Self-love and sociability: the ‘rudiments of commerce’ in the state of nature

Istvan Hont’s classic work on the theoretical links between the seventeenth-century natural jurists Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf and the eighteenth-century Scottish political economists remains a popular trope among intellectual and economic historians of various stamps. Despite this, a common criticism levelled at Hont remains his relative lack of engagement with the relationship between religion and economics in the early modern period. This paper challenges this aspect of Hont’s narrative by drawing attention to an alternative, albeit complementary, assessment of the natural jurisprudential heritage of eighteenth-century British political economy. Specifically, the article attempts to map on to Hont’s thesis the Christian Stoic interpretation of Grotius and Pufendorf which has gained greater currency in recent years. In doing so, the paper argues that Grotius and Pufendorf’s contributions to the ‘unsocial sociability’ debate do not necessarily lead directly to the Scottish school of political economists, as is commonly assumed. Instead, it contends that a reconsideration of Grotius and Pufendorf as neo-Stoic theorists, particularly via scrutiny of their respective adaptations of the traditional Stoic theory of oikeiosis, steers us towards the heart of the early English ‘clerical’ Enlightenment

Toasting and Gender in Great-Britain in the Eighteenth Century

Historians of eighteenth-century Britain have used toasting as evidence of the construction of socio-political allegiances and signs of dynastic, religious political divides. This presentation examines the construction of toasting norms within the paradigm of politeness, ascendant in the early part of the century and culminating in the ideal of the "polite gentleman", which may be understood as a model of hegemonic masculinity. Toasting, a ritual of male bonding, strengthened homosocial groups and included some males at the expense of other males and all women. Secondly, this paper explores the dimension of competitiveness and aggression always lurking below the veneer of polite masculinity. Toasting rituals served to channel violence into socially acceptable forms and can be seen as substitutes for duelling or brawling. The third moment of this paper qualifies claims about women's exclusion, showing they could engage in toasting, in domestic settings but also in some public contexts, especially from the end of the century. Femininity was also increasingly seen as a moderating, civilizing form that would restrain the excesses of all-male drinking

Jon Mee, Print, Publicity and Radicalism in the 1790s. The Laurel of Liberty

L’ouvrage de Jon Mee porte sur le rapport des radicaux anglais des années 1790 au monde de l’écrit et de l’imprimé ; il analyse « l’émergence du radicalisme populaire à travers l’expérimentation, la contestation et le spectacle [performance] » (1). Le milieu radical londonien gravitant autour de la London Corresponding Society (LCS) et de la Society for Constitutional Information, plus bourgeoise, a fait l’objet de nombreuses études depuis le classique d’E. P. Thompson, La Formation de la cla..

Citations et discussions de Harrington chez les radicaux anglais de James Burgh à Thomas Spence, 1775-1795

no abstrac

A practical English past: commemorating the Glorious Revolution in England, from Tom Paine to T. B. Macaulay (1792-1848)

Dans la seconde partie des Droits de l’homme (1792), Thomas Paine appelle le Bill des droits anglais de 1689 “un bill des torts, et d’insultes”. Cependant, cette affirmation ne représente en rien une capitulation historiographique. Les réformateurs anglais, qu’ils soient whigs ou radicaux, n'acceptaient pas l'interprétation conservatrice d'Edmund Burke, qui représentait les événements de 1688-1689 comme une déviation minimale de la ligne hérédicale effectuée pour conserver les libertés ancestrales et pour lier la postérité à tout jamais, ils n'abandonnaient pas non plus les “principes de la Révolution” qui formaient le socle de la politique whig. Alors que la Révolution française éclipsait la Glorieuse Révolution dans les dîners et les pamphlets, on pouvait encore invoquer dans la presse les principes de 1688, que ce soit pour dénoncer le Congrès de Vienne, pour faire respecter des droits ancestraux au tribunal ou pour faire étalage de son patriotisme dans des réunions et des manifestations de rue réformatrices. Ce chapitre examine des moments où des groupes politiques rivaux se disputaient le contrôle de la mémoire de 1688. Ce fut le cas au milieu des années 1790, quand Charles Pigott et d'autres 'Jacobins' britanniques faisaient la satire des loyalistes qui se targuaient de la Glorieuse Révolution; puis de nouveu pendant les controverses autour du droit de vote des Catholiques. Il se produisit un glissement dans les célébrations du 4 novembre, le jour désigné pour célébrer l'anniversaire de Guillaume d'Orange servant après 1795 à célébrer l'acquittement de Thomas Hardy et d'autres membres de la Société de correspondance de Londres, la plus grande société radicale d'artisan de l'époque. Le souvenir de la résistance à Pitt venait se surimposer sur la Glorieuse Révolution. Sur le terrain historiographique, pendant que les chefs de file whigs montraient leur attachement inaltérable aux principes de 1789 en écrivant des histoires de la Révolution, les interprétations radicales de cet événement furent gommées par le succès de l’Histoire d'Angleterre de Thomas Babington Macaulay, dont les deux premiers volumes parurent en 1848, année de révolution en Europe continentale mais pas en Grande-Bretagne.In the second part of Rights of Man, Paine famously called the Bill of Rights “a bill of wrongs, and of insult”. However, this statement was no historiographical capitulation. English reformers, whether whig or radical, did not accept Burke’s conservative interpretation of 1688-1689 as a minimal deviation of the hereditary line made in order to safeguard ancestral liberties and bind posterity forever after; nor did they abandon the “Revolution principles” underpinning whig politics. While the Glorious Revolution was eclipsed by the French Revolution in toasts and in pamphlets, the principles of 1688 could still be invoked in the press to denounce the Congress of Vienna, to uphold ancient rights in court, or to display one’s patriotism in reform meetings and processions. This chapter examines moments when rival political groups vied for the control of the memory of 1688: this was the case in the mid-1790s, when Charles Pigott and other ‘Jacobins’ satirized loyalist appropriations of the Glorious Revolution, and during the controversies over Catholic Emancipation. There was a shift in the celebrations of 4 November, the day appointed to celebrate William of Orange’s birthday serving instead to celebrate the acquittal of Thomas Hardy and other members of the London Corresponding Society from 1795 on. The memory of resistance to Pitt was superimposed onto the Glorious Revolution. On the terrain of historiography, while Whig leaders still showed their commitment to the principles of 1689 by writing histories of the Revolution, radical interpretations of the Revolution were erased by the success of T. B. Macaulay’s History of England, whose first two volumes appeared in 1848, a year of revolution on the Continent but not in Britain

Toasting and the diffusion of radical ideas, 1780–1832

International audienc

Cultural Transfer Theory and Exchanges between Britain and the Baltic in the Eighteenth Century

La méthodologie des transferts culturels, élaborée dans un context franco-allemand dans les années 1980, s'est développée alors que d'autres historiographie transnationales montaient en puissance. L'article examine l'historiographie des relations entre la Grande-Bretagne et la Baltique au sens large au dix-huitième siècle. Ce domaine d'étude bénéficierait d'analyses en termes de transfert culturel, comme en témoignent des propositions de sujets possibles à partir d'ouvrage publiés à Riga.This article reviews cultural transfer methodology as it was devised in the context of Franco-German research in the 1980s, and as it developed alongside other relational, transnational historiographies. Examining the historiography of relations between Britain and the Baltic (from Sweden to Russia) in the eighteenth century, if suggests that cultural transfers could complement current approaches and proposes avenues of research on the basis of books published in Riga