While republicanism promises to secure and promote freedom for all, contemporary republics persistently marginalize some of their members—women, foreigners, the working class, and religious, racial, and ethnic minorities. What explains this enduring problem of exclusion that is justified on the grounds of republican freedom?

Geneviève Rousselière’s Sharing Freedom turns to French republicanism and its historical-foundational tensions. Through a ground-breaking exploration of the French revolutionary republicanism of 1789, Rousselière demonstrates that revolutionary republicans were compelled to adopt an older republican tradition that saw freedom as a privilege of property-owning male citizens and transform it into a theory of democratic emancipation. Put otherwise, the revolutionaries had to democratize an elitist theory that saw self-government as an exclusive capacity of those who had the material and social independence as well as the education necessary for epistemic and moral competence. This created a paradox: “only those who are not dependent, that is, who are already free, are eligible to be emancipated” (143). Moreover, while the revolutionaries envisioned republican citizenship as a universal and inclusive status, they also emphasized the necessity of a common culture to maintain republican citize