In this seminar, we will consider how the expansion of consumption and trade in
the eighteenth century shaped domestic politics and international relations in
Europe. Historians have generally contrasted early modern mercantilism
(commerce as generative of war) with Enlightenment economic liberalism
(commerce as productive of peace). They have seen liberal ‘political economy’ as
having fostered the idea of doux commerce, or “sweet commerce,” which saw
trade as a means for expanding economies, civilizing societies and securing
international peace. Why was this utopia not achieved? Were contemporaries
truly inspired by this notion or was it exploited in the pursuit of more narrowly
defined interests? What impact did efforts to liberalize trade (or not liberalize it)
have on politics and diplomacy in an age of expanding trade, colonialism, and
empire? Finally, can the outbreak of the French Revolution be attributed, in part,
to the tensions generated by economic liberalization?
Questions
How did rising consumption in the 18th century reshape international relations
and the nature of European war?
What impact did liberal Enlightenment principles of free trade and reciprocity
have on both domestic politics and international relations?
How did the international and colonial trade contribute to the outbreak of the
French Revolution?
How far did progressive ideas about “doux commerce” go? Have historians gone
too far in stressing their importance as an ideology?
Required reading
1. Montesquieu, “Of Laws in Relation to Commerce, Considered in its Nature
and Distinctions”, Spirit of the Laws, Book 20, at
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccernew2?id=MonLaws.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng
/parsed&tag=public&part=20&division=div1
2. Two letters by Adam Smith to William Eden, 1st baron Auckland, in Electronic
Enlightenment.
- Adam Smith to William Eden, 3 January 1780
- Adam Smith to William Eden, 15 December 1783
3. Two essays from Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt, and William Max Nelson (eds.),
The French Revolution in Global Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2013):
- Michael Kwass, “The Global Underground: Smuggling, Rebellion, and the
Origins of the French Revolution”
-
Charles Walton, “The Fall from Eden: the Free-Trade Origins of the French
Revolution”
4. Paul Cheney, “A False Dawn for Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism? FrancoAmerican Trade during the American War of Independence,” The William and
Mary Quarterly 63: 3 (2006), 463-488.
5. Istvan Hont, “ chapter from” Jealousy of Trade International Competition and
the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge Mass.: Belknap Press,
2005).
Further Reading
Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: The Political Arguments for
Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). (A
very influential and very Montesquieuian interpretation of doux commerce and
the Enlgihtenment).
Daniel Roche, A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France,
1600-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Colin Jones, “The Great Chain of Buying: Medical Advertisement, the Bourgeois
Public Sphere, and the Origins of the French Revolution,” American Historical
Review 101:1 (1996), 13-40. (How liberal advertisements generated critical and
democratic impulses, via the ‘public sphere’.)
Robert Darnton, The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander in the
Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) (on
the international market for libels)
Will Slauter, “A Trojan Horse in Parliament: International Publicity in the Age of
the American Revolution,” in Charles Walton (ed.), Into Print: Limits and Legacies
of the Enlightenment (State Park: Penn State University Press, 2011), 15-31. (On
the diplomatic tensions generated by the international press.)
David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as
We Know It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), chap 2 on “Conscience, Commerce,
and History”. (On doux commerce as an ideology pointed towards perpetual
peace, a dangerous utopianism.)
Anoush Terjanian Fraser, Commerce and Its Discontents in Eighteenth-Century
French Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy
(Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010).
“Reciprocity – 1776-1830” in Encyclopedia of the New American Nation at
http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/Reciprocity-1776-1830.html
Pernille Røge, ‘”La Clef de Commerce” – The changing role of Africa in France’s
Atlantic Empire c. 1760-1797’, History of European Ideas, 32 (Dec. 2008).
Bertie Mandelblatt, ‘A Transatlantic Commodity: Irish Salt Beef in the French
Atlantic World,” Historical Workshop Journal 63: 1 (2007), 18-47 (on why Irish
salt beef, rather than French colonial salt cod, ended up being imported into
French colonies in the Caribbean, and on slaves as consumers and producers
fueling an Atlantic economy).