The Enlightenment at War

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (5) ◽  
pp. 1851-1854 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Dobie
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Cultural Minority ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Low Profile ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Status ◽  
Indian War ◽  
Global War

Though few today, even in academic circles, can say with certainty when, where, or over what issues the seven years' war was fought, this mid-eighteenth-century conflict can fairly be characterized as the first global war. It was fought on three continents—Europe, North America, and Asia—and there were significant encounters in West Africa and the Caribbean. It engaged all the European powers, and it is estimated to have cost over a million lives. The historian Linda Colley has characterized the Seven Years' War as “[t]he most dramatically successful war the British ever fought” (101). From the standpoint of empire, this assessment is accurate. The war established the contours of the vast British Empire and brought the rival French presence in North America and India to a sudden end. It also had transformative outcomes for the populations caught in the crossfire. Terms such as global, diaspora, refugee, and cultural minority are more widely applied in discussions of contemporary transnational warfare, but they helpfully illuminate the upheavals associated with this eighteenth-century conflict. The global warfare of the 1750s–60s relegated the indigenous population of North America to the status of an embattled cultural minority, and it turned thousands of francophone Canadians into refugees. Yet despite its scale and the social and political fallout it occasioned, the Seven Years' War has never occupied a central place in the national narratives of its major contestants or in the historiography of the Enlightenment. The main reason for this low profile, I think, is that the war was a many-sided conflict, fought on both metropolitan and colonial fronts. Because of this multilateralism, the war has had a fragmented historical reception, a fracture reflected in the various names by which it has come to be known. The label Seven Years' War is generally used to refer to the fighting that took place in Europe. The war in North America, on the other hand, goes under the name French and Indian War, though in Quebec it is remembered more acrimoniously as the War of Conquest. Histories of India often inventory the warfare of the 1750s–60s under the academic-sounding title Third Carnatic War; a more meaningful characterization would be that it marked the starting point of British rule in India.

scholarly journals The Enlightenment in Practice: Swedish Travellers and Knowledge about the Metal Trades

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Göran Rydén
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Tree Of Knowledge ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Mechanical Arts

Ever since the publication of the Encyclop&eacute;die, in the decades after mid-eighteenth century, there has been an on-going debate about the implications of the metaphor of enlightenment, mainly based on themes discussed in Diderot&rsquo;s and d&rsquo;Alembert&rsquo;s work. Sadly, however, one major field has been left outside; scholars have dealt with two branches of the tree of knowledge, science and the liberal arts, but ignored the branch of mechanical arts. This article takes a starting-point in the reintroduction of political economy, with division of labour, and technology into an assessment of the Enlightenment. It has the ambition of discussing the process whereby progress became a central feature of eighteenth-century thinking, as well as relating this to a discussion about travelling to other places. It deals with Swedish travellers going to Britain, and central Europe, to view differently organised trades with elaborate division of labour, more skilled artisans, fitted<br />into a commercial economy.

Temperate freshwater wetlands: types, status, and threats

2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark M. Brinson ◽  
Ana Inés Malvárez
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Wetland Loss ◽  
Freshwater Wetlands ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Floodplain Wetlands ◽  
Technical Literature ◽  
North East ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Status

This review examines the status of temperate-zone freshwater wetlands and makes projections of how changes over the 2025 time horizon might affect their biodiversity. The six geographic regions addressed are temperate areas of North America, South America, northern Europe, northern Mediterranean, temperate Russia, Mongolia, north-east China, Korea and Japan, and southern Australia and New Zealand. Information from the recent technical literature, general accounts in books, and some first-hand experience provided the basis for describing major wetland types, their status and major threats. Loss of biodiversity is a consequence both of a reduction in area and deterioration in condition. The information base for either change is highly variable geographically. Many countries lack accurate inventories, and for those with inventories, classifications differ, thus making comparisons difficult. Factors responsible for losses and degradation include diversions and damming of river flows, disconnecting floodplain wetlands from flood flows, eutrophication, contamination, grazing, harvests of plants and animals, global warming, invasions of exotics, and the practices of filling, dyking and draining. In humid regions, drainage of depressions and flats has eliminated large areas of wetlands. In arid regions, irrigated agriculture directly competes with wetlands for water. Eutrophication is widespread, which, together with effects of invasive species, reduces biotic complexity. In northern Europe and the northern Mediterranean, losses have been ongoing for hundreds of years, while losses in North America accelerated during the 1950s through to the 1970s. In contrast, areas such as China appear to be on the cusp of expanding drainage projects and building impoundments that will eliminate and degrade freshwater wetlands. Generalizations and trends gleaned from this paper should be considered only as a starting point for developing world-scale data sets. One trend is that the more industrialized countries are likely to conserve their already impacted, remaining wetlands, while nations with less industrialization are now experiencing accelerated losses, and may continue to do so for the next several decades. Another observation is that countries with both protection and restoration programmes do not necessarily enjoy a net increase in area and improvement in condition. Consequently, both reductions in the rates of wetland loss and increases in the rates of restoration are needed in tandem to achieve overall improvements in wetland area and condition.

Netzwerktheorie und Aufklärungsforschung

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nacim Ghanbari
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Starting Point

AbstractThis essay proposes a new appraisal of eighteenth century patronage culture. To this end, findings regarding network theory arrived at in the framework of research on the Enlightenment are extremely valuable. The discussion’s starting point is a reading of Friedrich Nicolai’s novel

Introduction: Enlightenment and Empire

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Allan I. Macinnes ◽  
Jean-François Dunyach
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
North America ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Impact

The Enlightenment is here located in the global transmission of goods, people and ideas. The Scottish participation in Empires is explored through four distinctive themes. The first scrutinises how Whig and Jacobite perspectives on Enlightenment affected Scottish engagement with the British and other Empires. The second relates to the impact of Enlightenment thinking on the reputed decline of Spanish Empire on Scottish commercial access to Latin America. The third deals with enlightened critiques of Empire that were not necessarily sustained by observation and practical experience. The fourth explores through case studies the application of Enlightenment in North America and India. Most of the contributions were primarily given as papers to the Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society Conference held in Paris Sorbonne in July 2013 with the Adam Smith Society and the Centre Roland Mousnier (Sorbonne) on ‘Scotland, Europe and Empire in the Age of Adam Smith and Beyond’. This volume is published with the financial support of the Centre Roland Mousnier, Sorbonne University.

