'He snatched lighting from the heavens': Benjamin Franklin, the Enlightenment and France's crisis of the 1780s -- 'The best model the world has ever produced': governing America and Britain in the traumatic 1780s -- 'Vibrating between a monarchy and a corrupt oppressive aristocracy': The woes of France and America, 1787-8 -- 'The seeds of decay and corruption': Britain, empire and the king's madness, 1784-8 -- 'The base laws of servitude': empire, slavery and race in the 1780s -- 'That offspring of tyranny, baseness and pride': abolitionism, political economy and the people's rights -- 'Constant effort and continuous emulation': the revolutions of cotton and steam -- 'This general agitation of public insanity': France and Britain in the spring of 1789 -- 'Highly fraught with disinterested benevolence': empire, reason, race and profit in the Pacific -- 'Deep rooted prejudices, and malignity of heart, and conduct': President Washington and the war in the West -- 'No, sire, it is a revolution': from the Estates-General to the Bastille, France, May-July 1789 -- 'For all men, and for all countries': declaring rights in America and France -- 'Your houses will answer for your opinions': the French Revolution imperiled -- 'The greatest event it is that ever happened in the world': the British and the French Revolution -- Conclusion: 1789/1798.
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