The Expanding Blaze

<p><b>A major intellectual history of the American Revolution and its influence on later revolutions in Europe and the Americas</b><br><br><i>The Expanding Blaze</i> is a sweeping history of how the American Revolution inspired revolutions throughout Europe and the Atlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Jonathan Israel one of the world&#146;s leading historians of the Enlightenment shows how the radical ideas of American founders such as Paine Jefferson Franklin Madison and Monroe set the pattern for democratic revolutions movements and constitutions in France Britain Ireland the Netherlands Belgium Poland Greece Canada Haiti Brazil and Spanish America.<br><br><i>The Expanding Blaze</i> reminds us that the American Revolution was an astonishingly radical event&#151;and that it didn&#146;t end with the transformation and independence of America. Rather the Revolution continued to reverberate in Europe and the Americas for the next three-quarters of a century. This comprehensive history of the Revolution&#146;s international influence traces how American efforts to implement Radical Enlightenment ideas&#151;including the destruction of the old regime and the promotion of democratic republicanism self-government and liberty&#151;helped drive revolutions abroad as foreign leaders explicitly followed the American example and espoused American democratic values.<br><br>The first major new intellectual history of the age of democratic revolution in decades <i>The Expanding Blaze</i> returns the American Revolution to its global context.</p>