scholarly journals The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution

2011 ◽  
Vol 101 (7) ◽  
pp. 3286-3307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daron Acemoglu ◽  
Davide Cantoni ◽  
Simon Johnson ◽  
James A Robinson

The French Revolution had a momentous impact on neighboring countries. It removed the legal and economic barriers protecting oligarchies, established the principle of equality before the law, and prepared economies for the new industrial opportunities of the second half of the 19th century. We present within-Germany evidence on the long-run implications of these institutional reforms. Occupied areas appear to have experienced more rapid urbanization growth, especially after 1850. A two-stage least squares strategy provides evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the reforms instigated by the French had a positive impact on growth. JEL: N13, N43, O47

Author(s):  
Stephanie A. Glaser

Gothic Revival designates a key moment in architectural history. It also refers to the use of Gothic forms and motifs in furniture, design, and the decorative arts. It is inextricably connected to the reawakened interest in medieval architecture that began in the 18th century and that provided both its scholarly basis and intellectual context. Thus, Gothic Revival comprises neo-Gothic artifacts as well as the antiquarian, scholarly, and literary texts that fueled it. Scholars distinguish between Gothic Revival and Survival. “Survival” refers to the continued use of the Gothic style in post-medieval building, whereas “Revival” describes the reuse of Gothic details. As an aesthetic term, in 16th-century Italy “Gothic” was associated with the “barbaric” medieval style and by the 18th-century it was equated with bad taste. “Gothick” was used for 18th-century garden architecture, design, and buildings, such as Walpole’s villa at Strawberry Hill or the Gothic House at Wörlitz, both playful amalgamations of Gothic motifs. Lenoir followed a similar aesthetic when he created monuments from the rubble of the French Revolution. With the rise of antiquarian studies and a growing number of architects schooled in the Gothic style, the Revival grew in impetus and importance through the 19th century. Frivolous Gothick gave way to an archeologically informed style that characterized the work of Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc. Neo-Gothic was adopted by Catholics and Protestants alike and promoted by local and national governments. Monumental restoration and completion of edifices such as Notre-Dame de Paris and Cologne Cathedral also played an important role. Significantly, Gothic Revival reflected each nation’s understanding of its history: in England it was nostalgic, looking back to a lost golden age; in France, Gothic forged a continuity with a past irreparably severed by the French Revolution; in the German-speaking lands Gothic was considered to symbolize the lost unity of the medieval German Empire, which meant that the German Revival was forward looking toward future political and religious unity. Creativity and eclecticism characterized the later Gothic Revival, with Romanesque, Byzantine, and Rundbogen styles becoming viable alternatives to Gothic. Scholarship on Gothic Revival dates to the late 19th century, when Eastlake set the pattern for the scholarly discourse. In the early 20th century, Clark and Abraham negatively appraised the Revival, a stance that English architectural historians began to revise in the 1940s. By the 1970s, England, France, and Germany were considered the center of Gothic Revival. In the 1990s Gothic Revival was recognized to be a pan-European phenomenon, and in the 21st century scholars have assiduously explored Gothic’s worldwide spread. This article reflects these scholarly developments.


2014 ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Hugo Sert

The « great detention » analysed by Michel Foucault shows the fear societies have of wanderers and tramps. During the wholeclassical period, political and religious elites try to lock up people who don’t have neither home nor work, thinking that they are a danger to society’s order. Arts and literature represent this threat, reinforcing the negativity of wandering and mobility in minds. However, there is a time in French history leading to question this doxa. A political revolution turns these representations round. The French Revolution changes the camp of suspicion towards wandering. Starting from 1789, old elites, ironically, find themselves out in the streets with nothing. These people, the Émigrés, are the ones creating literature during the revolutionary period. This phenomenonaffects writing at this time, and arises ethical and aesthetic questions. The texts written in exile trying to answer these questions create a new sensibility which is going to influence the minds of the 19th century.


