Conflict, Territory and the Frontier Economy: Smuggling in the Alps of Dauphiné During the 18th Century

“Catastrophe” is a term of that culture which is threatened by it; the modern understanding of catastrophe dialectically marks the boundary between nature and culture where the term originates. This can be exemplarily shown in the cultural coding of Swiss topography: threatening scenarios have been incorporated into Switzerland’s idyllic image repertoire since the 18th century, and they further developed into a “catastrophe culture” of its own. One looks up at the Alps from all directions not only because they are the symbol of identity, but also because they represent a collective threat and thus a challenge for solidary self-assertion. Thus, catastrophes support the construction of modern, national identity. Swiss literature contributes to the specific cultivation of catastrophe with various disaster scenarios. However, it also develops counter scenarios, which reflexively question the integrative effect of the catastrophe: It hears the discord in the unity choir and it reflects Switzerland’s alleged bystander role during global catastrophes. Moreover, it opens localness, when it ideologizes itself as “homeland,” to universality by releasing the transgressive energy with which the catastrophe attempts to destroy all political, topographical, medial, and aesthetic boundaries. Resumen La "catástrofe" es un concepto de aquella cultura a la que amenaza; el concepto moderno de catástrofe marca dialécticamente la frontera entre naturaleza y cultura en la que se origina. Esto se muestra de manera ejemplar en la codificación cultural de la topografía suiza: desde el siglo dieciocho se han ido incorporando en el repertorio idílico de imágenes de Suiza escenarios de amenaza que han ido evolucionando hacia una verdadera "cultura de la catástrofe". Los Alpes pueden observarse desde todos los ángulos ya que no sólo son el símbolo de identidad, sino que además representan una amenaza colectiva y, así, un desafío para la autoafirmación solidaria. De este modo, las catástrofes tienen un efecto en la formación de una identidad nacional y moderna. La literatura de Suiza contribuye con variados escenarios del ocaso a este cultivo específico de la catástrofe. No obstante, desarrolla también contraescenarios reales que ponen en duda de manera reflexiva el efecto integrativo de la catástrofe: Oye los tonos disonantes en un coro uniforme y le devuelve a Suiza su presunto papel de espectador en las catástrofes mundiales. Finalmente, abre lo local, cuando se ideologiza como "patria", a lo universal, liberando esa energía transgresiva con la que la catástrofe derrumba toda frontera política, topográfica, medial y estética.

Download Full-text

Alpine Climate Change Derived From Instrumental Measurements

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.761 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Yuri Brugnara

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Changes ◽

18Th Century ◽

European Alps ◽

Alpine Valley ◽

Continental Scale ◽

The North ◽

Run Off ◽

The Alps ◽

Meteorological Observations

The European Alps have experienced remarkable climate changes since the beginning of the Industrial Age. In particular, mean air temperature in the region increased at a greater rate than global temperature, leading to the loss of nearly half of the glaciated area and to important changes in the ecosystems. Spanning 1,200 km in length, with peaks reaching over 4,000 meters above sea level (m asl), the Alps have a critical influence over the weather in most of Europe and separate the colder oceanic/continental climate in the north from the milder Mediterranean climate in the south. The climatic differences between the main slopes are reflected into different climate changes—whereas the northern slope got wetter, the southern slope got drier. The consequences of these climate changes are not confined to the Alpine region. Being located in the center of Europe, the Alps provide water and electricity for over 100 million people. Alpine run-off is a major contributor to the total discharge of several major European rivers such as the Rhine, the Rhône, the Po, and the Danube. Therefore, climate change in the Alps can have significant economic impacts on a continental scale. Their convenient geographical position allowed scientists to study the Alpine climate since the very beginning of the instrumental era. The first instrumental meteorological observations in an Alpine valley were taken as early as the mid-17th century, soon followed by measurements at higher elevations. Continuous records are available since the late 18th century, providing invaluable information on climate variability to modern-day researchers. Although there is overwhelming evidence of a dominant anthropogenic influence on the observed temperature increase, the causes of the changes that affected other variables have, in many cases, not been sufficiently investigated by the scientific community.

