Jeudi 23 mars, journée de mobilisation interprofessionnelle contre la réforme des retraites, la séance avec Tom Stammers est annulée.
Rémy Duthille, « Les Britanniques au miroir des révolutions de 1830 » (16 mars)
Jeudi 16 mars à 17h : Rémy Duthille (Bordeaux Montaigne), « Les Britanniques au miroir des révolutions de 1830 »
Résumé: Des Britanniques, on le sait peu, ont célébré les révolutions européennes de 1830, dans un contexte de troubles sociaux et politiques, et de crise constitutionnelle à la veille de la réforme parlementaire de 1832. L’examen de ces célébrations s’inscrit dans l’historiographie récente dégage le caractère transnational des mouvements révolutionnaires de 1830-1834. Les multiples modalités de célébrer la révolution à l’étranger éclairent la diversité des conceptions de la révolution et de la réforme, suggèrent l’étendue de la participation politique et illustre les perceptions britanniques de la France.
Rémy Duthille est Maître de Conférences HDR à l’Université de Bordeaux-Montaigne et membre du laboratoire CLIMAS. Il a publié Le discours radical en Grande-Bretagne, 1768-1789 (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment 2017) et récemment coordonné un numéro de Leaves, “Sociability and democratic practices in Britain and Ireland, 1789-1832″ avec Magalie Fleurot et Laurence Machet.
Muriel Pécastaing-Boissière, « Les biographies de Giordano Bruno par Annie Besant (publiées entre 1876 et 1911) : entre stratégie de justification et autobiographie occulte » (9 mars)
Jeudi 9 mars à 17h: Muriel Pécastaing-Boissière (Sorbonne Université), « Les biographies de Giordano Bruno par Annie Besant (publiées entre 1876 et 1911) : entre stratégie de justification et autobiographie occulte »
Le long parcours d’Annie Besant (1847-1933), libre-penseuse puis théosophe, socialiste, féministe, et anti-impérialiste en Inde, a longtemps décontenancé ses biographes, prompts à y voir fractures et inconsistance (cf. Arthur Nethercot, The First Five Lives of Annie Besant et The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant, 1960-3). Pourtant, si la quête intellectuelle et spirituelle de Besant connut plusieurs étapes, son développement n’en fut pas moins sous-tendu par une continuité de pensée, qu’un travail sur l’ensemble de ses écrits permet de retracer. Ainsi, parmi les textes de Besant négligés jusqu’ici par la recherche, se trouvent quatre biographies du philosophe de la Renaissance Giordano Bruno, mort au bûcher, à Rome, en 1600, publiées par Besant entre 1876 et 1911. Leur étude montre que la fascination de Besant pour Bruno forme une passerelle entre sa libre-pensée et sa théosophie. De plus, ces textes révèlent un fort processus d’identification, au point de pouvoir être lus comme des autobiographies occultes, qui permettent à Besant de prolonger les stratégies de justification de ses choix et de ses luttes, entamées dans ses Autobiographical Sketches (1885), et dans Annie Besant: An Autobiography (1893).
Muriel Pécastaing-Boissière est maîtresse de conférences en civilisation britannique (époque victorienne) à Sorbonne-Université. Son domaine de recherche actuel porte sur les liens entre le féminisme, le socialisme et le renouveau spirituel de la fin de l’époque victorienne. Sa biographie Annie Besant (1847-1933): Struggles and Quest a été publiée chez TPH, à Londres, en 2017.
Charles West (Sheffield), ‘The Lost Kingdom: a British perspective on the collapse of Lotharingia’ (23 fév.)
Jeudi 23 février à 17h : Charles West (Sheffield), ‘The Lost Kingdom: a British perspective on the collapse of Lotharingia’
The Treaty of Verdun had seen the division of the Carolingian world between Charlemagne’s three surviving grandsons, Lothair I (who inherited the imperial title), Louis the German and Charles the Bald. Then appeared the Francia media, a wide territory between Italy and the North Sea, and which returned to Lothair I who could thus take possession of the former unitary capital, Aachen. Lothair I, however, died in 855, forcing a new division. His son Lothair II then took possession of a realm between Meuse and Rhine that now bore his name, Lotharingia. Rich, willingly rebellious but divided into rival families, the regional nobility led for more than a century a delicate policy of switching between West Francia and Germania. Memories of this period were often reactivated by European historiography: first by the Bourbons, to justify the rights of the Crown of France over Lorraine, then by the nascent Germany, to negotiate its western borders. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the memory of the lost Francia media was also an element of identity for the young Luxemburg. Now torn between five European countries, this phantom kingdom of the tenth century remains an object of fantasy: the dream of a lost unity that probably never existed. The purpose of this conference is to show the profound renewal that historiography has undergone through the hitherto marginal point of view of British historians.
