Les Mirabeau : économie politique et révolutions

The Marquis of Mirabeau and his son, Honoré-Gabriel, Earl of Mirabeau, studied the progress of the American Revolution and observed the rise of the French Revolution through the connection between economics and politics. Taking into account their troubled personal relationships, testimonies of a time of fractures that also involved divisions within families, it is easier to understand the Marquis and the Earl's attitude in the transition between the reforms and the revolution through the advantageous observation of America, whose economy and revolutionary experience became de facto models in France at the beginning of the 1780s. Both of them analysed the myth and reality of America and supported the cause of the American colonies from the start of their conflict with Great Britain. From these studies were produced some written works that remained unpublished. The Earl wrote in the spring 1788 the draft of a declaration of rights inspired by those of the American States, and particularly Virginia's; almost at the same time, the Marquis formulated elaborate observations about Virginia's declaration of rights, where he discussed the same principles of freedom, equality and popular sovereignty the Earl had postulated in his project.