Editorial: Atlantic revolutions

a ffi nities of praiseworthy terms? Citizens of the new republic, then, did not (in de Bolla ’ s words) “ reach for a ready-made political abstraction that later became known as republicanism. ” Rather, “ republicanism ” was developed after the Revolution and subsequent propaganda, part of the construction of a myth of origins. As such, the challenge to historians is clearly to analyse and date the emergence of that myth, not to project it backwards in time as if it had been a practical foundation of any new polity. In this familiar image, indeed, “