Ali Hatapçı, “Geographies of Science in Victorian England: Natural History in the Midlands” (19 oct.)

Jeudi 19 octobre à 17h, salle S001 :

Ali Hatapci  (Université de Bourgogne) : “Geographies of Science in Victorian England: Natural History in the Midlands”

Characterised by a strong amateur tradition, scientific research in nineteenth-century Britain depended largely on voluntary associations. Although London boasted the majority of Britain’s most esteemed scientific institutions, the provinces also cultivated thriving scientific communities. Organising lectures, soirées, establishing museums, and publishing; literary and philosophical, natural history societies and clubs across the country helped shape urban culture, as well as produce new knowledge. This paper will examine the organisation and practice of natural history in the provinces by focusing on the English Midlands. Encompassing twelve historic counties in central England, the Midlands offers a rare chance to study the spatial organisation of science on various scales: town, county, region. By looking into the activities, geographical perceptions, self-assigned duties of the scientific societies, this paper will explore science and sociability in the provinces in the latter half of the century.

 

Ali Hatapçı is a senior lecturer in British history at Université Bourgogne Europe, with research interests in the history of science, periodicals, and life in the provinces. His publications include articles on English county Floras, the Gardeners’ Chronicle, digital illustration archives, and the popularisation of mycology (to appear).

Programme 2025-2026

Le séminaire a lieu le jeudi de 17h à 18h30, à la Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e.

9 octobre 2025 à 17h, salle S002 : Chloé Luneau : « La question nationale dans les mobilisations gaies et lesbiennes dans les deux Irlande (années 1970-1980) » ; Lucas Privet (doctorant ENS Ulm – Sorbonne Université) : « “Home Colonization” et “Land Plan” : quelle place pour l’Irlande dans le projet chartiste de mise en culture des terres en friche ? » ; et Caroline Seyer (doctorante à l’université Paris-Cité) : « Maternité lesbienne et santé des femmes : Penser l’intime ou le politique au sein des lieux militants britanniques, 1970-1990 »

 23 octobre à 17h, salle S001 :  Ali Hatapci  (Université de Bourgogne) : “Geographies of Science in Victorian England: Natural History in the Midlands”

 6 novembre à 17h, salle S001 : Rory Naismith (Cambridge) : ‘Anglo-Saxon London’

 20 novembre à 17h, salle S002 :  Tom Wright (Sussex), ‘The Politics of Oracy and Mid-Victorian Voting Reform” 

 4 décembre à 17h, salle S001 : Antti Taipale (Helsinki), “Perspectives on religion as a tool of war in the English Civil War”

 18 décembre à 17h, salle S001:  Oscar Webber (London School of Economics), autour de son livre Negotiating relief and freedom:  Responses to disaster in the British Caribbean, 1812-1907 (Manchester University Press, 2023)

 29 janvier 2026 à 17h, salle D421 : Richard Whatmore (St Andrews), “Free states and fanaticism

 12 février à 17h, salle D421: Ann Thomson (émérite IUE-Florence), “Countering Islamophobia and Catholicism in Grub Street: Joseph Morgan, an early 18th C cultural go-between”

 26 février à 17h, salle D421 : Laure Piguet (Fribourg / Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin) : « Enquêter sur sa condition. Fabrication et usages des savoirs par les prisonniers londoniens au XVIIIe siècle »

 12 mars à 17h, salle D421: Juliette Desportes (Highlands), “Resistance to Improvement in the Highlands and Islands, 1750-1820”

 26 mars à 17h, salle D421: Claire Schiano-Locurcio (Montpellier), « Des religieuses en exil : survie et essor du catholicisme anglais aux XVII et XVIII siècles »

 9 avril à 17h, salle D421: Vic Clarke (Leeds), “’Reviewing Radical Literature in the Chartist Press (1840s)”

7 mai à 17h, salle D421 : Ole Birk Laursen (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), ‘Exile has its privileges’: the Indian revolutionary movement in Europe, 1905–1918″ 

Amélie Bonney et Christelle Gomis: “Standardizing Deficiency: Eugenic theories and the shaping of race, class and gender dynamics in Britain (1880-1970s)” (13 fév.)

