The French moment of the American national identity. St. John de Crèvecoeur's agrarian myth

The aim of this essay is to return to the genesis of the American agrarian myth in the eighteenth century, as a path to investigate the origins of the American national identity. This will be done by means of a comprehensive reassessment of St. John de Crèvecoeur, the Norman noble whose name is bound to the success of Letters from an American Farmer. His work contains the origins of the agrarian ideal as a peculiarly American phenomenon, prior to independence and before Republican ideology placed agrarian democracy at its foundations, making the project of agrarian development and democratic participation inseparable one from another. A Frenchman who became American and then, after 25 years, French again, Crèvecoeur represents an ideal lens through which to analyse the hitherto insufficiently explored contribution of French economic culture to the creation of American national identity. As a multi-faceted figure whose richness has been dominated by his image as the author of a best-selling autobiographical novel, Crèvecoeur is here also seen (partly through unpublished sources) as an agronomist who was no stranger to physiocracy and as a diplomat and French intellectual who always felt profoundly American. It was precisely this attachment to the land, seen as fundamental to the vision of a new and distinct form of peaceful cohabitation and democratic partnership, that became a political theme and an economic development project of the new nation and, as such, was a main plank of the agrarian ideology of Thomas Jefferson's Republicans.     

The continuities of counter‐memory: French republicanism and the revolutionary tradition

Although republicanism in France was discredited in 1815, being associated with dictatorship and terror, it provided the foundations for the political consensus of the late 1870s. Republican ideas survived through the creation of a collective ‘counter‐memory’ by a persecuted minority of republicans in the early nineteenth century; this tradition kept republicanism alive and available for later generations to adopt it more widely. This paper examines ways in which this counter‐memory was developed, from historical writings to popular customs, and how it was able to become part of the political mainstream once again.     

The French Idea of History: Joseph de Maistre and his heirs 1794–1854

ABSTRACT

Historians of modern design and sociology have shown little interest in the leaders of the ever resourceful and influential British Positivist Society. One of the aims of this essay is to show that the Positivist polymath Frederic Harrison (1831–1923) cultivated ideas and practices that are compatible with modernists’ aspirations to improve the lives of the masses. It is accordingly shown that Harrison was an ardent supporter of working-class causes and that on this basis he developed sociological survey methods and produced social programmes to initiate the comprehensive reorganisation of cities. Harrison intended to realise a modern utopia called the “Occidental Republic”, created by Auguste Comte, the Positivist Philosopher who – during the 1830 and 1840s – introduced both sociology and the Religion of Humanity. While many studies pore over the Positivists’ “church” rituals, this essay is the first to argue that the Religion of Humanity and sociology were of equal consequence – and that together they formed the basis of their controversial spatial theory and practice, which was considered the means to realise Comte’s utopia. This vision, it is argued, is central to appreciating how Positivism percolated into the “modern movements” of architecture and planning.     

Rendering justice in witch trials: the case of the val de Lièpvre

The borderland of the val de Lièpvre, with lands in Alsace and in the Duchy of Lorraine, and divided by religion and language, offers a rich collection of sources for the history of witchcraft persecution. The territory sharply reveals what was undoubtedly characteristic of witchcraft trials more widely. The crime of witchcraft was considered abominable before the Christian community and God, and its prosecution justified abandoning many of the safeguards and constraints in legal procedure, whether restrictions on the use of torture, the reliance on dubious testimony or even denial of advocacy to the witches. The action of the judges was nonetheless, as they understood it, the rendering of true justice, by punishing the culprits with a harshness that would expiate their crimes before the community and preserve them from damnation in the face of God's judgment.     

Fin de millénaire French Fiction: The Aesthetics of Crisis

Foucault, M., Dits et écrits I 1954–1969 (Gallimard, 1994), 855pp., 215F., ISBN 2 07 073844 2

Foucault, M., Dits et écrits II 1970–1975 (Gallimard, 1994), 838pp., 215F., ISBN 2 07 073987 2

Foucault, M., Dits et écrits III 1976–1979 (Gallimard, 1994), 836pp., 215F., ISBN 2 07 073988 0

Foucault, M., Dits et écrits IV 1980–1988 (Gallimard, 1994), 896pp., 215F., ISBN 2 07 073989 9

Halperin, D.M., Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford University Press, 1995), 246pp., £14.99 hbk, ISBN 0 19 509371 2

Jones, C. and Porter, R., eds., Reassessing Foucault: Power, Medicine and the Body (Routledge, 1994), 225pp., £45.00 hbk, ISBN 0 41 507542 4

McNay, L., Foucault: A Critical Introduction (Blackwell, 1994), 196pp., £39.50 hbk, ISBN 0 74 560990 2, £11.95 pbk, ISBN 0 74 560991 0

Sennett R., Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (Faber and Faber, 1994), 431pp., £25.00 hbk, ISBN 0 57 117390 X     

The Weaponising of Women's Bodies in the Wars of Reform and French Intervention in Mexico, 1857–67

Acts of violence in war not only have individual effects on bodies, but they also have a social, collective impact on the social body. While recent works have recovered the participation of women in the War for Independence and the 1910 Revolution in Mexico, the role their bodies played in wartime has not been examined. Focusing on the decade of war between 1857 and 1867, which influenced the consolidation of national sovereignty and identity, this article explores how, while women's bodies can be targets themselves, they also can be transformed into weapons aimed at other targets. Consequently, their bodies were ‘weaponised’ and aimed at: women as individuals punished for transgressions, real or imagined, of traditional gender roles; at men, to damage or destroy their masculine honour, their failure to protect their women and the integrity of their families; and last, the survival of their vision of the nation (either Liberal or Conservative), or even the honour and survival of the nation itself in the case of a foreign intervention. However, which bodies were targeted, and how, depended on the intersection of gender, class, race, ethnicity, political identity and nationality.