Abstract
The French Revolution changed both the political thought and the experience of time of many Europeans. Historical and political self-awareness reinforced one another as they were combined in many - sometimes opposite - ways. Conservatives and revolutionaries used ideas about time and history both to legitimize and criticize the existing political order. Studies of late eighteenth-century Dutch political thinking have nevertheless neglected to relate this body of thought systematically to transforming conceptions of history and time. This research will investigate the close relationship between thinking about history, time and politics in the Dutch Republic. Ideas about time and history are understood here as a form of political thought. This novel perspective will be based on a newly developed methodological framework: a synthesis between historical and philosophical analysis, inspired by both the Cambridge School of Political Thought and Begriffsgeschichte.