Call for Papers: Les Mirabeau: Eighteenth-Century French Society, Political Economy and Cosmopolitan Culture For well over a century, the Mirabeau family has fascinated historians of the Old Regime and of the French Revolution. In the person of Victor Riqueti, author of LAmi des hommes (1756) and physiocratic collaborator with François Quesnay, this clan furnished a pioneering figure in the political economy of the French Enlightenment. More generally, debates over agriculture, demography, luxury, commerce and taxation triggered by his abundant literary production helped to define the French Enlightenment during the second half of the eighteenth century. During the Revolution, the famed orator Honoré Gabriel advanced and eventually come to symbolize the profound national unity that helped to push the Revolution forward at key moments; at the same time, relations within his own family--between an authoritarian father who persecuted his son with a lettre de cachet and a brother who emigrated and fought against the Revolution--point to significant fissures within French elites and, therefore, of the meaning of the Revolutionary project itself. The background of the Mirabeaus was traditional: military nobles with landed wealth in Provence, they were significant participants in local politics. As representants of their social group, they participated in many of the conflicts between provinces and capital that were a permanent feature of Old Regime Frances absolutist politics and culture. At the same time, the Mirabeau family maintained connections at Versailles and, later, in the beau monde of Paris--testament to another geographic displacement that shaped the politics of Enlightenment and reform in eighteenth-century France. Finally, the Mirabeau family developed connections outside the mainland France, both in Europe and in the colonial world, whose importance to the social, economic and political world of Old Regime France historians have come to better appreciate in the last decade. In the juxtaposition of the provincial, national and cosmopolitan in the careers and writing of the Mirabeau family we glimpse the Enlightenment in and above national context. In many important senses, the history of the Mirabeau family captures the essence of what the Enlightenment, Reform and Revolution itself were. A conference on the Mirabeau family provides an opportunity to take stock of developments over the past two decades or so in the historiography of Old Regime France, The French Revolution as well as in the European Enlightenment. We invite proposals bearing on the Mirabeau family and the many contexts outlined above, from a broad range of methodologies and themes, such as social history, the history of elites, the history of political and economic ideas; and we expect that these classic perspectives for investigating the Mirabeau family and their context will be considerably enriched by studies in the history of science, the history of sociability and the history of administration and governance (e.g. of the colonies, parlements, and of the royal state). The conference is to be held in Paris, France on April 9-11, 2015 with sponsorship of the Institut National dEtudes Démographiques, The University of Chicago, the University of Paris 8 and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Please send a paper proposal in English or in French of 300 to 500 words before June 30, 2014 to the following address: [email protected] . Proposals for full sessions or round-tables are welcome, please contact the organizers at the above address for further information. Scientific commitee : Manuela ALBERTONE (Università di Torino); Loïc CHARLES (Université de Paris 8) ; Paul CHENEY (University of Chicago) ; Joël ELIX (University of Reading); Bela KAPOSSY (Université de Lausanne) ; Michael KWASS (John Hopkins University); Catherine LARRERE (University de Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne); Philippe MINARD (EHESS - Université de Paris 8) ; Arnaud ORAIN (Université de Paris 8) ; Pierre SERNA (University de Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne) ; Michael SONENSCHER (Cambridge University) ; Philippe STEINER (Université Paris IV - Paris Sorbonne ; Christine THERE (INED). Keynote speaker: Antoine Lilti (EHESS) The organizers [email protected] Loïc CHARLES (Université de Paris 8) Paul CHENEY (University of Chicago) Christine THERE (INED)
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 13:44:47 +0000