WORKSHOPS
December 2005 (Institut Charles V, Université Paris VII)
- Emmanuelle De Champs (Université Paris VIII) : « Etienne Dumont, the transmission of Bentham utilitarism in the french-speaking world ».Abstract : Etienne Dumont and Jeremy Bentham met in 1786, at the junction of several personal networks, political and religious. Very quickly, Dumont decides to translate Bentham's work into French and adopts different strategies to realise his project. First, he seeks his political contacts in France (around Mirabeau), then, after the revolution, he circulates his translations in the periodical press before publishing them in books. A study of the modalities of transfer of Bentham's philosophy in French should enable scholars to reconsider the question of his fame in the European continent.
- Fabrice Bensimon (Univerisité Paris X) : "Travelllers, exiles, migrants and cultural intermediaries between France and Great Britain, 1815-1870".
There are different ways to study exchanges and transfers between Franc and Great Britain. First, one can try to establish a statistical account, an inventory of the exchanges, the crossings : this is a necessary approach to measure the importance and the direction of currents, the impact of political changes, favourable or contrary factors. It then becomes necessary to distinguish "tourism" from "migration", temporary stay from long stay. Secondly, there is a cultural aspect of the question : it leads us to study the exchanges between these visitors : sociability, integration, cultural transfers. Finally, it is necessary to study other channels used by these travellers or migrants : press, edition, translation, diverse cultural forms, etc.
- Allan Potofsky : "french emigrants and british atlantic space"
Abstract : this paper examines the French émigrés experiences in Great Britain beforeand after the application of Pitt’s Aliens Act of January 1793. The bill imposed limits on the numbers of émigrés entering the country and their movements within it. Many who were expelled from Britain crossed the Atlantic to the United States; most notably, Tallyrand himself as well as La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt were expelled and left for North America. A study of these expelled Franco-British-American "aliens" focuses on theideological uses of exile. The original attraction toward England challenges the émigrés basic master narrative of how they found themselves
in the United States -- by fleeing to America, the émigrés avoided all association with the noble and bourgeois royalists that constituted the Counter-Revolutionary army of émigrés who took up arms against the French Republic. Of course, the émigrés’ passage through Britain -- after January 1793, the Revolution's most formidable enemy -- makes this thesis of neutrality improbable. The principle of taking refuge in a non-aligned American “sister republic” was itself invented memory.
June 2006, Worshop on correspondences (Paris)
- Ann Thomson, "The correspondence of Pierre Des Maizeaux"
Abstract : This paper provided a general presentation of Des Maizeaux’s passive correspondence in the British Library, together with an overview of his activities and importance in Franco-British cultural transfers in the first half of the 18th Century. After reviewing the existing studies on Des Maizeaux and the difficulties in interpreting his true opinions, it emphasized the wealth of as yet untapped information on many aspects of journalism, publishing, the circulation of information and intellectual networks to be found in these manuscripts. The need for a systematic study of this correspondence was emphasized, together with a project for publication.
- Richard Whatmore, « Etienne Dumont and French National Character »
Abstract : this paper examined Dumont's claim in his Souvenirs sur Mirabeau that France would have successfully engineered a peaceful constitutional revolution in the early 1790s had the lessons from Britain's experience post-1688 been learned. Dumont believed that French antagonism towards Britain explained the failures of the Revolution, and provided an outline of the reform strategy he had developed with Mirabeau. This sought to make France a model modern monarchy at peace with Britain and developing economically according to the dictates of the natural economic order. As it became clear that this strategy was not going to work, Dumont turned to Bentham's very different ideas about the route to peace and reform.
- Charles-Edouard Levillain, "La correspondance diplomatique au début du long dix-huitième siècle (c.1660-c.1715): problèmes de méthode".
- Lucia Bergamasco, "Thomas Jefferson and the physiocrats"
- Sarah Hutton, "Newtonianism in the correspondence of Madame du Chatelet"
- Alexandra Cook, "Botanical
exchanges: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Duchess of Portland"
Abstract :
In 1766 Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, in exile from France and Switzerland, came to England,
where he made the acquaintance of Margaret Cavendish Harley Bentinck,
Duchess of Portland. The two began to botanise together and
to
exchange letters about botany. These letters contain salient
statements about Rousseau’s views on natural theology,
gardens,
botanical texts and exotic botany. This exchange entailed not
only discussions about plant identifications and other botanical
matters, but most important, reciprocal gifts of books and specimens in
the manner of gentlemanly scientific correspondence of the
period. Rousseau volunteered his services as the
Duchess’s
‘herborist’ or plant collector, and collected
specimens and
seeds in her behalf; these were destined for her own extensive herbaria
and other natural history collections. Rousseau, who
elsewhere
denied female talent for science, admired the Duchess’s
knowledge
of natural history, acknowledging his own as inferior. Their
correspondence ended when the Duchess sent him the Herbarium amboinense
of Georg Rumpf (Rumphius), an important work of exotic
botany.