Download Full-text

‘Our common room in Geneva’ and the early exploration of the Alps of Savoy

Notes and Records the Royal Society journal of the history of science ◽

10.1098/rsnr.1998.0047 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 52 (2) ◽

pp. 221-235 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

J. S. Rowlinson

Keyword(s):

18Th Century ◽

The South ◽

German Speaking ◽

The Alps ◽

Early Exploration ◽

Natural Philosophers ◽

The City ◽

Made In ◽

Snow And Ice

The polite world took little interest in the Alps before the 18th century. The local inhabitants had ventured far enough to shoot chamois and to search for crystal (i.e. quartz), but few of the educated took any notice. The earliest natural philosophers to study the botany and mineralogy of these regions were from the German–speaking towns of Switzerland. Their first conclusions have not always stood the test of time; one of them, J.J. Scheuchzer (F.R.S., 1703) even reported the presence of dragons. Such frivolities did not appeal to the Calvinists of the city republic of Geneva. They could see the ‘montagnes maudites’ of Savoy to the south–east, but they never went to them. The first serious attempts to describe this world of snow and ice were made in 1741 and 1742.

Download Full-text

Alpenprojekt

Interactive Film and Media Journal ◽

10.32920/ifmj.v1i1.1519 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Marina Camargo

Keyword(s):

18Th Century ◽

Main Issue ◽

Fundamental Issue ◽

The Third ◽

European Tradition ◽

The Face ◽

German Region ◽

The Alps ◽

Reduced Dimension ◽

Alpine Landscape

Alpenprojekt videos register the action of cutting the skyline in the alpine mountains. The footage was taken at different sites in the Alps. The cutouts evoke the European tradition from the 18th century to depict portraits with scissors and paper. A deliberate intent to apprehend the landscape within a unique line in a reduced dimension is the main issue in Alpenprojekt I and II. To react in the face of this specific landscape as an effort to embrace what is not controllable became a fundamental issue in the Alpenprojekt series of works. Alpenprojekt began with artistic research related to the southern German region closely connected with its physical landscape. Its representation was then perceived as a memory heritage of historical facts, either forgotten or intentionally lost. The entire project is called Trilogy of the Mountains, and it is related to memory and history. Trilogy of the Mountains comprises three phases: Alpenprojekt, based on the alpine landscape; the second one approaches Beckton Alps, an artificial mountain in east London; and the third part is related to artificial mountains made with war debris in Germany. Each piece of the Trilogy comprises a series of works. The project was initially developed based on landscapes where the notion of Romanticism is still present. Then the project was set toward the post-industrialization period—and finally related to reshaping the topography in Germany after WWII. In Trilogy of Mountains, the tension between natural and artificial is a central issue, being rather complementary than the opposite.

Download Full-text

Protected Areas

Geography of Tourism ◽

10.23912/9781911396437-3647 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Peter Mason

Keyword(s):

Protected Areas ◽

18Th Century ◽

Mountain Areas ◽

Natural Landscape ◽

The World ◽

The Usa ◽

The Alps ◽

The Uk ◽

Economic Use

There are a significant number of protected areas in the world today, but their creation has occurred only relatively recently. The designation of protected areas can be linked back to the Romantic Movement in England and continental Europe (Mason, 2016). A related movement in the USA also contributed significantly to the establishment of pro- tected areas there. As indicated in Chapter 3, until the latter part of the 18th century, large areas of the natural landscape were not looked upon as having much potential for human use. So mountain regions, such as the Alps, were viewed as a barrier to communication and transport, and similarly uplands and mountain areas in the UK were viewed as offering little scope for economic use, except possibly sheep farming. This chapter indicates that the first protected areas were established in the USA, provides a case study of the very first national park, Yellowstone Park, and discusses the issues that can arise when the designation as a park acts as form of marketing and leads to increasing numbers of visitors with the related impacts. The chapter also discusses changing concepts of the term ‘wilderness’, the implications of this and provides a case study of the largest and most remote wilderness on earth, Antarctica.