Author(s):  
Nathan P. Devir

Zionism is the umbrella term used to describe the various strains of Jewish nationalism that grew out of other 19th-century nationalist ideologies and movements. Zionist thought owes its genesis to several converging intellectual and political factors in the late modern period: the assimilation and urbanization of many European Jews during the Haskalah [the Jewish Enlightenment], which began in the 1770s; the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), followed by the Napoleonic emancipation of the Jews (1806); the age of European imperialism; and, significantly, the resurgence of violent anti-Semitism in Europe in the latter half of the 19th century. Unabashedly secular in nature at the outset, Zionism as an ideology sought to correct what Joseph Stalin later infamously said the Jews lacked in order to be a coherent nation: a common language, territory, economy, and psycho-social make-up.


Author(s):  
William Doyle

The Revolution began as an assertion of national sovereignty. Nations were the new supreme source of authority in human affairs. ‘What it started’ considers the effects of the French Revolution over the 19th century. A new principle of political legitimacy began, and the sovereignty of nations achieved successful acceptance throughout the Western world. In the 20th century, it would be used to expel Europeans from overseas colonies. What part did the Revolution play in defining a ‘nation’ in 19th-century terms? What significance did popular power have? Can there ever be a true revolution without terror? The legacy of the French Revolution in the 19th century was momentous, yet always partial and often paradoxical.


Author(s):  
João Paulo Pimenta

Stemming from an accelerated and tumultuous process unleashed by European wars in the first decade of the 19th century, Brazil and Portugal split politically in 1822. In a sense, Brazil’s independence reflects a number of peculiar characteristics within the context of the time due, in part, to three centuries of Portuguese colonization and to changes within the colonial system beginning in the second half of the 1700s. In other ways, however, Brazilian independence is linked to external events like the French Revolution, the independence of Haiti, and, above all, the wars of independence in Spanish America. The most profound and lasting consequences of the break with Portugal were the emergence of a Brazilian state and nation that until that point did not exist and that was consolidated over the course of the nineteenth century, as well as the nationalization of certain colonial institutions that were partially maintained. Historiography and national memory would later imbue independence with supreme importance as the foundational moment of the nation such that it has become a recurring theme in historical studies of Brazil.


Author(s):  
Irina F. Shcherbatova ◽  

This article argues that by 1830s historiosophical discourse in Russia had be­come both a specific genre and a type of ideology. The article outlines the spec­trum of philosophical approaches to history within this genre and ideology. It ar­gues that the defeat of the Decembrist revolt led to the formation of a particular negative interpretation of Russian history amongst Russian philosophers of that time. The author offers an analysis of works by Dmitry Venevitinov, Ivan Kireyevsky, and Pyotr Chaadayev written in the late 1820s and in the early 1830s. These texts allow us to explore the genealogy and distinctive style of Russian philosophy of history. Nikolay Karamzin’s interpretation of history as governed by providence proved to be the most influential interpretation of the 19th century. Pyotr Chaadaev’s historical pessimism and Ivan Kireyevsky’s opti­mistic messianism were both influenced by Karamzin’s humanist anthropology. All these thinkers were looking to determine the meaning of Russian history, and this very task inevitably entails rhetorical and ideological constructions. Russian messianism and the popular Russian idea of the decay of Europe were inspired by the conservative reception of the French revolution by religious thinkers in Europe. This messianic philosophy of history was expressed in a very non-schol­arly discourse and was interwoven with ideas of teleology and providence to­gether with some superficial comparative observations. There is a striking simi­larity between philosophy of history in the 1830s and the philosophy that was developed by the authors of the Vekhi collection in the early 20th century.


