Romantic Federalism: Atlantic Republican Literature between Cosmopolitanism and Confederation

The age of democratic revolution in the Atlantic world (1776–1815) was marked by writing whose politics have been described as both patriotic and universalist. Far from reflecting a simple contradiction in revolutionary republicanism, these two strains reflect the simultaneous development of federalist and cosmopolitan discourses in the late Enlightenment and early Romanticism. This essay argues that we need a paradoxical conception of ‘Romantic federalism’ to account for transatlantic republican discourse in this period. Romantic federalism, in this essay’s account, facilitated both an ethnological interest in human diversity and a universalist understanding of popular sovereignty. The essay first takes as its case studies an anonymous visionary pamphlet, entitled The Golden Age; Constantin-François Volney’s best-known work, The Ruins; and the literary legacy of Anacharsis Cloots, the ‘Orator of the Human Race’. The essay concludes with a review of recent literary studies of both federalism and nationalism, and suggests ways that overemphasis on the nation form has led to neglect not only of republicanism but also of imperialism.