Download Full-text

Die Kraft der Gletscher. Ein Beitrag zur politischen Ikonographie in der Literatur der Napoleonischen Kriege

Germanica Wratislaviensia ◽

10.19195/0435-5865.144.2 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 144 ◽

pp. 29-40

Author(s):

Tomasz Szybisty

Keyword(s):

18Th Century ◽

High Elevation ◽

The Political ◽

Far North ◽

Beaten Track ◽

The Alps ◽

Political Iconography ◽

Military Campaign ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

Point Of Departure

Der vorliegende Aufsatz widmet sich den politisch-nationalen Auslegungen der eisigen Landschaft in ausgewählten literarischen Werken der Napoleonischen Zeit. Eingangs wird die Aufwertung der polaren und alpinen Regionen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert umrissen, in deren Folge die bis dahin negativ konnotierten Gebiete als antizivilisatorische Sehnsuchts- oder Erkenntnisorte umgedeutet wurden. Einen Höhepunkt fand diese Entwicklung am Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts. Der hohe Norden sowie die Alpen als Zitat des Nordischen wurden insbesondere zur Zeit der Befreiungskriege in der politischen Lyrik als Symbole der Freiheit und Hoffnung eingesetzt, da diese Himmelsrichtung assoziativ u.a. mit der vermuteten Herkunft der Germanen aus Skandinavien und der Niederlage Napoleons im winterlichen Russland verbunden wurde.The power of glaciers: Shedding additional light on the political iconography found in the lyrical production of the Napoleonic eraThis article undertakes to investigate national-political connotations attendant to glacier-featuring landscapes in some literary works of the Napoleonic era. The point of departure for this analysis is marked by the outline of the 18th century re-evaluative process which concerned the cultural conventional wisdom vis-à-vis the symbolic significance of polar and high-elevation regions. In that time, they came to be regarded as off-the-beaten-track refuges and loci affording illumination. This new trend found its culmination at the beginning of the 19th century. The Far North as well as the Alps may have functioned in that period as a symbol connoting freedom and hope for a victory over the French; this sentiment achieved particular prominence in the lyrical production of the Napoleonic period. The German national psyche invested such regions i.a. with two qualities: firstly, they were reminiscent of the cradle of the Germanic people, and secondly, they invoked the debacle of Napoleon’s winter military campaign in Russia.

Download Full-text

Dutch language study and the trivium

Historiographia Linguistica ◽

10.1075/hl.15.1-2.05kli ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 15 (1-2) ◽

pp. 63-83

Author(s):

Harm Klifman

Keyword(s):

18Th Century ◽

History Of Education ◽

School Curriculum ◽

Formal Context ◽

Heuristic Function ◽

Language Study ◽

Strongly Connected ◽

History Of ◽

The Alps ◽

Dutch Language

Summary In the history of European linguistics the 16th century is known as the century in which the vernacular languages of the countries above the Alps and the Pyrenees were discovered as objects of language study. The first grammars of the Dutch language appeared in this period. The study of grammar of the Dutch language took place within the context of a continuation of the Latin trivium tradition in the vernacular. As a consequence the historiographer must take into account this context and the traditional relation of grammar to dialectic and to rhetoric respectively. The first complete trivium in Dutch appeared during 1584–87, the last one in 1648–49. In the period in between, several reprints and editions in the separate disciplines, appeared. The reason for continuation of the Latin trivium tradition in the vernacular should be explained from various circumstances. First, it was the only intellectual tradition on which the contributors to the Dutch trivium could draw. This explains for instance that the structure of the Dutch grammars is based on that of the Latin grammars. Second, Latin grammar was taken to fulfill a heuristic function in the exploration of the vernacular. Not only is the formal context of the Latin trivium model important, but also the historical pedagogical triad of ars, natura and exercitatio played an important role, especially with respect to the criteria of grammaticalness in the Dutch language. The history of the trivium was always strongly connected with the history of education. For this reason it is not surprising to see that the contributors to the Dutch trivium hoped that their work would replace the Latin school curriculum. This did not happen, however. Nevertheless, their work laid the foundations for the study of the Dutch language on which the 18th century grammarians were to build their monumental studies.

Download Full-text