Contagion and the Body Politic: De Quincey on the 1830 Revolution in France

Abstract

Abstract: Writing in the fall of 1830, in the period immediately following France's révolution de juillet , Thomas De Quincey predicts the imminent breakdown of social order in Britain. In his political writing for Blackwood's Magazine over the course of this period, he consistently frames the threat of French-style revolution in terms of the body politic and its vulnerability to contagion, often playing on the meaning of a country's "constitution." In 1831, upon the introduction of the Reform Bill, his worst fears appear to have been confirmed, and he now presents the upcoming revolution almost as a fait accompli. De Quincey's dire predictions fit into a larger framework of nineteenth-century alarmism surrounding contagion, "sympathy," and the collective action of the mob. This article examines the presence and influence of these concepts in De Quincey's political writing for Blackwood's over the period of 1830 to 1832, the year the Bill was successfully passed.