Music ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warwick Lister

Giovanni Battista Viotti (b. 1755–d. 1824), the son of a blacksmith, was born in the village of Fontanetto Po, not far from Turin, where he completed his studies and began his career as a violinist. He died in London after a brilliant but checkered career as the most celebrated violinist of his time, as an opera theater and concert series director in Paris and London, and as a failed wine merchant. He was fêted by the crowned heads of Europe, including Frederick the Great, Catherine II of Russia, Marie Antoinette, and the Prince of Wales (later George IV of England). Forced to escape the French Revolution because of his royalist associations, he was later exiled from England for alleged revolutionary activities. Viotti’s life is instructive as an exemplum of musicians caught up in the social and economic upheavals of the French Revolution and its aftermath―the change from aristocratic and court patronage to the increasingly commercial, box office–centered institutions of the 19th century. For thirty years Viotti enjoyed an intimate friendship with an English family, the Chinnerys, that lasted until his death, and which in some ways became the mainspring of his existence. An extensive collection of their correspondence throws an extraordinarily vivid light on his life and career. Though he died in debt, having outlived his fame, Viotti, through his playing, his compositions, and his teaching, was arguably the most influential violinist who ever lived. His published oeuvre—consisting chiefly of violin concertos; sonatas for violin and keyboard; and string duets, trios, and quartets (and many arrangements thereof)—enjoyed enormous esteem and popularity in his time. Viotti’s musical style, thoroughly Italianate in its lyricism, reflects the evolution of the Classical style, from galant to pre-Romantic, but in an entirely original and unpredictable way. Scholarly study of Viotti and his works was practically nonexistent until the late 19th century, and remained scarce until well into the 20th century. Since the 1950s, however, and especially since the 1990s, scholarly studies—books and articles—have been published in ever-increasing numbers.


1978 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie T. Andresen

Abstract François Thurot’s Discours préliminaire (1796), a first attempt at a historiography of grammar, sums up the language theories of the philosophes, while prefiguring the 19th century in both his concept of language and his attitude towards the science of language. He accepts, for instance, the theory that the perfection of a language reflects the progress of the mind but rejects the metaphysical speculation on the origin of language that characteristically accompanied such a theory. And although Thurot, like his contemporaries, still preoccupies himself with the method of logico-linguistic analysis which would lead to a langue bien faite, his study opens up to a new variety of linguistic phenomena in the vernacular. Thus, his view of language embraces both the mechanical reductionism aimed at scientific language with its pretention to universality as well as the creative dynamism of discursive language with its recognition of cultural relativity. Furthermore, Thurot assimilates the interest in the genetic relationship among languages, that was already in the air, to the historicism of the philosophes, whose historical tableaux unfolded within their theories of language. Thurot’s interest in natural language is an outgrowth of the prevailing ‘climate of opinion’. The data-oriented approach to language had begun with the invention of the printing press, from which time there was an ever increasing accumulation and distribution of material on non-European languages. The French Revolution was to dramatize the importance of discursive language, since the unification of the nation depended, in part, on the democratization and standardization of daily language. Such a climate proved favorable for subsequent work on genetic classification and on Indo-European in the 19th century.


Author(s):  
Joseph Inikori

Since direct contact between Europeans and West Africans was established in the mid-15th century by the Portuguese, Euro-African trade relations have played a major role in West Africa’s long-run socioeconomic development. This critical role was connected to two totally different kinds of trade conducted by Europeans at different points in time: trade in commodities (the products of West African labor and natural resources) and trade in human captives. The first 200 years (1450–1650) of European commercial enterprise in West Africa were dominated overwhelmingly by trade in commodities; trade in human captives overwhelmingly dominated in the 200 years which followed (1650–1867). Trade in commodities returned with a bang in the last decades of the 19th century (1870–1900). The respective effects of these two trades on the development process in West Africa were as different as the trades themselves. The early trade in commodities contributed positively to the process; the transition from the trade in commodities to the trade in human captives had a disastrous effect; the 19th-century transition to commodity trade made an immense positive contribution. The positive contribution was significantly enhanced by the ending of the socioeconomic crises engendered by the trade in human captives, and by the establishment of general peace (Pax Britannica) by British colonial rule, with its free trade policy. However, the failure of the colonial administration to take advantage of the general increase in real household incomes and purchasing power and encourage domestic manufacturing in the colonies prevented the transformation of short-term growth into structural transformation and long-run development.


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