Oceanic Roots of the Atlantic Revolutions (ca. 1760-1850)

This five-day faculty-postgrad summer seminar, which brings together specialists working on both the North and South Atlantic and the Old and New Worlds, takes as its starting point a broad hypothesis.  We propose that there were long-term homologies among political practices around the Atlantic rim, including some that predated European contact, and that these shared political patterns were crucial in producing and shaping the Atlantic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This hypothesis draws inspiration from both scholarship on the revolutionary era and recent studies in global and oceanic history, which have shown the explanatory payoffs that can come from identifying transnational legal, cultural, and economic patterns. This seminar is the initial event of a larger project that aims to articulate an alternative model for conceptualizing the Atlantic revolutionary period, one which is polycentric and rooted in the longue durée rather than based on a notion of short-term revolutionary “diffusion” or “contagion.”

Entrée libre dans la limite des places disponibles :
• mardi 5 juin (inscription obligatoire),
• mercredi 6 juin, matinée (inscription obligatoire)
• jeudi 7 juin et du vendredi 8 juin, matinées (sans inscription).

This meeting and the larger project have been generously funded by: Paris Sciences et Lettre (IRIS - Études globales); USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute; Institut d’études avancées de Paris; Ecole Normale Supérieure; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

 

Program Summary

Monday, 4th of June – 10h-18h
Entangling the Atlantic revolutions: the revolutionary longue durée

10:00-10:30 – Welcomes from Romain Huret (EHESS-Mondes Américains) and Peter Mancall (USC).
10:30-11:00 – Opening remarks by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (USC) and Clément Thibaud (EHESS-Mondes Américains).
11:00-12:00 – Small group meetings.
13:30-15:30 – Workshop 1: Defining objects: the “Atlantic revolutions” and oceanic history.
16:00-18:00    Workshop 2: Methodology (comparison, contextualization, connection) with Jean-Frédéric Schaub (EHESS-Mondes Américains).

 

Tuesday, 5th of June – 10h-18h
Workshop: Atlantic Enlightenment(s), Atlantic Revolution(s). History and historiography

Organizers: Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (IEA de Paris / University of Southern California) / Antoine Lilti (EHESS)
10:00-12:00 –“Historiographies.” Roundtable with Antoine Lilti (EHESS); William Max Nelson (U. Toronto); Pierre Serna (IHRF/IHMC U. Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne); Tom Stammers (Durham).
13:30-15:30 – “Histories.” Roundtable with Francisco Ortega (U. Nacional de Colombia); Clyde Plumauzille (LabEx EHNE); Anne Simonin (CNRS); Charles Walton (Warwick).
16:00-18:00 – Presentation and discussion of precirculated text: David Bell (Princeton), “The Atlantic Revolutions.”

 

Wednesday, 6th of June – 9h30-18h
Visual and Material Cultures

Chair: Charlotte Guichard (CNRS-IHMC)
9:30-10:00 – Daniela Bleichmar (USC), “Seeing Imperial Nature.”
10:00-10:30 – Ashli White (University of Miami), “Revolutionary Things: A View from the Caribbean.”
10:45-11:15 – Zara Anishanslin (University of Delaware), “Revolutionary Devils: Object, Image, Ideology, and Emotion in the American Revolution.”
11:15-11:45 – Yann Potin (Archives Nationales de France), “Archive(s) de la Constitution, constitution des Archives : regards comparés sur les modalités matérielles du dépôt de la souveraineté (monde atlantique, fin XVIIIe-XIXe siècle).”
11:45-12:15 – Discussion.

Afternoon (14:00-18:00)
• Andrew Detch (CU Boulder), “Echoes of Africa in the Age of Revolution: Liberty Trees as Symbols of Emancipation, 1793-1820.”
• Vanessa Férey (Université Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle), “The ethnographic collection of the cabinet d’Histoire naturelle at the National Museum of Versailles 1767- 2007.”
• Emmanuel Velayos (New York University), “Painting Words and Drawing Republics: Gestural Typography and Republicanism”
• Gabriela Goldin (EHESS), “Le débat savant et les enjeux politiques de la découverte des deux pierres à Mexico en 1790.”
• Corey Blanchard (USC), “A Place Imperfectly Known: Science, Empire, and the West in the Early American Republic.”

