Author response

In 1783, Louis XVI founded the first public repository of machines in the very premises Vaucanson had set up his workshops the Hôtel de Mortagne. A record, found among the archives of the Conservatoire des arts et métiers, enables us to identify specimens which have been collected up to 1791 by this fairly unknown institution.

While the existence of the public repository, established six months after Vaucanson's death, was attested to through the royal decree of August 2, 1783, the exact list of the machines and tools left by the engineer remained unknown. Furthermore, documents giving information on the activities of this institution, which was to be at the origin of the Conservatoire des arts et métiers, were rare. The inventory of the Hôtel de Mortagne sheds light on these two points. It is the second part of this hitherto unpublished document which appears below, following the summary of the text which preceeded the first part published in the previous issue of this journal.     

Catholic resistance theory: William Barclay versus Jean Boucher

ABSTRACT

This article examines William Barclay's response to Jean Boucher's De Justa Abdicatione Henrici Tertii (1589) in view of the complexities of Catholic political thought in this post-Tridentine period. It argues that Barclay's famous category of ‘monarchomach’ is problematic for its avoidance of the issue of confessional difference, and that on questions of the relationship between the respublica and the ecclesia Barclay struggled to find an adequate response to Boucher in his De Regno et Regali Potestate (1600). His De Potestate Papae (1609) is treated as the intellectual extension of his battle with Boucher, and more broadly his confrontation with the position of the Catholic League and Jesuits on indirect papal power. By considering Barclay's works in the context of French Gallicanism and the Catholic League in the French Wars of Religion, this discussion aims to reposition Barclay in relation to other Catholic political theorists and thereby re-evaluate the category of Catholic resistance theory.     

Recent French archaeological work In Syria and Jordan

Abstract

The French connection with the late antique and Byzantine archaeology of the Levant is now more than a century old. Between 1864 and 1877 Melchoir de Vogue published his great Syrie Centrale: architecture civile et religieuse, a work which revealed for the first time the great richness of the archaeological record for the period. With its superb drawings and elegant plans it remains indispensable, especially since it describes some buildings, like the praetorium at Mismiyya, south of Damascus, which have long since disappeared. In these days when so much worthless nineteenth-century travel literature about the Middle East has been reprinted, it is sad that this masterpiece remains unavailable. The French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon from 1921 onwards gave a great impetus to these studies. Although most attention was given to great classical sites like Palmyra or Crusader ones like Crac des Chevaliers, late antiquity was not neglected and there was a growing interest in the deserted towns of the limestone hills of the north from J. Mattern, li travers les villes mortes de Haute Syre (Beirut 1944) and J. Lassus' study of the ecclesiastical architecture, Sanctuaires chretiens de Syrie (1947). This activity culminated in G. Tchalenko's great work Les villages antiques de fa Syrie du Nord (1958) which was based on field work done before 1939.     

Mitchell's Influence on European Studies of Peripheral Nerve Injuries During World War I

Objective: Describe the influence of S. Weir Mitchell's (1829-1914) work, and in particular his ideas on causalgia, on European physicians who treated peripheral nerve injuries during World War I (WWI). Background: During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Mitchell studied peripheral nerve injuries with colleagues George Read Morehouse and William Williams Keen. Three monographs resulted from this work. All were important landmarks in the evolution of knowledge of peripheral nerve injuries. A subsequent occasion to improve knowledge came in WWI. Methods: The most important European monographs or series on peripheral nerve injuries from WWI were studied with special interest in references to causalgia and Mitchell's works on peripheral nerve injuries. We included works by Tinel, Athanassio-Bénisty, Purves-Stewart & Evans and Carter, Foerster and Oppenheim. Results: Tinel and Athanassio-Bénisty provided the most detailed information on peripheral nerve injuries and causalgia and often referred to Mitchell. Both mentioned a possible sympathetic origin. Athanassio-Bénisty described tremor and other movement disorders in relation to causalgia. Purves-Stewart and Evans mentioned Mitchell and causalgia in the second edition of their book. They advocated the term "thermalgia." Carter, who had access to data of many cases, concentrated his work on causalgia, referring to Mitchell. Foerster provided data of a great number of peripheral nerve injuries, but did not refer to Mitchell. However, he described the symptoms of causalgia cursorily, applying the term Reflexschmerz (reflexpain). Oppenheim was particularly interested in muscle innervation and referred to Mitchell with respect to hypertrichosis and glossy skin. Oppenheim did not use the term causalgia, although he described the syndrome in some of his patients. It wasn't until around 1920 that German physicians devoted significant attention to causalgia and began using the term. Conclusion: Knowledge of peripheral nerve injuries was greatly advanced during and after WWI. Mitchell's influence was mainly found in the French medical literature, where his findings provided the basis for further research on the origin of causalgia. In England, Mitchell and causalgia were also well-known. We found evidence to suggest that some of the English knowledge came from French physicians. German physicians described the symptoms of causalgia, but did not use the term, nor did they refer to Mitchell. This variation in Mitchell's influence by country probably reflects the fact that Mitchell's Injuries of nerves and their consequences was translated into French but not German.     

