HIST 358: The Self before the Selfie (HC): Politics and Revolution

This is a history of the French Revolution told through the study of images of the body as they appeared in the popular literature of the time, showing how these images were at the very center of the metaphoric language used to describe the revolution in progress. The author draws upon some 2,000 texts, pamphlets, announcements, opinions, accounts, treatises, and journals to exhume the textual reality of the Revolution, the body of its history. The deployment of bodily images - the degeneracy of the nobility, the impotence of the king, the herculean strength of the citizenry, the goddess of politics appearing naked like Truth, the bleeding wounds of the Republican martyrs - allowed political society to represent itself at a pivotal moment in its history.

The century's most subversive thinker, Diderot arrived as the guest of its most ambitious and admired ruler, Empress Catherine of Russia. What followed was unprecedented: more than forty private meetings, stretching over nearly four months, between these two extraordinary figures. Robert Zaretsky traces the lives of these two remarkable figures, inviting us to reflect on the fraught relationship between politics and philosophy, and between a man of thought and a woman of action.

Histories of economics tend to portray attitudes towards commerce in the era of Adam Smith as celebrating what is termed doux commerce, that is, sweet or gentle commerce. Commerce and Its Discontents proposes that reliance on this doux commerce thesis has obscured our comprehension. Instead, it uncovers ambivalence towards commerce in eighteenth-century France, distinguished by an awareness of its limits - slavery, piracy and monopoly. Through a careful analysis of the Histoire des deux Indes (1780), the Enlightenment's best-selling history of comparative empires, Terjanian offers a new perspective on the connections between political economy, imperialism and the Enlightenment as well as the prehistory of globalisation. Also available as an ebook.

Lettres de cachet conveyed orders which were authorized by the king's authority. They ensured obedience and speed and were viewed in a positive light as the means to protect the country's morals.

Looking at royal ritual in pre-revolutionary France, this book examines the deathbed and funeral of Louis XV in 1774, the lit de justice of November 1774, and the coronation of Louis XVI, including the ceremony of the royal healing touch for scrofula. It reviews the state of the field in ritual studies and appraises the status of the monarchy in the 1770s, including the many ways people engaged with royal ritual. It answers questions such as whether Louis XV died in fear of damnation, why Marie Antoinette was not crowned in 1775 and why Louis XVI's coronation was not held in Paris.

The Devil in Disguise illuminates the impact of the two British revolutions of the seventeenth century and the shifts in religious, political, scientific, literary, economic, social, and moral culture that they brought about. It does so through the fascinating story of one family and their locality: the Cowpers of Hertford. Their dramatic history contains a murder mystery, bigamy, a scandal novel, and a tyrannized wife, all set against a backdrop of violently competing local factions, rampant religious prejudice, and the last conviction of a witch in England. Spencer Cowper was accused of murdering a Quaker, and his brother William had two illegitimate children by his second 'wife'. Their scandalous lives became the source of public gossip, much to the horror of their mother, Sarah, who poured out her heart in a diary that also chronicles her feeling of being enslaved to her husband. Her two sons remained in the limelight. Both were instrumental in the prosecution of Henry Sacheverell, a firebrand cleric who preached a sermon about the illegitimacy of resistance and religious toleration. His parliamentary trial in 1710 provoked serious riots in London. William Cowper also intervened in 1712 to secure the life of Jane Wenham, whose trial provoked a wide-ranging debate about witchcraft beliefs. The Cowpers and their town are a microcosm of a changing world. Their story suggests that an early 'Enlightenment', far from being simply a movement of ideas sparked by 'great thinkers', was shaped and advanced by local and personal struggles. - Publisher.

