5 ms·

Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-Century France

33 points by prismatic 4y ago

cafard 4y ago
Hadn't France been the dominant culture in Europe for about a hundred years at the time of the revolution? Descartes went to Sweden, Diderot to Russia, and Voltaire to Prussia, while the reverse flow of influence was limited. (OK, Rousseau was Swiss; but Francophone (Genevan) Swiss.)
- PeterWhittaker 4y ago
  Dominant? Not sure. Certainly in the anglic west, French thinkers of that time are better known, but I think the clearest thing we can say about ~18th C France is that it kept its borders intact and continued the centralizing of power begun a century before. Russia, Austria, and at times Holland, Spain, Prussia and Sweden, were all major players in Europe, with waxing and waning influence. France was relatively stable while Russian grew and the others mostly ripped pieces out of each other.
  - xwolfi 4y ago
    Well I feel the clearest thing we can say about 18th century France is that they completely derailed the pattern that had lasted for millenia: yes it is possible to try to behead your way into taking over the country and place no king for a while. This didnt work for long, but it started a chain reaction within and outside of France that showed at least an alternative to the anglo compromise (dont behead the king but clip its wings) and at most blew the mind of all who thought that having a divine omnipotent ruler was a fatality. Keep our borders and centralized power, is all you can remember of the 18th century? I know France is smaller today, but at the time, it was probably on every mouths of Europe. Granted it was towards the end, but when we think of the 18th century in France, we tend to explain every event and every situation as to leading to the big finale, the final frontier, the first and last regicide. It's the only century that truly matters to us, because that's when we finally woke up.
    - glompers 4y ago
      > an alternative to the anglo compromise (dont behead the king but clip its wings) and at most blew the mind of all who thought that having a divine omnipotent ruler was a fatality. Do you mean, all who were fatalistic about the divine right of royalty being an inevitability? The English regicide had already been done in 1649, and some form of large representative republics with or without a monarch were already governing in Venice, Poland-Lithuania, the Netherlands, America, and possibly other populous societies that I don't know about.
    - retrac 4y ago
      > At least an alternative to the anglo compromise (dont behead the king but clip its wings) and at most blew the mind of all who thought that having a divine omnipotent ruler was a fatality I see your point, and I actually agree - massive blow to an entrenched idea about divine monarchy. But I don't think it's quite that extreme, mostly because such republicanism was not unique to France. The current American government was created the year before the French Revolution. The American colonies had, practically speaking, been self-governing republics for a couple decades, by the time Louis was beheaded. Constitutional republics were going to be a thing in the 19th century in both Europe and America, even if Louis had managed to keep his throne and avert the revolution entirely.
    - wahern 4y ago
      I thought the chain reaction in Europe was mostly a consequence of Napoleon's conquest. Per Wikipedia, > Napoleon had succeeded in bringing most of Western Europe under one rule. In most European countries, subjugation in the French Empire brought with it many liberal features of the French Revolution including democracy, due process in courts, abolition of serfdom, reduction of the power of the Catholic Church, and demand for constitutional limits on monarchs. After Napoleon was defeated, the monarchs and aristocrats were never able to fully restore the status quo ante as everybody was used to modern administrative government. That sounds more like the Anglo evolution than the French revolution.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    This recent article made the interesting point (new to me anyway!) that 18th century France was “the China of Europe”: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust One in five Europeans was French. This enormous population allowed the country to effectively fight all the rest of the continent at once. But something happened in the latter half of the century that broke French demographics and halted population growth. The article makes a well-founded case as to the reasons.