Lavoisier, The Two French Revolutions and ‘The Imperial Despotism of Oxygen’

Abstract

The more famous of the revolutions referred to in the title of this paper is, of course, the political and social revolution, which is traditionally dated 1789 but which developed in succeeding years, reaching its climax in the Terror of 1793–94. There were also many other major changes, for example, in education and in scientific institutions. But it is the other revolution, the ‘chemical revolution’ of the 1780s associated with the name of Lavoisier that is the more immediate concern of historians of science. People at the time were ready to draw a parallel between the great changes beginning to take place in society and the fundamental changes in chemistry, 1 even if it was only a hundred years later that it came to be described as ‘ the chemical revolution.’ 2

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