The long, complex relationship between England and France as told by social networking, 1757-1815
Thesis
- Despite their differences, oftentimes substantial, the relationship within the elite social networks of English and French society remained strong throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century and through the revolution and Napoleonic era. Their cooperation, their friendships, and their continued interaction paved the way for a greater cooperation of elite and bourgeois governments in the nineteenth century. The turning point may be the return of Fox and others to Paris during the peace of Amiens to see an entirely different, disrupted society. This marks the end of the Old Regime and the beginning of the valorisation of the Old Regime just as politics and society were modernising. Thus although the elite castes were much more strongly related as a result of the revolutionary experience, they were also moving in two entirely different trajectories.
- Renversement: The politics and diplomacy of sociability, and the sociability of politics and diplomacy.(First, the utility of elite sociability, then the sociability of political bodies). Based in the private domicile and maintained by unspoken rituals rooted in the practices of an aristocratic milieu, the salon was a powerful tool for linking private interests to political power and public infulence prior to the rise of professional specialization and the bureaucratization of public life. Networks and relationships formed by marriage and liaisons that were contracted for public purposes made each salon at once familial, mondain, where consanguinity and friendship produced publicly significant alliances.(Steven Kale)
- Remember Michael Kwass and his reevaluation of Tocqueville. The people who discussed economics were, in fact, not removed from day to day governance. The same held for the salon attendees, who had the power to politicize a salon by their existence in the two worlds: le monde des salons and the monde of politics. Unlike French ministers who had little to no influence independent of the court, English MPs could take their knowledge with them and introduce it to their own political world.
- Despite the tendency to think about aristocrats as cosmopolitans and the middling classes as patriots, the interaction and networking between elites shows that for however much they might have shared in common, they were themselves on two separate trajectories.
- Out of the entire English population attracted temporarily to the French capital, only a fairly limited number were integrated into a relationship of exchange, let alone with the milieus of Paris intellectuals, philosophers, writers, scholars, academics, authors and art lovers. Among the travellers, depending on the year, between one third and two thrids could make this claim, and, through the recommendaitons they had, or their established celebrity, they could obtain access to those famous names who did not open their doors to all the world. It was a commonality of lifestyre customs and interests that made this society receptive to such privileged visitors. To understand its practices it is necessary to change schale and analyse sources less formal than the police reports, sources that moreover have not yet been fully exploited. They are complemented by the travel accounts collected by Boucher de la Richarderi, Pinkerton, Michele Sacquin, and by the CRIDAF. A definitive study that would use all the information supplied by these various sources – published and manuscript in all their forms, travel accounts, real or fictional correspondence, memoirs, novels, French and British address books – remains to be written; it would show the whole network of Egnlish travellers and display its operation and organisation, as well as the choices made, the role of transmission and that of individuals such as Franklin. Here we shall have to focus on a group of major actors and on the relations established between them.
- A number of the broader claims made by this dense and rewarding book, however, suggest that salons matter more than we have previously thought. Not only has Lilti reaffirmed that the subject will remain a vital element in a number of on going historical debates--concerning the roles of writers, the dimensions of the public sphere, the formation of public opinion, and the nature of Old Regime politics--but he has opened up new lines of inquiry by exploring such themes as the construction of social identities, the links between mondanité and literature, and the constitution of national stereotypes. Finally, Lilti has demonstrated that mondaine sociability was a key matrix of French identity, in which writers and foreigners alike found the distinctive traits of the French character and a privileged field of social and psychological observation.
- Within the network of aristocratic salons was itself a self-definition of high society, of which English passerbys where integral parts.
- Convergence of social, literary and political opinion formation
Intro
- The problem of England and France from the point of view of social history
o Anglophilia, Anglophobia
o The commercial competition between states
- The channel, contested barrier and piste migratoire
1. Channel Crossings
a. Crossing the English Channel in the eighteenth century
b. Rhythms, obstacles, diasporas, etc.
c. Towards a cross-channel understanding of sociability
2. Social Networks
a. The importance of social networking
i. Read, the representativeness of elite networks
ii. Note, the political crowd who gathered; aristocrats, ministeres, financiers, etc.
b. Who was friends with who
c. Types of Social Networks
i. Salons
1. The salon nobility as a closed caste, relatively static and resistant to change
ii. Academies
iii. Personal, etc.
iv. Universities
d. Lieux de Sociabilité
i. Salon
ii. Private Visits
iii. Diner/Supper
iv. Associational
v. Freemasons
vi. Entertainment
1. Balls, Routs, etc.
2. Theatre/Opéra
3. The importance of letter writing
4. Social Networking and the state
5. Cultural exchange
6. Social Networks reformulated: The survival of social networks and the apparition of new solidarities during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era
Conclusion
International Cooperation
A history of England and France
Journal
1/3/2009
- Lilti mentions the conspicuous consumption of the French nobility. I think that a case could be made for the same behavior in English nobles, especially considering Horace Walpole’s detailed list of expenditures and his penchant for visiting fancy shops.
