Abstract
At the dawn of the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen posed a fundamental and irreducible tension between the proclamation of the natural rights of mankind and the affirmation of the rights of the French citizen. Several issues were to run through the entire Revolution. The first was that of representation. If the " representatives of the French people " have declared the rights of man and citizen, who can represent humanity ? How can we be sure that these rights will actually be recognized ? In Les Ruines (1791), Volney imagines a " assembly of the peoples of the world ", where the anthropological diversity of mankind is eventually resolved in a unanimous adherence to natural law, under the auspices of " legislators of a great nation ", called upon to guide the whole world towards the " new century ". This universalist fiction prophesies what, precisely, remains to be demonstrated : the enthusiastic adherence of all peoples to the principles of the Revolution.
One year earlier, at the Assembly, Anacharsis Cloots, self-proclaimed " orateur du genre humain ", had sought to stage such a rallying. He led a delegation of foreigners before the deputies, requesting, in the name of their enthusiasm for the Revolution, to take part in the festivities of the Fête de la Fédération. Today, we follow the story of A. Cloots, whose radical cosmopolitanism reveals the ambiguities of revolutionary universalism. Replacing the sovereignty of the nation with the " sovereignty of the human race ", Cloots fights for the " République universelle ", a single nation on a global scale, without borders, founded on the universality of rights, on the unrestricted circulation of trade and information, and finally on a religion of nature and humanity, replacing all cults.
For Cloots, the universalization of the Revolution depended on the triumph of the French armies, but France's destiny was not to assert itself as a nation, but rather to fade away and disappear into this universal Republic. The project, which may have seemed in tune with the most universalist moment of the Revolution, quickly came up against the revolutionary patriotism of the year II. " Can a German baron be considered patriotic ? " exclaimed Robespierre. Excluded from the Convention in December 1793, Cloots was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal along with the Hebertists, and executed in April 1794.