Rousseau considered exotic botany to be the antithesis of the
domination-free nature from which he derived solace and
inspiration.
December
2006 (Leeds)
Journalism, the press and cultural
transfers between France and Britain in the long eighteenth century,
Leeds Humanities Research Center
- Hannah Barker, « Advertisements for French goods in the
northern British Press in the later eighteenth century »
Abstract : This paper
examined
advertisements for French goods and services in late eighteenth-century
newspapers published in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. The images of
conjured up by such advertisements – of polite pursuits and
refined tastes – are not ones that we would automatically
associate with northern industrial towns in this period. Sheffield may
have been host to Miss Balzac’s classes where young ladies
could
learn ‘French, Drawing, Embroidery, Filligree, Flowers, and
various Sorts of Fancy-Work’, but Horace Walpole famously
described it in 1760 as ‘one of the foulest towns in England,
in
the most charming situation’, whilst at the end of the
century,
Lady Caroline Stuart-Wortley remarked ‘I never was in so
stinking, dirty and savage a place’. Newspaper advertisements
offer us an alternative vision of northern urban culture. In contrast
to the sneering reports of elite visitors, they painted pictures of
urban cultural refinement, albeit of a suitably measured sort
(‘fashionable and cheap’ being a common refrain in
northern
adverts). The advertisements examined go some way to counter the model
of increasing metropolitan cultural dominance put forward by some
historians of eighteenth-century Britain. Clearly, dismissing the
capital altogether would present a very distorted picture of provincial
urban life, but so too would be a failure to acknowledge the cultural
cross-currents between London and the provinces, and between provincial
towns and continental Europe and the Americas.
- Simon Burrows ,
« The Courier de l’Europe as an agent of cultural
transfer »
Abstract : This paper
looks at the
Courier de l'Europe newspaper, a French international gazette produced
in London, as an agent of cultural transfer in the period 1776-1789,
considering both form and content. It discusses the way that the
paper's attempts to introduce British-style format and diverse content
rubrics met with limited success and in many cases were quickly
abandoned as they were alien to the market and audience expectations of
an international gazette. However, the paper was much more successful
in providing continental readers with a political education in the
practices, strengths and weaknesses of British representative
government. Perhaps more significantly, it was also under the
editorship of Charles Théveneau de Morande from 1787 the
first
French language newspaper to pioneer the British idea of an editorial
column and the essay-style journalism that became the hallmark of
revolutionary journalism and its self-styled Tribunes of the people.'
- John Chartres ‘English Provincial Press and the material
world: agency; travel; and tools in the
later
eighteenth century’
- Mark Curran, « D’Holbach’s translations
in the French language press »
- Ann Thomson, « La Roche’s Bibliothèque
angloise
and Mémoires littéraires de la Grande-Bretagne
»
Abstract : This paper
studies the
two learned French-language journals published by Michel de La Roche, a
French Huguenot refugee living in England: Bibliothèque
angloise
which started in 1717 and its continuation, Mémoires
littéraires de la Grande-Bretagne, which ended in 1724. La
Roche, who also published English-language journals, was part of a
network of Huguenot intellectuals which included Pierre Des Maizeaux
and had wide contacts in British intellectual circles. After presenting
what is known about his life and activities and providing evidence
conerning the circulation of his periodicals, this paper studies the
content of these two journals; La Roche attempted an impartial
presentation of British publications, in particular scientific and
theological, as a result of which he was accused of anti-Protestantism
and of favouring the Papists, but his main interest was the defence of
religious toleration. The greatest number of pages in his journals,
beginning in the last volume of Bibliothèque angloise in
1719
and continuing in the Mémoires littéraires, is
devoted to
John Chamberlayn’s English version of Gerard
Brandt’s
History of the Reformation in the Low Countries (Historie der
Reformatie en andre kerklyke geschiedenissen in en omtrent de
Nederlanden, 1671-1704), written at the request of the Remonstrants,
which propagates the ideals of liberty and toleration and aroused the
displeasure of the Dutch authorities. La Roche was responsible for the
1726 French translation published by Gosse in the Hague, which he
translated from this English version. What consistently comes out in
his journalism is his desire to make known to the French reading public
the more open and tolerant attitude of the Church of England, to
condemn the division of the Protestants into opposing sects and to
denounce dogmatism wherever it lies. He was thus clearly in the camp of
those Whig thinkers in England who opposed priestcraft and internecine
strife and opposed the laws against the nonconformists imposed by the
Tories, and he was as concerned to oppose protestant as catholic
intolerance. His case of raises once again the question of the motives
of the Huguenots who were responsible for diffusing information about
British publications. It is not always easy to decide how far their
defense of free thought went. While their publications undoubtedly
helped to provide ammunition for undermining not simply Catholicism but
religion itself in France, it is difficult to decide whether or not
this was their true intention. La Roche’s consistent defence
of
rational religion and his tireless presentation of reviews and
“extraits” concerning theological debate in England
clearly
make him an important vector for the transfer to a French reading
public of a culture of greater freedom of thought on religious matters
and opposition to the imposition of uniformity in religion.