Jeudi 13 février à 17h : Amélie Bonney et Christelle Gomis: “Standardizing Deficiency: Eugenic theories and the shaping of race, class and gender dynamics in Britain (1880-1970s)”

This panel investigates the long-lasting effects of theories of race and social hierarchy which developed during the nineteenth century in Britain. Focusing on educational and working environments, it shows how these theories contributed to shaping power dynamics in Britain from the late 1880s to the 1970s, focusing specifically on the ways it intersected with race and gender dynamics as well as with debates about the family. Améie Bonney’s paper explores the rise of occupational medicine as a field at the turn of the twentieth century, and shows how eugenic thought contributed to shaping the ways in which some of the symptoms of white lead poisoning were understood and addressed, focusing particularly on female workers. Christelle Gomis’s paper examines the influence of eugenic ideologies on the British education system during the post-war period, specifically in the context of Caribbean migration during the Windrush Era (1948-1971). It explores how these ideologies shaped the categorization and treatment of Caribbean children within the subnormal school system, highlighting the racial biases embedded within educational policies. By analyzing archival materials from the Inner London Education Authority and the Black Parents Movements, the project sheds light on the social and economic ramifications of such segregation and the advocacy efforts by parents, educators, and activists to push for educational reforms and challenge these injustices.

“The rise of occupational medicine, eugenics and debates over the risks of lead poisoning in Britain”

Amélie Bonney, D.Phil History of Science, Medicine and Technology, University of Oxford, UK / PRAG, Faculté des Sciences, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France – amelie.bonney@gmail.com

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, debates surrounding the legislation of workmen’s compensation made it necessary to better define thresholds of acceptable levels of toxicity in order to decide who could claim compensation. This renewed interest in occupational diseases fuelled new publications focusing specifically on the ‘diseases of occupations’ in Britain. While this raised hopes for a specialized study of dangerous work environments and the toxic substances that affected workers, in reality, the approaches of occupational physicians and industrial hygienists were also shaped by contemporary debates on eugenics and fears over the degeneration of the race. Racial theories developing in the second half of the nineteenth century – at a time of economic depression, rising social tensions and challenges to Britain’s imperial rule – significantly affected the ways in which occupational diseases were explained. In 1857, Bénédict Morel’s work on degenerescence investigated the effects of poisons such as white lead on the physiognomy of workers, an approach which subsequently persisted in the work of British experts. The standardisation of occupational medicine as a field cannot be dissociated from eugenic theories developed in the aftermath of Francis Galton’s publication of Hereditary Work on Genius (1869). Prominent figures in the field of occupational medicine such as Thomas Oliver and Thomas Arlidge approached some of the effects of lead poisoning through this lens. In particular, one major source of concern was the effect on motherhood and on the fitness of future generations, which was an argument promoted to further regulate some trades, however establishing distinctions based on gendered lines. The concerns of medical practitioners contrast with working-class women’s use of white lead as an abortive, which shows that far from being only victims of the substance, they also used it with an understanding of some of its effects.

Far from being ignorant of the toxic effects of white lead, workers also had an understanding of the risks they were subjected to. A history from below of workers’ knowledge of risks thus allows us to argue that there also existed an alternative form of knowledge of risks to the one developed by official ‘experts’.

“Eugenics, Postcolonial Migration, and the Fight for Meritocratic Education in Post-War Britain (1920s-1970s)”

