In 1792, the Marquis de Condorcet described the Glorious Revolution and the French Revolution as “parallel” events. Seeking to downplay the exceptional nature of the French Revolution, he turned to England for an example of an earlier yet comparable struggle against tyranny. “The cause of the French,” Condorcet observed, “is exactly the same as that of the English nation; and, indeed of all nations, that are, or have conceived the hope of becoming free” (Marquis de Condorcet, “Reflections on the English Revolution 1688, and that of the 10^th of August, 1792,” reprinted in A Narrative of the Proceedings relating to the Suspension of the King of the French on the 10 ^thof August, 1792 [Manchester, 1792], 37–38). As Rachel Hammersley demonstrates in her important and meticulously researched intellectual history, Condorcet was not the only revolutionary who looked across the Channel. For those Frenchmen committed to transforming their monarchy, English words and deeds offered both guidance and reassurance.

According to Hammersley, no French group was more captivated by English thought than the Cordeliers, a club whose members included Théophile Mandar, Jean Jacques Rutledge, Théodore Le Sueur, and Camille Desmoulins—men committed not just to creating a French republic but also to ensuring that this republic be “democratic” rather than representative. The club's name reflected its origins in the Cordeliers District of Paris, one of the most radical districts during the initial stages of the Revolution. Over the course of the club's meetings, which ran from 1790 to 1795, the Cordeliers routinely used English Commonwealth philosophers to support their particular brand of French revolutionary republicanism. Mandar translated Marchamont Nedham's The excellencie of a free state into French in 1790, while Rutledge's Le Creuset, a biweekly newspaper published during 1791, imported ideas directly from James Harrington's The commonwealth of Oceana. A constitutional proposal put forward by Le Sueur in 1792 (though likely penned by Rutledge) also looked to Harrington's Oceana. Desmoulins's popular newspaper Le Vieux Cordelier, published in 1793–94, demonstrated a strong indebtedness to Thomas Gordon's Discourses on Tacitus.

Why were the Cordeliers so preoccupied with English republican texts? Hammersley successfully shows in five central chapters that, for the Cordeliers, Commonwealth philosophers offered a solution to the Rousseauian problem of how to implement democratic republicanism in a modern nation-state. Whereas Rousseau had doubted that the classical republican model, with its emphasis on direct democracy and civic virtue, could be implemented in a country the size of France, the Cordeliers forwarded the ideas of Nedham, Harrington, and Gordon to show how classical republican elements might in fact be successfully introduced into their nation. A delegate and semi-direct democracy was possible, they insisted, taking their cue from Commonwealth texts, which had argued for rotating delegates and had promoted individual liberties as a way of securing virtue.

Hammersley should be commended for her detective work in piecing together this narrative. The Cordeliers have been largely neglected in the Revolutionary literature—not entirely surprising given the club's shifting membership and alliances. Hammersley goes a long way toward filling this gap, though many of her observations about club composition, proceedings, and influences remain (necessarily) speculative. Hammersley’s, however, is more than a recuperative achievement. In illuminating the Cordeliers Club, she also helps transform the history of republicanism. First, Hammersley makes a powerful case for a new Anglo-French philosophical trajectory. We know that Commonwealth ideas influenced late eighteenth-century American and British thinkers, but their impact to the east has gone largely ignored. Here, Hammersley provides a convincing argument for their circulation in late eighteenth-century France. Second, and more broadly, Hammersley offers a complex portrait of the various strands of republicanism in play during the late eighteenth century. Building on the work of J. G. A. Pocock, François Furet, and Keith Baker, she deftly parses the differences between the many kinds of Revolutionary republicanism—classical, modern, English, American, Rousseauian, Jacobin, Brissotin, and Cordelier. One leaves her work only further convinced that republicanism needs to be considered in the plural rather than in the singular.

Even with its many strengths, however, this book has some structural and substantive limitations. Chief among them is Hammersley's reluctance to fully address the significance of her own findings. She excels at demonstrating the presence of English republican ideas in Revolutionary France, but she is on less sure footing when it comes to detailing their impact or influence on the course of the Revolution or on modern French history more generally. She observes that the Cordeliers, in comparison to the Brissotins, “rarely attained office beyond the radical political clubs of the capital” (55). She also notes that such documents as Rutledge's Harringtonian constitution “attracted little attention” (116). Given these observations, then, why do the Cordeliers matter? Does their importance lie exclusively in the fact that they complicate our story of Anglo-French republicanism? Hammersley never fully engages with these questions and accordingly narrows her book's potential to reach a broader audience.

In terms of content, there are also some puzzling omissions. Hammersley insists throughout, for example, on the Cordeliers’ commitment to individual rights—the Cordeliers adamantly opposed the National Assembly's decision to distinguish between “active” and “passive” citizens (103)—but she never fully explains just how universal this commitment was. Would the Cordeliers have endorsed female citizenship? Hammersley only notes in passing that women could attend meetings of the club. What position did the Cordeliers hold regarding slavery? Here again, Hammersley briefly alludes to Mandar's antislavery stance but offers little elaboration. This valuable study would have benefited from more attention to critical analysis alongside its impressive exposition.