Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (1737-1789) was an English pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, and intellectual, who spent much of his life and career in North America and in France. He was a major representative of a political philosophy which was decisively defeated, and was remembered as such - despised by some as an agitator and firebrand or "a misguided fool", revered by others as a thinker, leader and martyr, and with numerous groups with widely divergent ideas and interests laying claim to his heritage.

Thomas Paine in The Two Georges
After having a checkered career in such diverging professions as a corset maker, merchant seaman, excise officer and ordained minister, Thomas Paine became politically involved, and emigrated across the Atlantic to the American colonies then in a state of turmoil and on the verge of declaring independence from Britain - even though such a move would have likely entailed a prolonged and destructive war, and its failure would have likely gotten the leaders of the enterprise hanged as traitors.

Nevertheless, Paine was strongly supportive of this option, believing that an independent association of colonies - for which he proposed the name United States of America - would create hitherto undreamed of possibilities for human Liberty, which were not possible in Britain or any other of hidebound "Old World" countries of Europe. Paine was strongly and outspokenly opposed to George Washgington's famous compromise with King George III, by which the colonies accepted continued British rule, and was very disappointed with the decision of Benjamin Franklin, whom he knew personally, to support what Paine considered "a most shameful surrender".

His powerful, widely read pamphlet, "Common Sense" was a last-ditch effort to stem the tide and return public opinion in the colonies to the path of seeking complete independence. It was widely read and even political opponents (some of them his former political partners and personal friends) admitted the cogency of his arguments - even when rebutting them. "If one man could have turned us back from the path we chose, Tom would have been the one - but the die was already cast" Franklin was reported to have remarked on his return from the historic London conference commemorated in the painting "The Two Georges".

Paine remained for another two years in America, increasingly embittered and frustrated. Exactly the fact that he was not arrested or in any way molested by the authorities, even though making statements which could have been construed as treasonable, was a kind of slap in the face - showing that he was now considerd irrelevant.

Having lost hope of America, Paine got tidings which made him turn to France, where there was an increasing ferment which - so it seemed at the time - was about to burst out in a major revolution and sweep away the institutions of the past. Paine took swiftly took ship to France, and though having no knowledge of its language soon established contact with the revolutionary intellectuals in Paris and established a leading position among them.

Thomas Paine was killed on July 14, 1789, among the crowd of Parisians trying to storm the notorious Bastille Prison - to free the prisoners held there - who were ruthlessly shot down at the order of Colonel Napoleon Bonaparte. On the circumstances of his death there were many versions. Some held that he was shot point blanc by Bonaparte personally, and that before dying he managed to cry out "Long Live Liberty! Vive La Liberte!" . A less romantic version held that he was among a group hit by an artillery shell and instantly blown to bits, "never knowing what hit him".

Whatever the reality, he was and is remembered as a martyr for the revolutionary cause. His writings got many (often clandestine) editions, in the original English as well as in translations to French, Russian and many other languages. So were many accounts of his life, often romaticised and highly inaccurate.

In the twentieth century various, widely divergent groups in the North American Union laid claim to Thomas Paine's heritage. The Sons of Liberty appropriated the name of his brochure, "Common Sense", for their well-known (or notorious) paper - claiming to be his followers and disciples in promoting the complete independence of North America from British rule.

However, the Radical Party, staunch foe of "The Sons", rebutted that Paine, an advocate of the equality of all people regardless of race or creed and an opponent of slavery, would never have accepted the Sons' outspoken racism towards non-whites. For their part, the Sons accused the Radicals of having betrayed Paine's heritage by giving up the option of armed struggle against tyranny.

Aside from political debates, an entire sub-genre of Alternate History developed, depicting the world as it might have been had Paine succeeded in making the American Colonies independent and overthrowing the French Monarchy. Such depictions of "The World Paine Could Have Made" range from blissful utopias to terrible hell-holes and all shades in between.

Naturally, more conservative writers contended that the way which Paine and his fellow revolutionaries advocated would have led to an unending series of bloody revolutions and wars, up to world-wide wars fought with weapons of unimaginable destructive power, or to tyrannies whose cruelty would have far surpassed that of the most absolute monarch.

On the other hand, such books as "The Gift Which Europe Spurned" - especially popular in the smaller German states, with their intellectual elites stifling under the rule of a variety of Princes dating back to the Middle Ages - argue that that Paine's victory could have led to a Europe-wide or even world-wide spread of democracy: "We could have been living now in a prosperous European Union, composed completely of democratic states. Yes, democratic states! From the Atlantic to the Borders of Russia, from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, Europeans would have freely chosen who would rule them, Kings would have reigned but not ruled - or been dispensed with altogether. No European would have needed to fear the Secret Police's knock on the door late at night, no censor would have decided what we may or may not read in the paper or see in the theatre. This is the gift Thomas Paine wanted to give us, and it was spurned."

The book was widely criticized and ridiculed as "utopian", "naive" and "unrealistic". Nevertheless, in most European countries the censorship swiftly banned it.