 

Thursday, 7th of June – 9:30-18:00
Sociabilities

Chair: Cécile Vidal (EHESS-Mondes Américains)

9:30-10:00 – Rahul Markovits (École Normale Supérieure), “Theatre and anti-imperialism: an Atlantic perspective .”
10:00-10:30 – Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (USC), “The Suspect Salon: Atlantic Sociability and Revolutionary Conspiracies, ca. 1765-1800.”
10:45-11:15 – Jean-Luc Chappey (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), “Scientific sociabilities in the French Revolution .”
11:15-11:45 – Annick Lempérière (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), “From corporatism to sociability: Alexander von Humboldt’s perception of society in New Spain ca. 1800.”
11:45-12:15 – Discussion.

Afternoon (14:00-18:00)
• Deborah Besseghini (Università di Studi di Milano), “La sociedad de los comerciantes británicos y la Revolución de Mayo en Buenos Aires.”
• Andrés Orias Bleichner (Université de Genève), “Victorián de Villava et les doctrines de Charcas à la fin du XVIIIe siècle.”
• Oscar Zárate (Universidad Autónoma de México), “Vicente Acuña (1808-1812): redes y sociabilidades atlánticas en la era de las revoluciones.”
• Rachel Engl Taggart (Lehigh University), “‘Not alone in misery’: Cultivating Camaraderie and Community Among Continental Army Soldiers During the American Revolution.”

 

Friday, 8th of June – 9:30-18:00
Republicanisms

Chair: Annie Jourdan (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
9:30-10:00– Olivier Christin (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études-Université), “Portraits, emblems, trees: making the mixed constitution visible in the sixteenth century .”
10:00-10:30 – Edgardo Pérez Morales (University of Southern California), “The Kingdom of Naples and the Legal Roots of Gradual Slave Emancipation in the Republic of Colombia.”
10:45-11:15 – Francisco Ortega (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), “Republicanism and Social Heterogeneity in Spanish America.”
11:15-11:45 – Marie-Jeanne Rossignol (Université Paris-Diderot), “Republicanism in North America: from ‘classical’ to ‘modern’, 1765-1860.”
11:45-12:15 – Discussion.

Afternoon (14:00-18:00)
EHESS - Room AS1_08 (basement level), 54 bd Raspail, Paris 6e
• Frédéric Spillemaeker (Casa de Velázquez-EHESS-Mondes Américains), “La révolte de Coro : les catégories bouleversées à l’ère des révolutions (Venezuela, 1795).”
• Nathalie Pierre (New York University), “‘A New Holocaust”: The Four Phases of the Haitian Revolution and Africans in Dessalines’ Empire, 1802-1805.”
• Anna Vincenzi (Notre Dame University), “Imagining an Age of Revolution? Interpretations of the American Revolution in the Italian States.”
• Matías Sánchez Barberán (EHESS-Mondes Américains), “Sociétés républicaines et reconquêtes impériales dans le Pacifique Sud, années 1860.”
• Kathleen McCrudden (Yale University), “Rights in the Work of Sophie de Grouchy and Benjamin Constant, or, Republicanism and Liberalism; Reason and Feeling.  A Tale of False Dichotomies.”

 

More informations

Date(s)
  • Monday 4 June 2018 - 10:00 to Friday 8 June 2018 - 18:00
Place(s)
  • 4 June : EHESS (room 7), 105 boulevard Raspail, Paris 6e 5 June : Salle des Gardes - Institut d’études avancées de Paris - 17, quai d’Anjou, Paris 4e 6 June : Salle d’Histoire (Escalier D, 2ème étage) - ENS - 45, rue d’Ulm, Paris 5e 7 June : EHESS (room 5), 105, boulevard Raspail, Paris 6e 8 June : EHESS - Amphithéâtre François-Furet, 105 bd Raspail, Paris 6e
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