Christelle Gomis, Ph.D, EUI, Florence, Italy – christelle.gomis@eui.eu

In the aftermath of World War II, the UK’s educational system faced significant challenges as it grappled with the consequences of eugenic ideologies and the impact of Caribbean migration. This paper examines how eugenics influenced the development of the subnormal school system, particularly in the context of post-war immigration. The placement of Caribbean children in these schools highlights the racial biases embedded within educational policies of the time. The legacy of eugenics in Britain, deeply intertwined with the educational policies of the 20th century, cannot be overlooked. Prominent eugenic theories that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries continued to shape societal views on intelligence and disability. These theories, which emphasized heredity and the prevention of “racial degeneration,” significantly impacted the categorization and treatment of children deemed “subnormal.” The interwar period (1918-1939) played a crucial role in embedding eugenic ideas within the British educational and social systems. During this time, the eugenics movement gained substantial traction, influencing public policies and educational practices. Reports and studies from this period, such as the Wood Report of 1929, reinforced the exclusion of mostly lower-class children based on perceived intellectual deficiencies, often informed by eugenic principles. This era also saw the establishment of special schools and classes for children deemed mentally defective, which laid the groundwork for the subnormal schools that proliferated in the post-war years. The arrival of Caribbean migrants during the Windrush era (1948-1971) added a new dimension to these issues, as many children from these communities were unjustly placed in subnormal schools. This placement was influenced by eugenic beliefs that linked race with intellectual capability and by a broader socio-political context that viewed these children through a lens of deficiency. Key legislative frameworks, such as the 1944 Education Act, and critical reports like the 1978 Warnock Report, played pivotal roles in shaping and eventually challenging these discriminatory practices. The experiences of Caribbean children in London subnormal schools are critical for understanding the broader impact of eugenics on British education. Education reports from the Inner London Education Authority reveal the ambivalences of an institution caught between an emerging anti-racist awareness and fears of overcrowding. Archives from the Black Parents Movement shed light on the experiences of those affected, detailing the social and economic ramifications of such segregation. They also highlight the advocacy and resistance efforts by parents, educators, and activists, who played a crucial role in pushing for educational reforms and exposing the injustices faced by these communities.

Camille Martinerie : “The same knowledge under different stars?” – Cross-examining history teaching in the South African university under apartheid from the other side of power (30/01/2025)

Jeudi 30 janvier: Camille Martinerie (Sorbonne Paris Nord), “The same knowledge under different stars?” – Cross-examining history teaching in the South African university under apartheid from the other side of power”

This paper is interested in the political and epistemological understandings of decolonisation – that is, the psycho-cultural dimensions of colonialism, which outlived itself notably through the production of “colonial knowledge” as a means of conquest within institutions, and more specifically universities. My point of entry is a a long-standing debate in South African historiography about the decolonisation of history resulting from the erosion white settler minority’s dominant stronghold on academic norms, appointments and traditions in South Africa in the 1990s. This retrospective study of academic history proposes to capture the different dimensions and layers of “colonial knowledge” as a discursive formation using the University of Cape Town (UCT) – a historically white English-speaking institution –  as a case study. Based a detailed discursive analysis of history examination questions triangulated with oral testimonies from black university students, the study exposes the ideological and epistemological biases that have influenced historical education and narrative construction within this prominent academic institution, internationally known for its opposition to the regime.

Camille Martinerie is a course convener and researcher at University Sorbonne Paris Nord (France) where she teaches British and Commonwealth history. She holds a joint PhD degree in African and Anglophone Studies from the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and Aix-Marseille Université (France). Her research interests revolve around African Studies, intellectual histories of decolonisation, historiography and higher education in (post)colonial contexts. Her next project looks at the social and intellectual trajectories of black South African scholars in exile as part of a wider seminar project on South-North political, intellectual and artistic circulations in the post-Bandung era. More information available here: https://calenda.org/1122619  

James Fisher, autour de son ouvrage _The Enclosure of Knowledge: Books, Power & Agrarian Capitalism in Britain 1660-1800_ (25 avril)

Jeudi 25 avril : James Fisher (Exeter), autour de son ouvrage The Enclosure of Knowledge. Books, Power and Agrarian Capitalism in Britain, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2022)

James Fisher viendra présenter son ouvrage, The Enclosure of Knowledge: Books, Power & Agrarian Capitalism in Britain 1660-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) qui s’intéresse à l’essor de la production d’ouvrages d’agriculture et d’agronomie au dix-huitième siècle en Grande Bretagne et dont voici le résumé (en anglais) :

 

“The rise of agrarian capitalism in Britain is usually told as a story about markets, land and wages. The Enclosure of Knowledge reveals that it was also about books, knowledge and expertise. It argues that during the early modern period, farming books were a key tool in the appropriation of the traditional art of husbandry possessed by farm workers of all kinds. It challenges the dominant narrative of an agricultural ‘enlightenment’, in which books merely spread useful knowledge, by showing how codified knowledge was used to assert greater managerial control over land and labour. The proliferation of printed books helped divide mental and manual labour to facilitate emerging social divisions between labourers, managers and landowners. The cumulative effect was the slow enclosure of customary knowledge. By synthesising diverse theoretical insights, this study opens up a new social history of agricultural knowledge and reinvigorates long-term histories of knowledge under capitalism.”

