Generazioni rivoluzionarie ed Età delle rivoluzioni: Note e riflessioni intorno ad un recente studio

Abstract

Since the second half of the twentieth century, historiography has increasingly tended to view the French Revolution within the broader and more complex framework of an Age of Revolutions with at least a European scope. Although it constitutes a distinct historiographical current, Atlantic History has played a decisive role in fostering an analytical expansion capable of connecting both sides of the Atlantic. In recent years, comprehensive studies have multiplied on a general Age of Revolutions spanning the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, now encompassing even broader scenarios than the Euro-Atlantic world. Beginning with the recent study by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, The Age of Revolutions: And the Generations Who Made It (New York 2024), and extending the analysis to the principal works that have proposed a similar global perspective based on specific analytical criteria, the paper will offer a critical reflection on the potential and inherent limitations of an approach that appears to challenge not only the traditionally acknowledged exceptional nature of the French epicenter, but also the very modernizing value historically attributed to the Age of Revolutions.