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    France was not only the biggest military power from the end of the 17th century until late 18th century, but also it was de facto dominant culture in Europe. Every other European country took their fashion from Paris, Age of Enlightenment matured in France and was imported from there, and French was lingua franca until early 20th century. The upper classes of all of those major players sent their children to France to study, if they couldnt, the children studied French under French tutors at home. Even Ottoman Empire imported a lot from France - the European diplomacy in the empire started with France, French language was the lingua franca, even the word for 'European' was 'Frenk', and later in late 18th century, French Revolutionary principles were imported. There is no downplaying France in 18th century. It was basically the center of the European world.
    - hackandthink 4y ago
      The germans killed each other in their religious wars. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-country?time=1500..latest&country=GBR~FRA~DEU~ESP~ITA~TUR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-country?tim...
    - gerdesj 4y ago
      "There is no downplaying France in 18th century. It was basically the center of the European world." Centre not center (-re is French/English, -er is mostly American). There was no such concept of a European as we understand it today, back in C18. "center of the European world" - no, the Parisian meridian effort was eventually ditched in favour of Greenwich, London. Again you persist with the non French -er. I do applaud your deft handling of a Germanic language: "English". English is of course the modern lingua franca - French.
      - unity1001 4y ago
        > There was no such concept of a European as we understand it today, back in C18. Yes, there was. And its mostly unchanged since then after including the changes that the French Revolution brought. And that identity openly and directly took France as its center. The literature, politics, culture, letters and even thoughts of the people who lived in that era, especially the upper classes, demonstrate that unmistakably. Its not something that surfaces by 'interpreting' what they say and reaching a conclusion either - its what they directly say themselves, in writing. > -er is mostly American So?
- lordleft 4y ago
  My favorite example of French dominance is the preponderance of French spoken in War and Peace: “Heavens! what a virulent attack!” replied the prince, not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pávlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa.
  - shakow 4y ago
    Well, like they say... https://cs14.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2022/10/20/9/166627666914724562.png https://cs14.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2022/10/20/9/16662766691... (when you're French and can't read War and Peace because of all the inserts in Russian)
- hackandthink 4y ago
  Descartes moved (fled) much earlier to the Netherlands. I think France was too dangerous for him. (1) "Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic" (Wikipedia) (1) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes/Residence-in-the-Netherlands https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes/Residenc...
- davidgay 4y ago
  > Rousseau was Swiss No - Rousseau was born in the Republic of Geneva in 1712. Geneva only became part of Switzerland in 1815 (after a Napoleonic interlude since 1798).
  - gumby 4y ago
    Thank you for this comment. It's just the perfect kind of pedantry: correct, yet pointless, and taught me something I didn't know but could probably have figured out if properly asked (i.e. one of those things that when you read it you think, "oh, of course!"). Hn needs to increase the number of such comments.
hackandthink 4y ago
There's a nice usage of Google books ngram viewer. The french and english cosmopolite/cosmopolitical graphs from 1500 to 2019 look remarkable different. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolite&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=fr-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolite&ye... https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolitical&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=en-GB-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolitical... And we should still be afraid of Germany: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolitisch&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=de-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolitisch...

