Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Culture

2012 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-568
Author(s):  
J. D. Garrigus
Author(s):  
Kathryn L. Ness

This chapter concludes Setting the Table and summarizes the argument that individuals on both sides of the Atlantic were participating in developing a Spanish-Atlantic identity that amalgamated Spanish heritage with new ideas and goods from other parts of Europe, Asia, and the Americas. It emphasizes that Spain and Spanish America were closely connected as late as the eighteenth century and that Spanish Americans continued to look to Spain as a model for fashion and culture. The chapter argues that data from the St. Augustine sites suggest that traditional interpretations of status and displays of Spanish identity need to be reevaluated in light of changing fashions in eighteenth-century Spain and the similarities between eighteenth-century Spanish and Spanish-American sites. It also contends that the transition away from traditional stews and the possible adoption of French culinary techniques by middle class Spaniards and elite Spanish Americans calls into question previous hypotheses regarding the impact of French culture on Spanish society after the advent of the Bourbon dynasty in 1700. Lastly, it considers other directions and ways in which this study could benefit those studying other parts of the Spanish empire.


2012 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Barker

This essay challenges the generally accepted interpretation of Greuze's Young Girl Weeping over Her Dead Bird (1765) as an allegory of lost virginity by considering the painting in relation to eighteenth-century representations of the young girl in a range of discourses. The central contention is that the implied spectator to whom the picture is addressed is a quasi-paternal figure who disavows his own desire for the girl whilst nevertheless enjoying an eroticized intimacy with her. In thereby raising the specter of incest even as it represses it, the painting exemplifies deep-seated tensions within later eighteenth-century French culture.


Author(s):  
Jay M. Smith

The nobility became a widely despised target of French revolutionaries despite its own lack of unity and its general openness to reform. The strength of the antipathy toward nobility is explained in part by the debates about noble identity that had coursed through French culture for much of the eighteenth century. Those debates brought forth conflicting perspectives, as some sought to revive and expand while others sought to attenuate noble power, standing, and influence. Perhaps the most important consequence of these debates, however, was to reveal the uncertain and contested foundations of noble pre-eminence—a cultural ambiguity that contrasted sharply, and troublingly, with noble assertions of political solidarity in 1788–9.


2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-292 ◽  
Author(s):  

AbstractTwo linked arguments are offered in this paper. The first half argues that I.B. Cohen's notion of the "Newtonian Revolution" in mechanics needs to be revised in light of the recent historical work of Michel Blay, Henk Bos, and Niccolò Guicciardini. It further suggests a new way of thinking about the history of French mathematical mechanics in the decades around 1700 that follows as a consequence of these historical revisions. The second half of the paper builds upon these revisions by offering a cultural explanation for the particularly French approach to mechanics that was developed after 1690. Specifically, it suggests that the broad circulation and influence of the philosophy of Nicolas Malebranche in France between 1680 and 1715 exemplifies the ways that French culture contributed to the development of its particular approach to mechanics.


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