 James Fisher is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Exeter. He completed his PhD in History at King’s College London in 2018. Befor joining Exeter in 2023, he taught at King’s College London, Royal Holloway, and the University of East London.

Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq, ‘Harrington’s republic in eighteenth-century France’ (21 déc.)

Jeudi 21 décembre 2023 à 17h : Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq (université Paris Nanterre), ‘Harrington’s republic in eighteenth-century France’

In his major book The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) and his subsequent writings, James Harrington vindicated democracy in an age when the term was often synonymous with anarchy (Cuttica and Peltonen, 2019). Beyond the act of resistance to tyranny, he exposed the constitutional means of implementing popular sovereignty in a vast country. In doing so, Harrington has incarnated a distinctive form of republicanism in seventeenth-century England, and, as I tried to show, in eighteenth-century France to inspire various constitutional projects.

By reconstructing the history of his reception, La République de Harrington dans la France des Lumières et de la Révolution (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2022) aims to bridge the gap between the great Pocockian narrative of Machiavellian republicanism in Great-Britain and the American colonies (The Machiavellian Moment, 1975) and the historiography of the French Revolution. The present book is set against the panorama offered by Rachel Hammersley (The English republican tradition in eighteenth-century France, 2010) and aims to go further. On the one hand, it shows the major role played by authors such as Hume, Jaucourt or Rousseau, along with numerous minores, notably translators and commentators, in reviving Harrington’s ideas. On the other hand, it shows the diversity of his intellectual legacy. He did not only stand as the inspirer of specific political institutions: as political economy developed, Harrington also appeared as the theoretician of a distribution of wealth among the people, perceived by many as the true basis of a stable political order.

Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq is Professor of British civilisation at Paris Nanterre University. Her research has focused on the history of political thought in early modern England and more particularly on English republicanism and its reception in eighteenth century France. She has authored a monograph, Aux Sources de la démocratie anglaise. De Thomas Hobbes à John Locke (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2012) and has directed a collective volume with Laïla Ghermani, Le Prince, le despote, le tyran : figures du souverain en Europe de la Renaissance aux Lumières/The Prince, the Despot, the Tyrant : figures of the sovereign in Europe from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Honoré Champion, 2019). She has also translated Rachel Hammersley’s book: Entre Anciens et modernes. La Tradition républicaine anglaise dans la France du dix-huitième siècle (Le Bord de l’eau, Nouvelle Bibliothèque républicaine, 2022).

 

 

Programme 2023-2024

Les séances ont lieu, sauf indication contraire, le jeudi de 17h à 18h30 à la Maison de la Recherche de Sorbonne Université (28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e), salle D421

Jeudi 5 octobre 2023 : Séance pédagogique sur les ressources en ligne en histoire britannique (Fabrice Bensimon, Stéphane Jettot et Frédérique Lachaud)

Jeudi 19 octobre : Louise Jackson (Edimbourg), ‘Gender equalities at work: writing an interdisciplinary history of feminist campaigning in the UK c. 1970-2020’

Jeudi 9 novembre : Ophélie Siméon (Sorbonne Nouvelle), « Anna Doyle Wheeler (1785-1848): itinéraire politique et militant d’une pionnière du féminisme » (cette séance remplace celle avec John Tolan, initialement prévue).

Jeudi 23 novembre : William Ashworth (Liverpool) : ‘The Early Chemical Industry in North West England and Its Legacy’

Jeudi 7 décembre : Emily Ward (Edimbourg), ‘”I witness this myself”: adolescent rulers and political “belonging” in Britain and France, c. 1150 –c. 1260’

Jeudi 21 décembre : Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq (Nanterre), sur son livre La République de Harrington dans la France des Lumières et de la Révolution (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2023)

Jeudi 1er février 2024 : Alison Cathcart (Stirling) : ‘James VI & I and his empire of islands’

Jeudi 8 février : Luke Blaxill (Oxford), ‘Text Mining and Political History: challenges and opportunities in the age of Big Data’

Jeudi 15 février : Thomas Stammers (Durham): ‘Philippe, comte de Paris and the Orleans family in Exile after 1848: Liberalism, Collecting and Empire’  (la séance est annulée)

Jeudi 29 février: Béatrice Robic (Nanterre) : « Le travail des enfants en Angleterre et au pays de Galles entre 1870 et 1914 »