From the outset of Napoleon's career, the charismatic Corsican was compared to mythic heroes of antiquity like Achilles, and even today he remains the apotheosis of French glory, a value deeply embedded in the country's history. From this angle, the Napoleonic era can be viewed as the final chapter in the battle of the Ancients and Moderns. In this book, Robert Morrissey presents a literary and cultural history of glory and its development in France and explores the "economy of glory" Napoleon sought to implement in an attempt to heal the divide between the Old Regime and the Revolution. The author reveals that the economy of glory was both egalitarian, creating the possibility of an aristocracy based on merit rather than wealth, and traditional, being deeply embedded in the history of aristocratic chivalry and the monarchy--making it the heart of Napoleon's politics of fusion

"In this sequel to Civility and Society in Western Europe, 1300-1600, Marvin Becker continues his study of the interior life of Western culture. Here Becker treats the rise of civil society in England and Scotland as it worked to reorganize the spaces and practices that constituted human sociability. For Becker, the emergence of civil society marks the tilt from familiarity toward impersonality, from public toward private, from social solidarity toward self-interest. He shows how these cultural changes from an archaic to a commercial social model called for new approaches to human nature, ethics, and politics, which Becker summarizes as a scaling down of expectations." "Through an analysis of the writings of Descartes, Pascal, Hobbes, Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke, and others, and culminating in the leading figures of the eighteenth century Scottish Enlightenment, Becker traces the decline of the medieval conception of society, characterized by the correct performance of duties and obligations and which prized above all else honor, heroism, and charitable benevolence. In its stead emerged a new view of society based on self interest and privacy and in which sociability was reduced to the minimum required to guarantee economic freedom and property rights. The result projected a notion of society as an abstract entity with a life of its own, independent of personal ties of duty and obligation. This concept came to fruition in England and Scotland at what Becker calls a "privileged moment," when political and religious stability combined with rapid commercial expansion. Although there were differences in the ways their societies were transformed, eighteenth-century England and Scotland provide the clearest expression of the newly emerged civil society."--BOOK JACKET.

Frederick G. Whelan, a leading scholar of Enlightenment political thought, provides an illuminating and incisive interpretation of key eighteenth and nineteenth century European political thinkers' accounts and assessments of the societies and political institutes of the non-Western world.

In 1617, Louis XIII was forced to resort to assassination to rid himself of an over-mighty subject. A century later, Louis XIV had no need of such violent methods and, at his command, the most powerful men and women in the kingdom were prepared to submit to imprisonment or internal exile without a trial or an opportunity to justify their conduct. This volume examines that transformation through a study of the 'politics of disgrace', why it emerged, how it was conceptualised, the conventions that governed its use, and reactions to it.

Sharon A. Stanley analyzes cynicism from a political-theoretical perspective, arguing that cynicism isn't unique to our time. Instead, she posits that cynicism emerged in the works of French Enlightenment philosophers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot. She explains how eighteenth-century theories of epistemology, nature, sociability and commerce converged to form a recognizably modern form of cynicism, foreshadowing postmodernism. While recent scholarship and popular commentary have depicted cynicism as threatening to healthy democracies and political practices, Stanley argues instead that the French philosophes reveal the possibility of a democratically hospitable form of cynicism.
Also available as an ebook

In The Idea of Europe and the Origins of the American Revolution, Dan Robinson presents a new history of politics in colonial America and the imperial crisis, tracing how ideas of Europe and Europeanness shaped British-American political culture. Reconstructing colonial debates about the European states system, European civilisation, and Britain's position within both, Robinson shows how these concerns informed colonial attitudes towards American identity and America's place inside - and, ultimately, outside - the emerging British Empire. Taking in more than two centuries of Atlantic history, he explores the way in which colonists inherited and adapted Anglo-British traditions of thinking about international politics, how they navigated imperial politics during the European wars of 1740-1763, and how the burgeoning patriot movement negotiated the dual crisis of Europe and Empire in the between 1763 and 1775. In the process, Robinson sheds new light on the development of public politics in colonial America, the Anglicisation/Americanisation debate, the political economy of empire, early American art and poetry, eighteenth-century geopolitical thinking, and the relationship between international affairs, nationalism, and revolution. What emerges from this story is an American Revolution that seems both decidedly arcane and strikingly relevant to the political challenges of the twenty-first century.