33 points by prismatic 4y ago

Hadn't France been the dominant culture in Europe for about a hundred years at the time of the revolution? Descartes went to Sweden, Diderot to Russia, and Voltaire to Prussia, while the reverse flow of influence was limited. (OK, Rousseau was Swiss; but Francophone (Genevan) Swiss.)

PeterWhittaker 4y ago
Dominant? Not sure. Certainly in the anglic west, French thinkers of that time are better known, but I think the clearest thing we can say about ~18th C France is that it kept its borders intact and continued the centralizing of power begun a century before. Russia, Austria, and at times Holland, Spain, Prussia and Sweden, were all major players in Europe, with waxing and waning influence. France was relatively stable while Russian grew and the others mostly ripped pieces out of each other.
- xwolfi 4y ago
  Well I feel the clearest thing we can say about 18th century France is that they completely derailed the pattern that had lasted for millenia: yes it is possible to try to behead your way into taking over the country and place no king for a while. This didnt work for long, but it started a chain reaction within and outside of France that showed at least an alternative to the anglo compromise (dont behead the king but clip its wings) and at most blew the mind of all who thought that having a divine omnipotent ruler was a fatality. Keep our borders and centralized power, is all you can remember of the 18th century? I know France is smaller today, but at the time, it was probably on every mouths of Europe. Granted it was towards the end, but when we think of the 18th century in France, we tend to explain every event and every situation as to leading to the big finale, the final frontier, the first and last regicide. It's the only century that truly matters to us, because that's when we finally woke up.
  - glompers 4y ago
    > an alternative to the anglo compromise (dont behead the king but clip its wings) and at most blew the mind of all who thought that having a divine omnipotent ruler was a fatality. Do you mean, all who were fatalistic about the divine right of royalty being an inevitability? The English regicide had already been done in 1649, and some form of large representative republics with or without a monarch were already governing in Venice, Poland-Lithuania, the Netherlands, America, and possibly other populous societies that I don't know about.
  - retrac 4y ago
    > At least an alternative to the anglo compromise (dont behead the king but clip its wings) and at most blew the mind of all who thought that having a divine omnipotent ruler was a fatality I see your point, and I actually agree - massive blow to an entrenched idea about divine monarchy. But I don't think it's quite that extreme, mostly because such republicanism was not unique to France. The current American government was created the year before the French Revolution. The American colonies had, practically speaking, been self-governing republics for a couple decades, by the time Louis was beheaded. Constitutional republics were going to be a thing in the 19th century in both Europe and America, even if Louis had managed to keep his throne and avert the revolution entirely.
  - wahern 4y ago
    I thought the chain reaction in Europe was mostly a consequence of Napoleon's conquest. Per Wikipedia, > Napoleon had succeeded in bringing most of Western Europe under one rule. In most European countries, subjugation in the French Empire brought with it many liberal features of the French Revolution including democracy, due process in courts, abolition of serfdom, reduction of the power of the Catholic Church, and demand for constitutional limits on monarchs. After Napoleon was defeated, the monarchs and aristocrats were never able to fully restore the status quo ante as everybody was used to modern administrative government. That sounds more like the Anglo evolution than the French revolution.
- pavlov 4y ago
  This recent article made the interesting point (new to me anyway!) that 18th century France was “the China of Europe”: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust One in five Europeans was French. This enormous population allowed the country to effectively fight all the rest of the continent at once. But something happened in the latter half of the century that broke French demographics and halted population growth. The article makes a well-founded case as to the reasons.
- unity1001 4y ago
  France was not only the biggest military power from the end of the 17th century until late 18th century, but also it was de facto dominant culture in Europe. Every other European country took their fashion from Paris, Age of Enlightenment matured in France and was imported from there, and French was lingua franca until early 20th century. The upper classes of all of those major players sent their children to France to study, if they couldnt, the children studied French under French tutors at home. Even Ottoman Empire imported a lot from France - the European diplomacy in the empire started with France, French language was the lingua franca, even the word for 'European' was 'Frenk', and later in late 18th century, French Revolutionary principles were imported. There is no downplaying France in 18th century. It was basically the center of the European world.
  - hackandthink 4y ago
    The germans killed each other in their religious wars. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-country?time=1500..latest&country=GBR~FRA~DEU~ESP~ITA~TUR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-country?tim...
  - gerdesj 4y ago
    "There is no downplaying France in 18th century. It was basically the center of the European world." Centre not center (-re is French/English, -er is mostly American). There was no such concept of a European as we understand it today, back in C18. "center of the European world" - no, the Parisian meridian effort was eventually ditched in favour of Greenwich, London. Again you persist with the non French -er. I do applaud your deft handling of a Germanic language: "English". English is of course the modern lingua franca - French.
    - unity1001 4y ago
      > There was no such concept of a European as we understand it today, back in C18. Yes, there was. And its mostly unchanged since then after including the changes that the French Revolution brought. And that identity openly and directly took France as its center. The literature, politics, culture, letters and even thoughts of the people who lived in that era, especially the upper classes, demonstrate that unmistakably. Its not something that surfaces by 'interpreting' what they say and reaching a conclusion either - its what they directly say themselves, in writing. > -er is mostly American So?
lordleft 4y ago
My favorite example of French dominance is the preponderance of French spoken in War and Peace: “Heavens! what a virulent attack!” replied the prince, not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pávlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa.
- shakow 4y ago
  Well, like they say... https://cs14.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2022/10/20/9/166627666914724562.png https://cs14.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2022/10/20/9/16662766691... (when you're French and can't read War and Peace because of all the inserts in Russian)
hackandthink 4y ago
Descartes moved (fled) much earlier to the Netherlands. I think France was too dangerous for him. (1) "Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic" (Wikipedia) (1) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes/Residence-in-the-Netherlands https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes/Residenc...
davidgay 4y ago
> Rousseau was Swiss No - Rousseau was born in the Republic of Geneva in 1712. Geneva only became part of Switzerland in 1815 (after a Napoleonic interlude since 1798).
- gumby 4y ago
  Thank you for this comment. It's just the perfect kind of pedantry: correct, yet pointless, and taught me something I didn't know but could probably have figured out if properly asked (i.e. one of those things that when you read it you think, "oh, of course!"). Hn needs to increase the number of such comments.

hackandthink 4y ago

There's a nice usage of Google books ngram viewer. The french and english cosmopolite/cosmopolitical graphs from 1500 to 2019 look remarkable different. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolite&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=fr-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolite&ye... https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolitical&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=en-GB-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolitical... And we should still be afraid of Germany: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolitisch&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=de-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cosmopolitisch...