Jeudi 14 mars : Perry Gauci (Oxford) : ‘Friends and Countrymen: The London Private Banker in Eighteenth-Century Society’

Jeudi 28 mars : Lauriane Simony (Cergy) : « Diplomatie culturelle, stratégies d’influence et propagande : le British Council en Birmanie après l’indépendance »

Jeudi 4 avril : Sophie Scott-Brown (East Anglia), ‘The Impolitics of Internationalism: Claude Bourdet, G. D. H. Cole, and the International Society for Socialist Studies’

Jeudi 25 avril : James Fisher (Exeter), autour de son ouvrage The Enclosure of Knowledge. Books, Power and Agrarian Capitalism in Britain, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2022)

Jeudi 16 maiEmma Griffin (Queen Mary University of London), ‘Empire and the Origins of Global Capitalism’

 

Le séminaire est ouvert aux étudiants de master et doctorat, ainsi qu’à toutes les personnes intéressées. Les enregistrements de la plupart des communications sont ensuite disponibles sur la chaine YouTube du séminaire :  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCveumFeGDtmJP8GTG3S8DOQ

Gregory Claeys : ‘Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism’ (20 avril)

Jeudi 20 avril à 17h (Serpente, salle D421)

Gregory Claeys (Royal Holloway, University of London) – Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism

 

Few can have missed the fact that humanity is facing the greatest crisis in the earth’s history. With global warming currently at 1.25°C, but headed towards 3C or more, the threat of cataclysm is more real than ever. This talk argues that notional targets of 1.5C-2C are inadequate, and that warming must be kept below 1C. In order to achieve this, a variety of measures, commencing with the immediate renunciation of carbon fuels, but extending to a severe dampening of consumer demand and consumerism as such, must be implemented. The utopian tradition fruitfully provides a range of suggestions as to how to achieve this goal.

 

Gregory Claeys is Professor Emeritus at the University of London. His eleven books, which have been translated into nine languages, include Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism (Princeton University Press, 1987); Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 1989); Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (Unwin Hyman, 1989), Searching for Utopia: the History of an Idea (Thames & Hudson, 2011), Mill and Paternalism (Cambridge University Press, 2013); Dystopia: A Natural History (Oxford University Press, 2016); Marx and Marxism (Penguin Books, 2018), Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism (Princeton University Press, 2022); and John Stuart Mill: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2022). He has edited The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2010; Turkish edn., 2017) and over forty volumes of primary sources, including Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (Hackett, 1992). He is editor-in-chief of a new collection of Paine’s collected writings in six volumes (2026, forthcoming), and Chair of the Utopian Studies Society (Europe

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.

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.

Niall O’Flaherty : “Malthus and the Discovery of Poverty” (24 fév.)

Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e, Salle D421, de 17h à 18h30 (La séance aura lieu en présentiel uniquement. Un enregistrement sera diffusé ultérieurement sur la chaine youtube du séminaire).

 

Jeudi 24 février à 17h : Niall O’Flaherty (King’s College London) : ‘Malthus and the Discovery of Poverty’

Few books have cast such a long shadow as the second edition of T. R. Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population (1803). Yet it remains one of the most poorly understood books published during the last two hundred years. I argue that the ‘Great Quarto’ should no longer be read primarily as a work of demography or economics, but as a seminal work in the science of poverty – the first book to try to explain the structural causes and social effects of hardship, and to offer a root-and-branch solution to the problem. In the paper, I will also show that both Malthus’s political and religious ideas were subservient to this social programme and not vice versa as has long been argued. 

Niall O’Flaherty est Senior Lecturer in the History of European Political Thought à King’s College London. Il a publié Utilitarianism in the Age of Enlightenment: the moral and political thought of William Paley (CUP, 2019). Il participé à l’ouvrage New Perspectives on Malthus dirigé par R. J. Mayhew (CUP, 2016). 

 

Anne Verjus, « James Henry Lawrence (1773-1840), ou quand la pensée aristocratique sert la cause des femmes » (21 oct.)

Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e, Salle D421, de 17h à 18h30 (La séance aura lieu en présentiel uniquement. Un enregistrement sera diffusé ultérieurement sur la chaine youtube du séminaire ). 