The Status of Animals in Scottish Enlightenment Philosophy

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Wolloch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Common ◽  
Social Improvement ◽  
John Gregory ◽  
Enlightenment Philosophy

This article examines the consideration of animals by various eighteenth-century Scottish philosophers, with special attention given to the physician and philosopher John Gregory, who utilized the comparison of human beings with animals as a starting point for a discussion about human moral and social improvement. In so doing Gregory, like most of his contemporary fellow Scottish philosophers, exemplified the basic anthropocentrism of the common early modern consideration of animals.

Comment

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 229-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Intellectual Challenge

The Articles By David Sorkin and Edmund Kern have a common starting point. Both address aspects of the reform movement that unfolded in the Habsburg lands under Maria Theresa. They underline an argument made by much recent work on the subject that the movement in question, though committed to substantial changes in the social and cultural fabric, was fundamentally Catholic in its inspiration and only loosely and partially aligned with either the great intellectual challenge of the Enlightenment or the fuller and later program of reconstruction that has come to be known in the Austrian context as Josephinism. Both writers acknowledge the powerful contributory stimulus from abroad to the new climate of ideas generated in the monarchy by the travails of the mid-eighteenth century, but submit that those ideas besically arose out of a domestic evolution, especially within ecclesiastical circles.

scholarly journals Lhitage des Lumies: The Enlightenment as an unfinished and morally demanding project

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-30
Author(s):  
Charlotta Wolff
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
Anglo American

The French Enlightenment and the Revolution of 1789 have commonly been seen as forerunners of modern Western European democracies and democratic values such as inalienable human rights, freedom from oppression, equality, religious tolerance, social security and happiness, inherited partly from the Anglo-American revolutions and partly from the radical French philosophes of the last third of the eighteenth century. Historians interested in the culture of the age of Enlightenment have long been looking for the movement in itself, studying the forms of participation and the places where Enlightenment ideals, described and impersonated by men like Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot, were propagated. As much as ‘the Enlightenment’ itself is not a homogeneous philosophical trend, recent historical research has shown that the social and cultural practices of eighteenth-century philosophic-al circles were far from corresponding to the ideals of equality and liberty commonly associated with the Enlightenment. A second bias in our interpretations of the Enlightenment is the central place given to values commonly associated with it in the legitimisation of modern democracies, while in the meantime, other phenomena of the age of Enlightenment, such as cosmopolitanism, are misunderstood or rejected because of, for example, the idea of national primacy. This article is concerned with how the strengthening of the focus in cultural history on social practices has changed our picture of the Enlightenment as a movement, but also with the difficulties experienced by historians who are intellectually and morally indebted to the Enlightenment in constructing a credible picture of this movement in a time when its legacy is subject to political debate.

Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel on the Status of Women in the State

2021 ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Charlotte Sabourin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Status ◽  
Civil Status ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Status Of Women

Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, mayor of Königsberg, was a friend and former student of Immanuel Kant. This chapter investigates Hippel’s plea for the improvement of the civil status of women in eighteenth-century Germany. Hippel argues that men and women are equal and that this equality should lead to similar civil status. On these grounds, he shows that the Enlightenment is bound to be self-defeating if women are excluded from the public sphere. In doing so, he proposes a feminist appropriation of some of Kant’s ideas—in particular by revisiting the categorical imperative. Hippel’s proposals thus provide support to the idea that the legal subordination of women is a problem for the enactment of the Enlightenment broadly construed, and even more so in a Kantian perspective.

The Quiet Scientific Revolution: Problem-Solving and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of “Newtonian” Mechanics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Hepburn
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mathematical Treatment ◽  
Newtonian Mechanics ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Select Group ◽  
Starting Point

A narrative is proposed for eighteenth-century origins of “Newtonian” mechanics, according to which there are two relevant streams of development. One was the popularization of Newtonian natural philosophy, particularly in France in connection with the philosophe movement and the Enlightenment. This movement was inspired primarily by the example of Newton’s Opticks and embraced induction from observation and experiment. Newton’s Principia (1687), on the other hand, and its mathematical treatment of forces and motion, was exceedingly difficult. Solving novel problems in mechanics not addressed in the Principia required the kind of training possessed by a select group of mathematicians, most of whom were already engaged in a program of mathematical mechanics and did not identify as Newtonians nor took Principia as their starting point. The loudly celebrated, popular Newtonianism was lacking a program in mechanics until the end of the eighteenth century, when it subsumed, ironically, the mechanics of the non-Newtonians.

Houses

Quarters ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 10-49
Author(s):  
John Gilbert McCurdy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
French And Indian War ◽  
Military Geography ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Indian War ◽  
Private Homes

This chapter investigates quartering in houses, a common practice in colonial America, and details struggles to billet troops from ancient times to the eighteenth century. It asks why quartering in houses was challenged in seventeenth-century England, and how this introduced the ideal of the home as a distinct place of domestic privacy, absent of military geography. When the French and Indian War brought large numbers of British regular soldiers to North America, American colonists were forced to quarter troops, and this elicited a variety of reactions, with some colonies billeting soldiers in private homes, some in public houses, and others in alternative locales like barracks.

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