Politics and Public Policy

Abstract

Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others has been widely praised as the first German film to confront the horrors of the East German communist regime. But the film's politics may be ambiguous. As critical as it is of East Germany, it does not offer a ringing endorsement of West Germany. For example, the film's playwright-hero seems to have artistic problems in the West, just as he did in the East. The film's equivocal attitude toward communism is epitomized by its apparently positive view of the Marxist author Bertolt Brecht. This essay compares The Lives of Others with Brecht's play The Good Person of Szechwan in an effort to understand Donnersmarck's attitude toward his East German predecessor and what it means for his larger view of communism and its relation to art.     

Montaigne: Founder of Modern Liberalism

In this essay David Lewis Schaefer summarizes and defends the argument set forth in his book The Political Philosophy of Montaigne (Cornell University Press, 1990; second edition 2019) that Michele de Montaigne's Essays (first edition, 1580) merits consideration as a founding text of modern political liberalism. After responding to the most extensive published critique of his interpretation (by James Supple) and citing other recent studies that harmonize with his argument, Schaefer compares his analysis of Montaigne's political aims and political-ethical teaching with those set forth in two other recent studies: Philippe Desan's Montaigne: A Life and Pierre Manent's Montaigne: La Vie sans loi.     

Machiavelli's scientific method: a common understanding of his novelty in the sixteenth century

This paper argues that Machiavelli's method, his inductive and comparative use of history and experience for political analysis, and his fashioning of historical-political analysis as ‘science’, played an important and still unrecognised role in his reception in the sixteenth century. It makes the case that Machiavelli's inductive reasoning and stress on historia and experientia offered a model for scientific method that open-minded sixteenth-century scholars, eager to understand, organise and augment human knowledge (scientia), could fit to their own epistemology. By focusing on the question of method—a crucial issue for sixteenth-century contemporaries—the paper offers more than a key to the understanding of Machiavelli's positive reception. It also helps in apprehending the crucial importance of Lucretius to Machiavelli's scholarship; the role of the late Renaissance fascination with historia in his reception; and the breadth of appropriation of his method exactly in the decades when anti-Machiavellianism became official politics all over Europe. These claims are sustained through the cases of Machiavelli's early translators and promulgators; the French legal humanists and historiographers; the Swiss, Italian and French scholars engaging with medicine, Paracelsism and astronomy; the authors of political maxims from all over Europe; and finally Francis Bacon.     

Pure and impure gestes: the generation of history in Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated the place in medieval historiography of Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors, a universal history in celebration of Liège written in French around 1399. The abundance of Old French epic material in a chronicle that, according to its author, contained translations of only Latin sources, was once a source of outrage. The Myreur now holds significant interest, however, for its evidence of late medieval narrative strategies. This study demonstrates the Myreur's deliberate adaptation of epic material to glorify Liège. The author reimagines the Carolingian past as a source for future historical narratives by knowingly altering the genealogical framework of the chanson de geste universe. Carrying tales of sexual impurity, he describes the demise of the Carolingian line and transforms figures from epic to function within his linear history. This inventive approach allowed him to create a new hero- and history-generating lineage for his universal history.     

