A COMPARATIVE STUDY

OF REGIONALISM IN POLITICS

IN LANCASHIRE AND NORMANDY

DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The object of Ibis paper is to compare and contrast two separate, but characteristic, series of complicated events in two importa n I regions in England and France al a period of rapid political and social change at the end of Ihe eighteenth century. It will be suggested lhal the real significance of these local political conflicts ;n Lancashire and Normandy al the lime of Ihe French revolution cannot be properly understood if Ihey are treated, on the one hand, as instances of « pump-politics », nor if they are interpreted, on the oilier hand, as mere local responses or reactions lo the wider issues raised by national politics. The phenomena for comparison here are, in England, the conservative reaction in Lancashire against Ihe Dissenting influence in politics, Painile radicalism and French egalitarianism, and, in France, the « federalist » revolt in Normandy against political « anarchism » in Paris, and Ihe policy of administrative centralisation and economic regulation imposed by Ihe Paris Commune upon the National Convention in Ihe summer of 179.'!. Neither of these local « conservative » reactions were isolated movements — they were, in fact, accompanied by similar contemporary anti-revolutionary movements elsewhere in England and France — but it is here suggested thai they may best be sludied as characteristic examples of the importance of « regionalism » in eighteenth-century politics (1).

How far were the local political struggles in Lancashire, and Normandy during the French revolution « regional » in character ? In the case of Normandy the problem may first be clarified by an enquiry whether the revolt of the administrative officials of the Calvados, Orne and Eure departments in support of the fallen Girondin faction in the summer of 1793 can be regarded as inspired