Europe Against Revolution

New Work In Intellectual History

In this episode, Robin Mills speaks with Matthijs Lok (Amsterdam) about his recently published book Europe against Revolution - Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past (OUP, 2023). In this book, Matthijs explores what counter-revolutionary thinkers in the decades around 1800 thought about Europe. Many of his conclusions are surprising, with critics of the French Revolution often being proponents of cultural and religious diversity, cosmopolitanism and political moderation that they viewed as unique to Europe. They believed themselves to be the true heirs of the European Enlightenment, rather than the radical materialist atheists who had taken over France.