-
Jonathan Topham (University of Leeds) : "Scientific Knowledge in
Transit: Franco-British Communication and Print Culture, 1780-1820"
Abstract :
The paper began by outlining the importance in contemporary history of
science of James Secord's notion of 'knowledge in transit', whereby the
act of communicating scientific knowledge is seen to be constitutive of
that knowledge. This notion is of particular importance in
relation to the Franco-British situation in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, when British men of science were greatly
interested in French scientific innovations just at the moment when the
conflict between the two countries placed printed communication on a
peculiar footing. The paper presented initial evidence that the
inception of commercial science journals in Britain in the years after
1796 led to a marked increase in the reporting of Continental
scientific work. In addition, it suggested a prominent role for
French and Swiss emigree booksellers in London in mediating French
scientific work to British audiences during the Napoleonic wars.
The paper concluded by observing that further attention also needed to
be paid to the role of personal communication in the transmission of
French scientific work to British audiences.
- Delphine Soulard, « Les journalistes du Refuge et la
diffusion
de la pensée politique de John Locke auprès du
public
francophone dès la fin du XVIIe siècle »
8-15 July 2007, Montpellier, France
Twelfth International Enlightenment Congress : Knowledge, Techniques,
Cultures in the 18th Century (SIEDS)
« The constitution of scientific sociability in 18th century correspondance networks »
Our workshop addressed one of the most difficult problems in the social and intellectual history of cultural exchange: what characterised particular practices that relied on inter-cultural correspondence as a central mode of activity? Science and scholarship relied on communication at a distance as their primary modes of constitution. Observations, collections, contributions and challenges were all exchanged between individuals across the space of Europe and this communication integrated science as a unitary practice, rather than a set of scattered local initiatives. The workshop investigated how actors and institutions created these networks and how they were regulated. We established the differing techniques used to establish the boundaries of scientific orthodoxy and investigated the differences in organisation, membership self-understanding and form of activity in a variety of these. Our aim was to illustrate how the idea of science as an integrated practice emerged.
- A. Cook, "Communicating Science at a distance : Jean-Jacques Rousseau's botanical correspondence"
- C. Crignon-De Oliveira, "le rôle des périodiques dans la
diffusion des connaissances médicales à la croisée
des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles en Angleterre et en France"
- M. Saad, "Autour du réseau Duquennoy : la correspondance britannique"
September 2007, Worshop on networks (University of London in Paris)
- Elisabeth Grist, "Des Maizeaux and the Royal Society"- Siegfried Bodenmann, "Euler's Scientific Network"
- Mariana Saad, "Le réseau Duquennoy et le Conseil Général des Hospices"
- Jean-François Dunyach, "La question des réseaux et des échanges transmanche au XVIIIe s!ècle à travers le cas William Playfair (1759-1823)
- Simon Burrows, "Book Trade Networks in the Late Enlightenment"
abstract : This paper offered an overview of a 4-year AHRC funded research project in to the European Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe, which is being conduced by two members of this research network, Professor Simon Burrows and Dr. Mark Curran, both of Leeds University. In particular it explored the main output of the project, a database of the book trade of the Société typographique de Neuchâtel between 1769 and 1787. The data base will contain estimated 750 000 - 100 000 volumes of perhaps 4500 titles that were traded by the compagny in this period.
- Rachel Hammersley, "The Real Whig-Huguenot Network and the English Republican Tradition"
abstract : The role played by the Real Whig in making the works of the English republican tradition avaible to a new generation of English readers has been well known ever since the publication of Caroline Robbins's seminal book The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealth in 1959. What has received less attention is the fact that Huguenot associates of the Real Whigs were simultaneously making the works of that same tradition accessible to a European - and particularly a francophone - audience. Their translation s and reviews had an impact beyond their own generation ; indeed they played a part in the development of a republican language in France, and thereby had an influence upon the French Revolution. This paper focused on the Real Whig-Huguenot network - examining the means by which it operated and the works that emerged from it. Moreover, we demonstrated that it was not n isolated case, but one of a number of cross-channel networks that facilitated the exchange of republican ideas between Britain and France during the course of the eighteenth century.
- Paola Zanardi, "Hollis, Algarotti and Italian networks"
abstract : Paola Zanardi's paper was focused on T. Hollis (1720-1774), an independent, radical, activist and cultural entrepreneur, who fully embodies the spirit of Enlightenment. Trough the circulation of books, newspaper propaganda, literary and visual arts, he promoted Whig ideology. He was a supporter of artists and intellectuals, among them he came in touch with the scientist, F. Algarotti, author of "Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy explain'd for the Use of Ladies", translated in English by Elisabeth Carter".
- Alan MacInnes, "Jacobite neworks"
- Allan Potofsky, "Financiers or Political Economists ? Revolutionary Atlantic Networks"
- John Hope-Mason, "Rousseau's circle"