Charles West is professor in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. His publications include The Divorce of King Lothar and Queen Theutberga: Hincmar of Rheims’s De divortio (Manchester University Press, 2016).
Séance du 16 février annulée
En raison de l’appel à une journée de mobilisation interprofessionnelle contre la réforme des retraites, nous annulons la séance du 16 février avec Sally Holloway, que nous réinviterons à une date ultérieure.
Prochaine séance, le 23 février : Charles West (Sheffield), “The Lost Kingdom: a British perspective on the collapse of Lotharingia”.
Laurent Curelly, “Edward Sexby et Killing Noe Murder : pour une histoire radicale de la Révolution anglaise?” (9 fév.)
Jeudi 9 février à 17h (D421 à Serpente)
Laurent Curelly (Mulhouse) : “Edward Sexby et Killing Noe Murder : pour une histoire radicale de la Révolution anglaise?”
Au printemps 1657 fut publié en Flandres et diffusé en Angleterre Killing Noe Murder, pamphlet sulfureux qui non seulement légitimait le recours au tyrannicide mais appelait spécifiquement à l’assassinat d’Oliver Cromwell, Protecteur d’Angleterre. L’objet de mon intervention est d’explorer les différentes facettes de ce texte, dont François-René de Chateaubriand écrivit qu’il s’agissait du « pamphlet le plus célèbre de son époque ». On étudiera les circonstances dans lesquelles il fut diffusé. On tentera également d’identifier son auteur. On se penchera enfin sur ses divers avatars anglais et français. Ces différentes pistes permettront de brosser un tableau de la Révolution anglaise des années 1640-1650, mais aussi de réfléchir aux lectures possibles de l’époque révolutionnaire qui l’enfanta et, ce faisant, de promouvoir une certaine histoire radicale des îles Britanniques.
David Armitage : ‘John Locke, Treaties, and the Two Treatises of Government’ (2 fév.)
Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e, de 17h à 18h30, Salle D421 (La séance aura lieu en présentiel uniquement. Un enregistrement sera diffusé ultérieurement sur la chaine youtube du séminaire).
Jeudi 2 février 2023 à 17h. David Armitage, Harvard/ Queen Mary University London: ‘John Locke, Treaties, and the Two Treatises of Government’
In the Two Treatises of Government (1690), John Locke offered an account of the separation of powers that was at once novel and almost entirely without influence. In chapter XII of the Second Treatise, he divided the powers of government conventionally between the legislative and the executive; unprecedentedly, the third power he enumerated was the “federative,” “the power of War and Peace, Leagues and Alliances, and all the Transactions, with all Persons and Communities without the Commonwealth”. Just why Locke highlighted the federative in this way—and then almost immediately collapsed it back into the executive power—presents a conundrum. This paper accounts for its prominence by tracing Locke’s engagement with treaties and treaty-making across his career, from his earliest appearance in print (with two poems celebrating a treaty), via his early diplomatic activities, his trafficking in treaties in France and the Netherlands, his notes on treaties in his journals and elsewhere, and his engagement with treaties as a colonial administrator in both the early 1670s and the late 1690s. It shows that Locke was deeply immersed in the burgeoning treaty culture of his time and that this hitherto unremarked interest shaped his peculiar and mostly unparalleled account of the royal prerogative as it stood on the eve of the Glorious Revolution. The paper concludes with reflections on how we might construe the relationship between Locke the diplomatic actor and student of treaties on the one hand and Locke the constitutional analyst and political theorist on the other.
David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University and currently also an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought, Queen Mary University of London. He is the author or editor of eighteen books, among them The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000), The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007), Foundations of Modern International Thought (2013) and Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (2017). He is currently completing an edition of John Locke’s colonial writings for the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke and working on a new global history of Britain through its treaties and on a study of opera and international law.
Frank Rynne, ‘The Queen v. Parnell: A state trial and the Irish Land War, 1879-82’ (26 jan. 2023)
The Queen v. Parnell: A state trial and the Irish Land War, 1879-82
In nineteenth century Ireland, the end result of state trials was generally a foregone conclusion with conviction inevitable. State trials were political trials aimed at thwarting sedition or political movements. Examples include the trial of Daniel O’Connell and others in 1844 and the Fenian Special Commission in 1866. However, during the Irish Land War 1879-82 much had changed in Ireland. The case, The Queen v. Parnell and others was a more nuanced and complicated affair. From the outset the government had little confidence that they would secure convictions. The Irish Land War, 1879-82, resulted from a compact between the transnational Fenian movement and radical politicians in Ireland led by Charles Stuart Parnell. Central to the agitation, which ostensibly sought to gain peasant proprietorship for tenant farmers, was a national organisation, The Irish National Land League. Through the summer and autumn of 1880 Land League branches were founded throughout Ireland with mass meetings being held even in the remotest districts.