Crossing the Great Divides: Hans Aarsleff's Lessons for Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Historians

SUMMARY

This essay discusses Hans Aarsleff's long battle to demonstrate the importance of the French and British thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century to the development of modern linguistic thought. Contesting claims that German scholars were the first to develop historicised theories of language, Aarsleff, along with his Princeton colleagues Lionel Gossman and Anthony Grafton, helped pioneer longue durée studies of the history of philology and of historiography that cross national boundaries as well as the so-called Sattelzeit (stretching from about 1780 until 1820). Although the importance of his work was, for a long time, little appreciated by modern intellectual historians, this essay argues that it is time that we fully learned Aarsleff's lessons.     

Neurology and Literature, 1860–1920 by Anne Stiles (ed.)

Abstract

Research from many perspectives has been made on the work of the French neurologist, J.‐M. Charcot (1825–1893) with particular reference to his fame for his studies and “construction”; of hysteria. What has not been demonstrated so far is the extent to which Charcot's construction can be explained by the perceived relationship between hysteria and epilepsy and Charcot's access to epileptic patients at La Salpêtrière. From the confusion that reigned concerning hysteria and epilepsy, both separately and in relation to each other, Charcot claimed to have isolated hysteria as a distinctive and universal pathology. This claim was partly based on the “grande attaque”;, representing the most intense degree of hysteria. A comparison with Gowers, the contemporary English neurologist suggests that diagnosis was the function of the practitioners’ preferences; and a linguistic analysis pinpoints Charcot's problems in describing an isolated pathology in terms of its relation to its neighbour, epilepsy.     

A map of Germany made after the Swedish Campaign of 1630–48

Summary

The Elizabethan small‐scale maps of towns, beginning with Cuningham's Norwich (1559) and ending with Speed's collection in his Theatre, are often underrated by historians. If used intelligently, these maps, which combine a ground plan with perspective drawing, can give much useful historical information, particularly about the main street pattern; fortifications or other buildings, since demolished; and the extent of suburban development. Large‐scale maps of this and later periods provide not only a reliable record of the changes in the street plan, but often depict the structure of houses or the various kinds of industrial undertakings, and give historical or statistical details of great importance. Many have borders filled with accurate engravings of buildings, since demolished. From the time of Leake's great survey of London (1665), but especially in the second half of the 18th century, an increasing number of towns had accurate surveys made at a scale of approximately 1: 5,000. The best of these show the house plots in detail, the relation of the built‐up area to the open spaces, and land use in the environs. In the first decades of the 19th century plans of the greatest detail and reliability were made for some of the larger towns on a scale of 1 : 2,500. All are valuable material for the student of social and economic history.     

French Eighteenth-Century Materialists and Natural Law

Summary

This article looks at the discussions of natural law by the eighteenth-century French materialists Julien Offray de La Mettre, Denis Diderot, Paul Thiry d'Holbach and Claude-Adrien Helvétius. It is particularly concerned with their discussion of moral values and their attempt to find a materialistic basis for them as part of their rejection of religion. The discussion brings out the différences between them and analyses their dialogues on this question, including the other materialists' rejection of La Mettrie's amoralism, which threatened to undermine their attempt to found a natural law taught by experience and based on human nature. Particular attention is paid to Diderot's many writings which grapple with the subject, beginning with his Encyclopédie article droit naturel, probably written in 1754. He discussed the question in many of his later writings, including in his annotations on the works of Helvétius, who based natural law on the general interest. These writings reveal a tension between Diderot's emphasis on the search for individual happiness and the interests of society as he, together with d'Holbach, attempted to provide a natural basis for morality and government from which to criticise existing institutions.     

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

Summary

R. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.     