Jeudi 21  octobre à 17h : Anne Verjus (ENS Lyon, UMR Triangle), « James Henry Lawrence (1773-1840), ou quand la pensée aristocratique sert la cause des femmes »

L’Empire des Nairs, de James H. Lawrence, est une utopie dans laquelle ont été abolis le mariage et la paternité. Elle a l’originalité de prévoir les moyens d’assurer aux femmes une indépendance matérielle à l’égard des hommes. Mais, et c’est son paradoxe principal, elle se veut moins au service de l’émancipation féminine que de la consolidation de l’authenticité des lignées. Utopie avant tout aristocratique, elle présente pourtant le projet féministe le plus radical de son temps. Peu connue aujourd’hui, elle fut à l’époque lue et relayée par Shelley, Godwin, Schiller ou Goethe, ou encore Richard Carlile, Claire Demar ou Flora Tristan.

 Anne Verjus est directrice de recherche au CNRS en science politique et histoire sociale des idées. 

 

 

Bernard Lightman et Richard England, “The Metaphysical Society and the End of Metaphysics” (6 mai)

Jeudi 6 mai 2021 à  17 h : Bernard Lightman (York University) et Richard England (Eastern Illinois University), “The Metaphysical Society and the End of Metaphysics”

The Metaphysical Society was a unique London debating club that lasted for eleven years, from 1869 to 1880.  The debaters came from every sphere of intellectual endeavor, from politics and religion, to science and literature. The roster of members included many of the English intellectual superstars of the period, such as the liberal politician William Gladstone, the biologist T. H. Huxley, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Henry Edward Manning, and the Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson. During the period when the Metaphysical Society held its meetings there were questions being raised about the future of the study of metaphysics.  So why did members of the Society decide to name their debating club the Metaphysical Society?  This paper will explore how the concept of metaphysics was understood by the members of the society during the 1870’s.  It became an issue of contention within the society, as Christian intellectuals attempted to defend the validity of metaphysics from the criticisms of fellow members who questioned the existence of such a discipline, and ironically, the raison d’être of the society itself.

 

Bernard Lightman is Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities Department at York University, and Past President of the History of Science Society.   
Richard England  is Dean of the Pine Honors College and professor of philosophy at Eastern Illinois University. 

– Catherine Marshall, Bernard Lightman & Richard England (eds), The Papers of the Metaphysical Society (1869-1880), Oxford, Oxford, University Press, 2015.
– Catherine Marshall, Bernard Lightman and Richard England (eds), The Metaphysical Society (1869-1880): Intellectual Life in Mid-Victorian England, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019. 

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Jan-Melissa Schramm : « The Idea of Universal Citizenship and the Rhetoric of Rights in the 1790s: Republican Virtue versus British Reform » (28 jan.)

Jeudi 28 janvier 2021 à  17 h : Jan-Melissa Schramm « The Idea of Universal Citizenship and the Rhetoric of Rights in the 1790s: Republican Virtue versus British Reform »

In the trial of Thomas Hardy for the seditious promotion of constitutional reform in London in 1794, the prosecution used all possible means to establish Hardy’s respect for the works of Thomas Paine, and to claim that such respect was inconsistent with British patriotism.  Crucial to this process was Paine’s adoption of French citizenship:
“A letter was then read [to the jury] from Thomas Paine to the People of France, dated Sept. 25, 1792; in this letter he returns them thanks for having elected him a French Citizen, and a Member of the Convention, and on having broken the line which limited patriotism, like vegetation, to the soil.  Theirs, he said, was not the paltry cause of Kings, but the great cause of mankind.”
Historians have long seen the French Revolution as a critical episode in the story of modern citizenship, encouraging, as counsel for the Crown noted above, the crucial separation of patriotism from ‘the soil’ on which a man was born.  But the idea of citizenship was also deeply problematic, promising much and often delivering little to those who most needed its protection.  In this paper, I will look at the relationship between emergent definitions of citizenship and the language of human rights which rose to prominence in this period, probing both their utopian aims and their conceptual incoherence.  I will pay particular attention to the works of Bentham, Godwin and Paine.

Jan-Melissa Schramm est professeure de Droit et Littérature à l’université de Cambridge.  Elle a récemment publié Censorship and the Representation of the Sacred in Nineteenth-Century England (OUP 2019) et co-édité Sacrifice and the Modern Literature of War (OUP 2018).
 
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