By autumn 1880 government appointees in Ireland were at loggerheads with Gladstone over his refusal to continence a coercion act for Ireland. While Gladstone resisted draconian measures, the Irish administration sought to appease potentates who demanded habeas corpus suspension. It was clear to the Dublin Castle administration that should the trial fail to result in convictions Gladstone’s hand would be forced and he would have to introduce a coercion in Ireland. Thus, the state invested a vast amount of human and financial capital in pursuing the case.
The documentation associated with the preparation for the trial and the evidence presented offers unique insights into the Irish National Land League’s rapid growth and also the nature of government in Ireland in the 1880s. The trial itself and its aftermath, which included the introduction of habeas corpus suspension in Ireland, illustrates the complexity of the Irish political situation during the Land War. It is also clear that the leaders of the Irish Nationalist movement revelled in the prospect of a state trial for conspiracy; confident in acquittal and relishing such a platform for promoting their agenda. This paper will also examine the preparation for the trial and the remarkable throve of evidence the government compiled. It is clear that rather than being a further example of what nationalists might have concluded was the judicial suppression of a political movement, The Queen v. Parnell illustrates a symbiotic propaganda exercise by both the government in Ireland and the Land League.
Frank Rynne is a Senior Lecturer in British Studies and Irish history at CY Cergy Paris Université and a Visiting Research Fellow at The School of Modern History, Trinity College Dublin. He is a member of Agora (EA 7392) CY Cergy Paris Université and an associate member of Prismes (EA 4398) Université Sorbonne Nouvelle.
Philippa Carter, “Diseased brains and diseased souls in Reformation England” (15/12)
In Mystical Bedlam: The World of Madmen (1615), the Calvinist preacher Thomas Adams warned his readers that “there is a double madnesse, corporal and spirituall. That obsesseth the braine, this the heart”. Adams develops this extended simile throughout his sermons. Yet similes depend on points of difference as well as likeness. Focusing on the latter, Adams treats the difference between ‘corporal’ and ‘spiritual’ madness as though it were simply self-evident. For many of his contemporaries, however, it was not. Madness was troubling precisely because it seemed to afflict the whole person, including the rational faculties traditionally attributed to the soul. This paper explores English theologians’ attempts to disentangle soul, mind and brain in the aftermath of the Reformation.
Philippa Carter is a historian of early modern medicine, natural philosophy, and religion. She is Assistant Professor in the History of Medicine and Health before 1800 at the History and Philosophy of Science Department, Cambridge, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. She is currently working on a first monograph, provisionally entitled Phrenitis: Madness, Brain Disease and the Soul in Early Modern England.
Jane Humphries, ‘“The best job in the world”: breadwinning and the capture of household labour in 19th and early 20th-century British coal mining’ (8/12)
Jeudi 8 décembre 2022 à 17h (salle D421 à Serpente) :
Jane Humphries (Oxford / LSE ), ‘“The best job in the world”: breadwinning and the capture of household labour in 19th and early 20th-century British coal mining’
This paper, written with Ryah Thomas, explores the effects of gender inequality and women’s disempowerment in the context of historical coalmining. Across the US and Europe, ex-coalmining regions are characterized by significant deprivation. While there are many reasons for persistent problems, this study focuses on the restrictions imposed on women’s involvement in economic life. Families in mining communities exemplified the male breadwinner structure, in which men’s earnings supported wives and children who provided domestic services in return. This article, however, exposes a different reality of household economics and relations of dominance and subordination: All family members were integrated into the coalmining production process and the creation of profit. Women’s unpaid work did not simply provide domestic comfort; it transferred well-being from women and children to men and simultaneously contributed to the colliery companies’ profits. These findings revise accounts of mining families while providing insight into the intransigence of deprivation in ex-coalmining areas.
Joanne Paul, “Friendship, Kinship and Power: The House of Dudley in the Tudor Period” (1er déc.)