- Gift giving as well
1/14/2009
- One of the principally important movements of late twentieth century historiography has been to look at the means of dissemination of information. Most of this has rightly concentrated on the published word, but imagine, for example, a study that takes into account how friendship and acquaintance was integral to spreading information as rapidly as through publication, if not more so. How to find this out?
o Debate between Anne Goldgar and Dena Goodman: we know about Dena Goodman’s taking seriously the republic of letters, while Goldgar rather puts it down, perhaps anticipating Lilti.
o Thirdly, Pocock in The Enlightenment of Edward Gibbon. One is a serious, erudite and Protestant movement, the other an effemincate, trivial collection of wits.
o Where’s the difference between the Republic of Letters and High Society
o The Republic as a Cultural Phenomenon
- Compare the letter network to subscription lists...who is getting the same information. It’s like a listserv.
1/17/2009
- Corresponding Societies
2/9/2008
- There are a series of internation castes or networks, and they include:
o Aristocrats and Elites
o Intellectuals (broadly defined)
o Diplomats
o Merchants and Financiers
o Free-masons
o Churchmen
o Families and Friens
o Exiles and Refugees
- Bastille Manuscripts. Think about the reports on Thompson. While the concern with diplomatic despatches and troop movements is important, there seems to be no contradiction between that and the everyday movement of the ambassadors, their retinue, the suspicious people who come by, etc. These two things are equally heavy on the mind of the police
2/13/2009
Intermediaries. The reason why so many Britons stuck to themselves and ketp to tourism rather than real social integration is because the real cultural intermediaries, those well integrated into social networks on both sides of the English channel, were actually few and far between. Attending a salon is one thing, but to strike a lasting friendship that results in “commerce des lettres” and opens the doors to new friends and networks is quite a rare feat.
- English
o Lady Berry
o Lady Hervey
o Horace Walpole
o Hume
o Ambassadors
- French
o Morellet
o Suard
o Du Deffand/Geoffrin
o La Rochefoucauld
o Ambassadors
There’s also a connection between between passport development, diplomacy, travel and the Anglo-British connection. One can see the parallel in the way that letters of recommendation opened up vistas for visitors and those attempting a foothold in society. These letters of recommendation and personal introductions were like your passports for society, attesting to your good character and your relative desire not to destroy that society.
The politics of economy is an international political culture. See Morellet and Landsdowne, Smith and Turgot.
17/2/2009
- Had workship with John Hight’s paper last night. He’s organizing things based upon self-identification in journals and letters. Not a terrible idea. So, mother, husband, son, Catholic/Protestant, class, political ideology, etc. Goes with his theory of identity, but it’s useful here as well.
20/2/2009
Policing Social Networks, The police of Paris followed the actors to different parts of the globe to survey and note the contacts they were making as a possibly suspicious set of actions. See, in particular, the Contrôle des Etrangers that reported on meetins, lisaisons, and intended itineraries of these visitors.
The Police of Paris invented the idea of social networking that we know today
New Outline
Inventing Social Networks
1. Historiography
2. Travel and Social Networks: The British in Paris
a. Caste Identity
i. An International Class
ii. Consumption
3. Correspondence Networks: Cross Channel Friendships
a. Caste Identity
i. An International Class
4. Surveillance and the Invention of Social Networks
5. Social Diplomacy
Back to Elaine Chalus, if we think about social diplomacy, then we give women pride of place as well as men.
3/2/2009
The instance of social networking between aritocratic, mercantile and financial elites could parallel modern day “caste survival” techniques, whereby aristocrats rely upon financiers to finance their consumption patterns and lifestyle choices whilst at the same time elevating the prestige of those same merchants and financiers by plugging them into their social networks. Connections pay off in both a monetary and a cultural fashion.
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