For the ruling and propertied classes of the late
eighteenth century, the years following the French Revolution were
characterized by intense anxiety. Monarchs and their courtiers lived in
constant fear of rebellion, convinced that their power—and their heads—were at
risk. Driven by paranoia, they chose to fight back against every threat and
insurgency, whether real or merely perceived, repressing their populaces
through surveillance networks and violent, secretive police action. Europe, and
the world, had entered a new era.
In Phantom
Terror, award-winning historian Adam Zamoyski argues that the stringent
measures designed to prevent unrest had disastrous and far-reaching
consequences, inciting the very rebellions they had hoped to quash. The newly
established culture of state control halted economic development in Austria and
birthed a rebellious youth culture in Russia that would require even harsher
methods to suppress. By the end of the era, the first stirrings of terrorist
movements had become evident across the continent, making the previously unfounded
fears of European monarchs a reality.
Phantom
Terror explores this troubled, fascinating period, when
politicians and cultural leaders from Edmund Burke to Mary Shelley were forced
to choose sides and either support or resist the counterrevolutionary spirit
embodied in the newly omnipotent central states. The turbulent political
situation that coalesced during this era would lead directly to the revolutions
of 1848 and to the collapse of order in World War I. We still live with the
legacy of this era of paranoia, which prefigured not only the modern
totalitarian state but also the now preeminent contest between society’s haves
and have-nots.
These tempestuous years of suspicion and suppression
were the crux upon which the rest of European history would turn. In this
magisterial history, Zamoyski chronicles the moment when desperate monarchs
took the world down the path of revolution, terror, and world war.
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“With characteristic flair and elegance, Adam Zamoyski dissects the
paranoia, suspicion, and conspiracy theories which followed in the wake
of the French Revolution. He sketches out the birth of the modern police
state in this era, as well as the origins of European totalitarianism
and the beginnings of what we would later come to call class struggle. Phantom Terror is a timely and original history book, a brilliant guide to the past which will inspire reflections about the present as well.”
—
Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History