Joanne Paul, “Friendship, Kinship and Power: The House of Dudley in the Tudor Period”
Jeudi 1er décembre à 17h
In the Tudor period, power was acquired and maintained through the establishment not just of personal relationships with the monarch, but complex webs of alliances that made a dynasty – a ‘house’ – resilient against monarchical change. Many of these connections were formed with those whom would be thought of, by modern standards, distant family at best, but were decidedly considered ‘kin’ by Tudor standards. Expanding on the neo-revisionist studies of ‘family’ and ‘kinship’ in the early modern period, this talk will focus on the kinship connections formed by members of the Dudley family during the sixteenth century. It will argue that the functioning or failure of affective kinship ties played a significant part in the acquisition or loss of power to the House of Dudley in the Tudor period, drawing particular attention to affectionate male relationships, but also the ways in which the networks established by women were frequently essential to the re-establishment of the position of the family, following a breakdown in male kinship relationships. Drawing on research compiled for a public-history trade book, The House of Dudley, this talk will also experiment with methods of bridging (or eliminating, or exposing the fictionality of) the gap between ‘public’ and ‘academic’ histories.
Dr Joanne Paul is Honorary Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, working on the intellectual, cultural and political histories of the Tudor and Renaissance periods. The House of Dudley (Penguin: Michael Joseph, 2022) is her third book and first trade book.
Frédérique Lachaud, Stéphane Jettot et Fabrice Bensimon : « Les ressources numériques en histoire britannique »
Jeudi 24 novembre 2022 à 17h (salle D421 à Serpente) :
Frédérique Lachaud, Stéphane Jettot et Fabrice Bensimon (Sorbonne Université) : « Les ressources numériques en histoire britannique »
Cette séance, à l’intention des étudiants de master et de doctorat, évoquera les principales ressources numériques en ligne en histoire britannique. Après une présentation générale, certaines collections en histoire médiévale, moderne et contemporaine seront plus particulièrement présentées.
Samraghni Bonnerjee, ‘”Game and bigger game”: The Settler Soldier, the Non-Human, and the First World War’ (17/11)
Jeudi 17 novembre 2022 à 17h (salle D421 à Serpente) : Samraghni Bonnerjee (Northumbria University), ‘”Game and bigger game”: The Settler Soldier, the Non-Human, and the First World War’
Quentin Gasteuil : « Les travaillistes britanniques face aux questions coloniales durant l’entre-deux-guerres » (10 nov.)
Jeudi 10 novembre 2022 à 17h : attention, séance sur Zoom uniquement (veuillez contacter l’équipe organisatrice pour le lien de connexion)
Quentin Gasteuil : « Les travaillistes britanniques face aux questions coloniales durant l’entre-deux-guerres »
Tout au long de l’entre-deux-guerres, les travaillistes britanniques sont confrontés aux questions liées à la domination coloniale exercée par le Royaume-Uni outre-mer : tentatives de gestion de l’Empire qui succèdent à sa phase d’expansion, projets de réformes ou encore contestations par les populations colonisées du sort qui leur est fait. Les occasions ne manquent pas pour que les membres du Labour Party, dont la place sur l’échiquier britannique a pris une importance nouvelle au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale, s’expriment et agissent vis-à-vis de ces enjeux. Selon quelles modalités le font-ils ? Qui sont ceux qui prennent ces sujets en main, personnellement et pour leur parti ? Par quelle pensée coloniale sont-ils guidés ? Durant cette intervention, c’est à un éclairage particulier de l’appréhension métropolitaine des questions coloniales qu’inviteront de tels questionnements, en même temps qu’ils donneront la possibilité de saisir certaines des spécificités du mouvement travailliste britannique.
Julia Laite, ‘Finding Lydia Harvey: reflections on global microhistory, creative non-fiction, and playing with scales in the The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey’ (27 oct.)
Jeudi 27 octobre 2022 à 17h (salle D421 à Serpente) :
Julia Laite (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Finding Lydia Harvey: reflections on global microhistory, creative non-fiction, and playing with scales in the The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey ‘
Lydia Harvey boarded a steamship in Wellington, New Zealand in January of 1910 bound for Argentina, where she was forced to sell sex in Buenos Aires by the people who had trafficked her there. They later brought her to London, where she was discovered by the Metropolitan Police and became the star witness in their case. The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey traces this story, chases Lydia through the archive, and reveals the entangled lives of her traffickers, their prosecutors, and those who sold and used Lydia’s story for their own ends.
In this talk, Julia Laite will examine the digital methodologies that made this global microhistory possibly, explore the potential of creative non-fiction and storytelling in historical scholarship, and discuss the ethics and practicalities of rescuing someone from ‘the condescension of posterity’.
Julia Laite is Professor of History at the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. She researches and teaches on the history of women, crime, sexuality and migration in the nineteenth and twentieth century British world. Her latest book, The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: A true story of sex, crime, and the meaning of justice (Profile, 2021) won the Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and the Bert Roth Award for New Zealand Labour History.