419.
129. France-Amérique - 1776-1789-1917, Déclaration d'indépendance. Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme, 8-23.
130. Jean Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la révolution française (A socialist history of the French Revolution) (1904; Paris, 1968);
131. Albert Mathiez, La Révolution française (The French Revolution) (2 vols., Paris, 1922);
132. Georges Lefebvre, La Révolution française (The French Revolution) (Paris, 1951);
133. Claude Mazauric, Sur la Révolution française (On the French Revolution) (Paris, 1970);
134. Albert Soboul, Comprendre la révolution (Understanding the Revolution) (Paris, 1981);
135. Vovelle, "De l'ambiguïté des modèles," 12.
136. François Furet, Penser la révolution française (Reflecting on the French Revolution) (Paris, 1978).
137. Raynaud, "Révolution américaine," 860-70.
138. La Rochefoucauld's translation of the preamble and closing paragraph of the declaration appear in Philippe Sagnac, La Fin de l'ancien régime et la révolution américaine, 1763-1789 (The end of the ancien régime and the American Revolution, 1763-1789) (1941; Paris, 1952), 298-300.
139. Becker, Déclaration d'indépendance, trans. Bertrand and Holdt, 261-74.
140. The translation of the preamble of the declaration in that work appears in André Kaspi, Claude-Jean Bertrand, and Jean Heffer, La Civilisation américaine (American civilization) (Paris, 1979), 255.
141. See Rials, Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 492-95;
142. Barret-Kriegel, Droits de l'homme et le droit naturel, 107-11;
143. Wood, Création de la république américaine, trans. Delastre, 733-36;
144. Degler et al., Histoire des Etats-Unis, trans. Deutsch, 649-50;
145. Déclaration d'independance.
146. See also Lacorne, Invention de la république, 65;
147. Marie-France Toinet, Le Système politique des Etats-Unis (The political system of the United States) (Paris, 1986), 46-48. We are grateful to Professor John Catanzariti for having looked through the Papers of Thomas Jefferson and to the Paris and Washington staff members of the USIA for having researched in their archives.
148. Jean-Pierre Lassale, "Les Institutions des Etats-Unis" (The institutions of the United States), La Documentation française; Documents d'étude: Droit constitutionnel et institutions politiques (Paris) (no. 1, 1997), 5.
149. Elise Marienstras, Les Mythes fondateurs de la nation américaine: Essai sur le discours idéologique aux Etats-Unis à l'époque de l'indépendance, 1763-1800 (The founding myths of the American nation: An essay on ideological writings in the United States at the time of independence, 1763-1800) (1976; Brussels, 1992);
150. Elise Marienstras, Nous, le Peuple: Les origines du nationalisme américain (We, the people: The origins of American nationalism) (Paris, 1988), 285-391;
151. Naomi Wulf, L'Idée de démocratie aux Etats-Unis, de 1828 à 1844, à travers les écrits de Orestes Brownson (The idea of democracy in the United States, from 1828 to 1844, through the writings of Orestes Brownson) (forthcoming, Paris, 1999);
152. Naomi Wulf, "Le Suffrage universel, ou le bonheur du plus grand nombre" (Universal suffrage or the happiness of the greatest number), Cahiers Charles V (Paris) (no. 22, 1997), 141-54.
153. See Elise Marienstras, "Nation et religion aux Etats-Unis" (Nation and religion in the United States), Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions (Paris) (no. 83, 1993), 11-24.
154. The phrase "American incarnation" is taken from Myra Jehlen, American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent (Cambridge, Mass., 1986).
155. See Fauré, ed., Ce que déclarer des droits veut dire, 21-34.
156. There are interesting remarks on the authorship and legitimacy of the Declaration of Independence in Jacques Derrida, Otobiographies: L'enseignement de Nietzsche et la politique du nom propre (Otobiographies: The teachings of Nietzche and the politics of naming) (Paris, 1984), 13-32.
157. In this interpretation of nationalism, we differ with scholars such as Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, Eng., 1990).
158. Boyd, ed., Papers of Thomas Jefferson, I, 121-35.