The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson - Hardcover

William Howard Adams

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300069030 ISBN 13: 9780300069037

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1997

Synopsis

An illustrated study brings to life the atmosphere and personalities of pre-revolutionary Paris, traces their influence on the American envoy, and recounts his participation in the life of the city and its intrigues at court. UP.

About this title

Review:

Thomas Jefferson spent five years in Paris, from 1784 to 1789, serving as the representative of a struggling new nation. In this entertaining, scholarly chronicle of those years, we're treated to an account of how the nights spent among the Paris intellectuals influenced Jefferson's thought, and we get a vivid taste of the social whirl in that great European city. William Howard Adams, a leading Jefferson scholar for 25 years, quotes extensively from Jefferson's letters and other writings, and does a commendable job of describing the scenes in which Jefferson would have found himself.

From Kirkus Reviews:

In an elegantly written survey, Adams, a historian, critically examines the effects on Thomas Jefferson of his period as American minister to Paris during the waning years of the ancien r‚gime. In retrospect, Jefferson's arrival in Paris in 1784 as the representative of the fledgling US may seem inauspicious: The new country was mired in debt, particularly to France, from the recently ended revolution; indeed, America may have seemed little more than a banana republic, barely united under the patchwork Articles of Confederation; and Jefferson, a retiring figure from a rural backwater whose principal authorship of the Declaration of Independence was generally unknown in France, seemed ill-suited to succeed the popular, cosmopolitan Benjamin Franklin as America's representative in the sophisticated French capital. In the event, Adams shows, Jefferson excelled as a diplomat. He succeeded in opening up French markets for American exports, in negotiating payment of the enormous debt to France, and in establishing credibility for the new country, while receiving a peerless education in Europe's Machiavellian politics that stood him in good stead when he became president. Meanwhile, as Adams demonstrates at great length, Jefferson fit well into the aesthetic, intellectual, and scientific circles of Paris. His friendships with leading intellects of the period, like Condorcet and Lavoisier, as well as with great salon leaders like Madame d'Houdetot and Madame Helvetius, broadened his outlook and introduced him to the best of European culture. Adams examines in detail the social aspects of Jefferson's life in Paris and his many close friendships with women. He also suggests that Jefferson developed a taste for French radicalism during his Paris years that led him to support the French Revolution even after the Terror had claimed the lives of close friends. A balanced and well-researched look at Jefferson's life and intellect during a crucial period in his development. (68 illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0300069030
• ISBN 13: 9780300069037
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 364