Perspectives: On Political Science: Annual Index Volume 30, 2001

Abstract

Although Tocqueville called Jefferson “the greatest democrat, who has yet issued from within the American democracy,” a close reading of their works suggests that Tocqueville’s assessment of Jefferson was far more mixed than first appears. In the first section, I take up Jefferson’s understanding of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and offer arguments for why Tocqueville chose not to cite the Declaration in Democracy in America. Using those writings of Jefferson available to Tocqueville in French translation, I show that Tocqueville saw in Jefferson’s own understanding of those principles certain dangerous tendencies of the democratic mind. Yet there is one principle on which both agree: the natural right to political liberty and association. Section two compares their contrasting views of republican constitutionalism, taking into account Jefferson’s evolving views of republicanism as well as Tocqueville’s analysis of both the American constitution and his contributions to the committee that framed the French constitution in 1848. The concluding section analyzes their differing assessments of philosophical materialism and religion in preserving the political liberty both sought.     

Our Heritage – Our Future

Abstract

Much of our present technology can be traced to the great discoveries at the beginning of our century, particularly relativity and quantum mechanics. This is our heritage. Based on these, reasonable extrapolations can be made for our future, and are here exemplified by microelectronics, lasers, molecular biology, new material, aviation and nuclear energy. But often the unexpected development is the most important, here compared with non-linear equations in mathematics. Man's great future will arise from such non-linearities and the space telescope may bring a new field theory, redundancy in computers may give us thinking machines and finally the discovery – or the proof of absence – of extra-terrestrial life will bring the greatest of all non-linear changes. It is concluded that human imagination is unlimited, that imagination lets man grow to transcend his limits and to fulfil his dreams.     

Marketing Fabrics and Femininity in Interwar France

Abstract

This article examines discourse about the gender of garments and dress fabrics in the French fashion media, using Roland Barthes's 'informal semiotics' of modern consumption, and particularly his notion of the fashion magazine as a 'machine' articulating the meaning of fashion, including the gender implications of fashion and fabrics. The article also tracks the response of French couturiers and textile manufacturers to anxieties about gender ambiguities in ladieswear between the two world wars. The first part analyzes coverage of chemise dresses and ladies' suits in 13 illustrated magazines: four fashion magazines, three fashion supplements, three trade magazines and three society magazines. The second part of the article explores the attitudes of textile manufacturers' associations, of prominent woollen and silk producers, and of their marketing campaigns, to more androgynous styles using the same sources, professional bulletins, and the minutes of the Silk Manufacturers Syndicate (Chambre Syndicale des Fabricants de Soieries).     

Robespierre's Éloge De Gresset: Sources of Robespierre's Anti‐Philosophe Discourse

One of the most important debates in the field of eighteenth‐century French intellectual history concerns the ideological significance of the rise of the cult of the Great Frenchmen. Taking this debate as a frame of reference, the paper attempts a close reading of Robespierre's Éloge de Gresset (written in 1784, published in 1785). Usually dismissed by Robespierre scholars, this text is, in fact, a very important document offering clues not only to Robespierre's intellectual formation, but also his appropriation of what he regarded as the official and conventional rhetoric of his age. These questions engage the larger debate regarding the origins of the French Revolution, in particular its ‘cultural origins’, and its intellectual origins, defined as the distillation of and interactions between competing representations of society and its relation to the public sphere. The thesis proposed is that Robespierre's eulogy of Gresset indicates that his anti‐philosophical ideas came from a much broader array of sources than previously believed. Among these sources, Gresset's 1740s–1750s polemics against the philosophes pointed the way towards the type of criticism of the Enlightenment that underpinned Robespierre's cultural revolutionary politics.     

WHY IS THE MINARET SO SHORT? EVIDENCE FOR EARTHQUAKE DAMAGE ON MT ZION

Abstract

On top of King David's Sepulchre at Mt Zion there is an Ottoman minaret known as al-Nabi Da'ud. Compared with other minarets in Jerusalem, al-Nabi Da'ud seems to be somewhat shorter, and has a squat-like appearance. To track why it is shorter than other minarets, we inspected written historical sources, a sequence of old drawings dated between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries and analysed the minaret's metric proportions. In drawings dated to and before 1833, the minaret is portrayed much higher than in drawings and photographs dated to and after 1838. Furthermore, comparative height-diameter ratio of various parts of the minaret does not fit those of its counterpart, the al-Qal'a minaret. Thus, we suggest that the minaret was originally built higher but damaged during the 1834 earthquake, and reconstructed to a lower height sometimes afterwards.