Feminism in eighteenth-century England

Nietzsche's early work is located in the context of the various nineteenth century attempts to found a secular religion. His own attempt, it is argued, was particularly influenced by the work of Richard Wagner and F.A. Lange. It is premised on the claim that the ordinary rational capacities of most human beings are not sufficient for them to arrive at true beliefs. Philosophers do have the required expertise, but in the absence of widespread recognition of this expertise, it can have little effect on popular belief. Nietzsche therefore seeks a means of making philosophical insight popularly effective by harnessing the non-rational, persuasive power of art. However, the project does not turn out to be well-founded; its failure seems to demonstrate that a ‘secular religion’ thus conceived cannot provide us with a coherent conception of intellectual authority.     

State investment in eighteenth-century Berne

This article provides information about Berne's financial situation at the time the Economic Society was founded. The canton was in an exceptionally fortunate position, having accumulated a sizeable cash reserve that was in part used for loans and investments on the London capital market. Throughout the century, the Bernese government followed a very cautious investment strategy. The main reason for purchasing overseas securities was that they helped the patricians to become independent from tax-paying subjects. Economic imperatives ruled out increases of the cash reserve or further involvement in the overcrowded domestic capital market. However, by investing abroad Berne became increasingly dependent on the goodwill of its debtors, for which it was criticised by the Economic Patriots amongst others.     

The history of the book and publishing in eighteenth-century Italy

Based on published and untapped sources, the article sets out to explore the cultural and material conditions of the book trade in Italy during the eighteenth century. Special concern is given to the import of French printed works and pamphlets as a means to diffuse the Enlightenment south of the Alps. The text does not address problems of authorial status, but provides a general assessment of the literary market and its impact on the reading habits of the elites. Critical and bibliographical information is also provided about the renewal of interest for the history of the book and reading in Italy since the 1980s.     

The political functions of virtue in the eighteenth-century Italian debate

Many recent studies either assert that the concept of virtue in eighteenth-century Italian intellectual culture is a polysemous term without really explaining its meaning, or concentrate on just one of its many facets. However, so far no study has explored the shades of meaning ascribed to ‘virtue’ to their full extent. This study is an attempt to reconstruct the eighteenth-century Italian intellectual perspective on virtue and to reveal its geographical complexities, its semantic evolutionary curve, and its interconnections in different fields. The aim is not to create a simple ‘map’, but rather to focus on the limits of the intellectual debate in defining and communicating virtue, and to envisage the understanding of the political functions of virtue through more popular and widespread media such as poetic texts. Despite its ever-changing meaning, virtue remains not only a keyword of political discourse over the century, but also stands as one of the very pillars on which powerful imageries of political communication were constructed. Therefore, this article provides a first step towards an analysis of political communication in eighteenth-century Italy, which, in subsequent studies, will take into account poetic sources, which at that time were regarded as an effective instrument to overcome the aforementioned intellectual limits and better exploit the possibilities of a rhetoric of virtue.     

The Netherlands in the constellation of the eighteenth-century Western revolutions

In the constellation of the eighteenth-century revolutions, the French events have always occupied a dominant position. Consequently the other European upheavals have been considered as being provoked or strongly influenced by France. Yet, the Dutch revolutions in the 1780s and 1790s provide some important nuances to this interpretation. Before the French took over the Bastille, there was already a Dutch revolution with devoted Patriots, speaking about rights of man and constitutions. The Patriots had to flee abroad in 1787. In 1795, thanks to the French Army, they were able to return to their drawing boards, eager to think anew their government and society. This paper investigates how they did it and whether the American and French precedents were so influential after all in the construction of the Batavian Republic.     

Commerce and morality in eighteenth-century Italy

This paper would like to discuss some aspects of current trends in studies on eighteenth-century Eastern Europe. In the first part it addresses recent approaches devoted to the reconstruction of the conceptualization of Eastern Europe at the time of the Enlightenment, which have often been inspired by the work of Edward Said and Martin Bernal. These include Larry Woolf's Inventing Eastern Europe (1994). Michael Confino has provided a detailed critique of Woolf's approach. It can be argued that Woolf is in fact projecting Cold War divisions back into the eighteenth century.

The article argues in favour of a less “Orientalising” approach to the history of Eastern Europe, by proving an alternative overview of the historical dimensions of the eastern (and northern) regions of Europe in the eighteenth century. Eastern Europe was inextricably connected to its western European neighbours. Without Eastern Europe, European history is incomplete and incomprehensible.

In the third part the article argues that the interpretative framework of the “first crisis of the Old Regime”, which Franco Venturi outlined in his Settecento riformatore in the 19870s and 1980s represented a subtle rejection of the East/West dichotomy, and in fact foreshadowed the eventual reunification of Europe after the end of the Cold War.     

Anatomists and entrepreneurs in early eighteenth-century London

Anatomical demonstration in the eighteenth century took place in many formats. In this essay I discuss public anatomical demonstration as performed by entrepreneurial anatomists in London between 1700 and 1740. These anatomists offered courses, advertised in newspapers, to anyone who was willing to pay. In contrast to courses offered in official settings to prospective physicians and surgeons, these courses emphasized natural philosophy and natural theology rather than practical knowledge. Entrepreneurial lecturers also aimed to entertain. In this article I examine the lectures of James Douglas, William Cheselden, and Frank Nicholls, each of whom differed significantly from the others in style and content but were all anatomical entrepreneurs. All of them, moreover, employed not only human cadavers but also living and dead animals in their lessons. I examine the content of the lectures and the motivations of the lecturers' audiences. I also argue that the prevailing historiographical representation of eighteenth-century science as "polite" requires considerable revision to accommodate as impolite an activity as public anatomy.     

The archaeology of social rank among eighteenth-century nomadic pastoralists in Southern Namibia

The remains of a complex stone- walled encampment at //Khauxa!nas in Namibia provide new insights into the social consequences of European contact with the pastoral Khoi. The Namibian evidence contradicts the general view that the eighteenth- century Khoi were little more than a colonial underclass. Details of layout and construction from //Khauxa!nas point to the rise of a hierarchical organization uniting autonomous households within a pastoral alliance. This development reflects the evolutionary potential of Khoi society at a crucial moment in its history, immediately prior to the rise of armed resistance against colonial rule.

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Résumé Les vestiges d'un campement complexe ceinturé d'un mur de pierre à //Khauxa!nas en Namibie donnent des nouveaux aperçus des conséquences sociales du contact européen avec les Khoi pastoraux. L'évidence namibienne dément les vues générales que les Khoi du 18ème siècle n'étaient plus qu'une sous- classe coloniale. Les détails du plan et de la construction du campement de //Khauxa!nas mettent en évidence l'essor d'une organisation hiérarchique unifiant des ménages autonomes dans l'alliance pastorale. Ce développement reflète le potentiel évolutionniste social de la société Khoi d'un instant crucial de son histoire, immédiatement avant le soulèvement de la résistance armée contre l'autorité coloniale.