This book examines the political works of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1683-1743) within the context of early eighteenth century British and French political thought. In the first monograph on Ramsay in English for over sixty years, the author uses Ramsay to engage in a broader evaluation of thetheory in the two countries and the exchange between them.At the beginning of the eighteenth century Britain and France were on divergent paths of political sovereignty. After the Glorious Revolution (1688) Britain had rejected James II's absolutist pretensions in favour of a monarch that governed through Parliament, while in France Louis XIV ruled a seemingly absolute state. Yet in the first three decades of that century, the growing impetus towards mixedgovernment in Britain influenced the political theory of its long-standing enemy. Shaped by experiences and ideologies of the seventeenth century, thinkers in both states expressed a desire to stimulate change by integrating past wisdom with modern knowledge. A Scottish Jacobite emigre living inParis, Ramsay employed a synthesis of British and French principles to promote a Stuart restoration. He offered a daring vision of European co-operation that would allow Britain to claim its place as the "capital of the universe." Adapting a range of philosophies, including his mentor ArchbishopFenelon's opposition to Louis XIV, Ramsay created a compelling image of the future that grappled with key political ideas extant in Britain and France. Mansfield reveals that Ramsay was an important intellectual conduit for the two countries, whose contribution to the history of political thoughthas been greatly under appreciated.Due to the extensive analysis of the period between the 1660s and 1730s in Britain and France, this book will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in the history of political thought, religious, intellectual, political and cultural history, as well as the early Enlightenment.

The late Middle Ages and early modern era saw an increase in revolts and uprisings. A complex imagery of revolts emerges and spreads. Especially on short-lived materials, but also in manuscripts, and very soon in printed pamphlets and prints. In return, challenged authorities try to contain seditious images and display their legitimacy by publishing their point of view.

This book offers a radically new view of the Enlightenment and the French armed forces from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Pichichero makes a striking discovery: the Geneva Conventions, post-traumatic stress, and the "band of brothers" all found their antecedents in the 18th century army. From the Caribbean to India, the military was one of the few institutions to transform progressive theories into practice, actually operationalizing the Enlightenment.

A groundbreaking study of the role of Muslims in eighteenth‑century France   From the beginning, French revolutionaries imagined their transformation as a universal one that must include Muslims, Europe's most immediate neighbors. They believed in a world in which Muslims could and would be French citizens, but they disagreed violently about how to implement their visions of universalism and accommodate religious and social difference. Muslims, too, saw an opportunity, particularly as European powers turned against the new French Republic, leaving the Muslim polities of the Middle East and North Africa as France's only friends in the region. In Muslims and Citizens, Coller examines how Muslims came to participate in the political struggles of the revolution and how revolutionaries used Muslims in France and beyond as a test case for their ideals. In his final chapter, Coller reveals how the French Revolution's fascination with the Muslim world paved the way to Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Egypt in 1798.

Peter the Great made two long trips to Western Europe and stayed in France in 1717. He met with statesmen, scientists, technicians and artists. Conversations with the French fueled the reformist tsar’s efforts.

The 1840s witnessed widespread hunger and malnutrition at home and mass starvation in Ireland. And yet the aptly named 'Hungry 40s' came amidst claims that, notwithstanding Malthusian prophecies, absolute biological want had been eliminated in England. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were supposedly the period in which the threat of famine lifted for the peoples of England. But hunger remained, in the words of Marx, an 'unremitted pressure'. The politics of hunger offers the first systematic analysis of the ways in which hunger continued to be experienced and feared, both as a lived and constant spectral presence. It also examines how hunger was increasingly used as a disciplining device in new modes of governing the population. Drawing upon a rich archive, this innovative and conceptually-sophisticated study throws new light on how hunger persisted as a political and biological force.

"Democracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political self-determination of peoples, sexual and racial equality - these values have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades since they were enshrined in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. But if these ideals no longer seem radical today, their origin was very radical indeed - far more so than most historians have been willing to recognize. In A Revolution of the Mind, Jonathan Israel, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment, traces the philosophical roots of these ideas to what were the least respectable strata of Enlightenment thought - what he calls the Radical Enlightenment." "Originating as a clandestine movement of ideas that was almost entirely hidden from public view during its earliest phase, the Radical Enlightenment matured in opposition to the moderate mainstream Enlightenment dominant in Europe and America in the eighteenth century. During the revolutionary decades of the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s, the Radical Enlightenment burst into the open, only to provoke a long and bitter backlash. A Revolution of the Mind shows that this vigorous opposition was mainly due to the powerful impulses in society to defend the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, empire, and racial hierarchy - principles linked to the upholding of censorship, church authority, social inequality, racial segregation, religious discrimination, and far-reaching privilege for ruling groups." "In telling this history, A Revolution of the Mind reveals the surprising origin of our most cherished values - and helps explain why in certain circles they are frequently disapproved of and attacked even today."--BOOK JACKET.

Drawing on sources ranging from village council minutes and reports of government spies to investigations into seditious speech, this book provides a new account of the politicization of the French peasantry in the 18th century. Walshaw demonstrates that villagers were well-informed and outspoken on political issues. In addition, though the political authorities characterized peasants as ignorant and easily manipulated, Walshaw shows that the ruling elite also carefully monitored and suppressed their opinions, revealing a contradiction in the governing practices of the state. By documenting the lively political forum that existed in rural France, this study challenges not only the bourgeois nature of the public sphere, as defined by Jürgen Habermas, but also the notion that it was predominantly urban.

Demonstrates why the American and French Revolutions, although roughly contemporaneous and inspired by many of the same ideals, followed utterly different trajectories.

"In this extraordinarily rich book, Madelyn Gutwirth examines over one hundred prints and paintings, dozens of texts, and the work of a great many cultural critics in order to consider how gender politics were played out during a highly volatile era. Finding evidence of a crisis in gender relations during the eighteenth century, she traces its evolution in the politics of rococo art, demographic trends, plans for the control of prostitution, maternal nursing and wet-nursing practices, folklore, the salon, and in the theater of Diderot and the polemics of Rousseau." --BOOK JACKET.

In this provocative interdisciplinary essay, Joan B. Landes examines the impact on women of the emergence of a new, bourgeois organization of public life in the eighteenth century. She focuses on France, contrasting the role and representation of women under the Old Regime with their status during and after the Revolution. Within the extremely personal and patriarchal political culture of Old Regime France, elite women wielded surprising influence and power, both in the court and in salons. Urban women of the artisanal class often worked side by side with men and participated in many public functions. But the Revolution, Landes asserts, relegated women to the home, and created a rigidly gendered, essentially male, bourgeois public sphere.

Aaron Sullivan explores the British occupation of Philadelphia, chronicling the experiences of a group of people who were pursued, pressured, and at times persecuted, not because they chose the wrong side of the Revolution but because they tried not to choose a side at all. For these people, the war was neither a glorious cause to be won nor an unnatural rebellion to be suppressed, but a dangerous and costly calamity to be navigated with care. Both the Patriots and the British referred to this group as "the disaffected," perceiving correctly that their defining feature was less loyalty to than a lack of support for either side in the dispute, and denounced them as opportunistic, apathetic, or even treasonous. Sullivan shows how Revolutionary authorities embraced desperate measures in their quest to secure their own legitimacy, suppressing speech, controlling commerce, and mandating military service. By highlighting the perspectives of those wearied by and withdrawn from the conflict, The Disaffected reveals the consequences of a Revolutionary ideology that assumed the nation's people to be a united and homogenous front.

Freedom's Mirror follows the reverberations of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba, where the violent entrenchment of slavery occurred at the very moment that the Haitian Revolution provided a powerful and proximate example of slaves destroying slavery. By creatively linking two stories - the story of the Haitian Revolution and that of the rise of Cuban slave society - that are usually told separately, Ada Ferrer sheds fresh light on both of these crucial moments in Caribbean and Atlantic history.