RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

European culture and the problem of otherness: historiography, politics, science of man in modern Europe (XVI-XIX centuries)

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di TRIESTE - STORIA E DI STORIA DELL'ARTE - ()

Research Unit Leader

Guido Abbattista

Description

The unit of Trieste – “Knowing, representing and ruling the “other”: culture and colonial-imperial ideologies in early modern Europe (16th-19th centuries)” – will develop, on the basis of pre-existing works by its members, three main research directions belonging to the historiography of ideas and to the social history of cultures.

I. The first direction concerns the historiographical and political-constitutional reflections between about 1750 and 1850 in such European states such as Great Britain, France and Holland on the problem of “otherness” in close connection with the transformation of the nation-State into a colonial-imperial entity as a consequence of the growing presence or conquest in the American and the Asiatic worlds (India and China) and later on of the penetration into the interior of the African continent. This field of research will be articulated in three sections: 1) the analysis of the historiographical representations and of the forms of governance of the “other” within a context of imperial relations (“rule of difference”), taking into account the perspective of the “subaltern” and “postcolonial studies” and, together, of the “imperial studies” and the “world history”; 2) analysis of the perceptions of imperial problems and their consequences in the late 18th century Scottish and British political and historiographical thought; 3) study of the ways of representing colonial and imperial history and politics as constitutive elements of national identitites, especially in France between 18th an 19th centuries;
II. The second direction is regarding the experiences, descriptions, images of the exotic “otherness” in the European culture from the age of the Renaissance to the 19th century and envisages the following sections: 1) the study of the representation of the Turk and the Turkish world between 15th and 16th centuries; 2) the study of the representation of the exotic “other”, as brought about by different modes of physical presence of living human beings of the “savage” type and as perceived both in popular mentalities and in the public representations of power conveyed by great feasts, spectacles, ceremonies, triumphs, tournaments, solemnities, receptions, royal entries and such kinds of symbolic manifestations of power, till the more prosaic forms of commercial and spectacular exploitation of the exotic in 18th and 19th century Europe; 3) study of discussions and interpretations of anthropological otherness with reference to the problem of slavery, abolitionism and black indentities in the Francophone narrative, political and anthropological literature between 18th and 19th centuries .
III. The third direction is concerning the political and institutional evolution of the republic of Venice between 16th and 18th centuries in the political and territorial context of North-Eastern Europe and with reference to its role as a colonial and imperial power in the Dalmatian and Balkan areas of Eastern Mediterranean.

I.1. Within the first research direction, the section on “Empire, liberty and the rule of difference” will deal with the relationship between empire and liberty in the early modern age, with particular reference to Great Britain and India between 1750 and 1850, that is to say the reflection on the consequences of imperial power on the part of a free country on its own institutions and social forms and on the conditions, timing and ways of communicating values of liberty, rights ad civilization to subordinated countries. This theme is closely connected to the debate on the “rule of difference”, carried on by contemporary authors such as Amartya Sen, and by scholars inspired by the “subaltern” and “postcolonial studies” (Edward Said, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee), but also by recent imperial revisionist historiography (Christopher A. Bayly). An objective of this research is to find in the British (and partly French) late 18th century and beginning of the 19th century controversies on the government of India the basic elements of a reflection on the government of the “other” in a specific imperial framework capable of showing the considerable variety of options existing from the 18th century authors (Raynal, Roubaud, Anquetil_Duperron, Volney, Adam Smith, William Robertson, Edmund Burke, American Federalists), to the 19th century thinkers (James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Walter Bagehot, Edward Freeman, Lord Holland, J. M. Robertson, John Hobson, John M. Robertson, Francis W. Hirst, Gilbert Murray, John L. Hammond. Objectives: production of essays for scientific periodicals; achievement (within a publishing Anglo-French-Italian-German undertaking) of the critical edition of the classic of 18th century historiograhy abbé Raynal, Histoire des deux Indes (1780); publication of a collection of sources on colonial and imperial problems and discussions in Europe between the 17th and the 19th centuries.
I.2. A second section will concern “Empire and historical narration in the reflection on otherness of the Anglophone Enlightenment”. This line of enquiry aims at studying, by the method of textual and lexicological analysis, the role of the paradigm of historical and evolutionary temporality produced by Scottish authors in their representation of political and social diversities and in their building different patterns of social and political development (within and outside Europe) to be compared by inclusion in a homogeneous scheme of ‘progress’. It will be investigated how these intellectual and narrative schemes affected the discussion of the category of “empire”, with the political and constitutional implications entailed by the representation of composite bodies made up by states, territories, provinces, peoples and religions different from one another. Two topics are relevant to this purpose: the first is Edward Gibbon and his Decline and Fall, and the second the political writings and parliamentary discourses of colonial and imperial subject by Edmund Burke, that are currently object of publication by some members of this projec. Objectives:a reinterpretation of the Decline and Fall aiming at highlighting the arguments employed in the dealing of imperial history (from rhetoric to exemplum, to satyre to the portrayal of historical characters, to the question of emulation and imitation between civilizations); and at inventorying gibbonian discussions on (Roman, Barbarian, Muslim, Mongol, Hun, Ottoman) empires and states. On the basis also of the forthcoming publication of a choice of Edmund Burke’s imperial writings, analysis of Burke’s imperial ideas, with a special attention to the theme of the consistency of the principles and working of the British constitution with the Indian context and the relevant problems of understanding and handling the problems of cultural diversity.
I.3. The third line concerns “French historical culture and its dealing with otherness (18th-19th centuries)”. This research investigates the relationship between the problem of otherness and historical culture with specific reference to the French colonial historiography in the 18th and 19th centuries. The building of such a culture is considered not only as a way of understanding and describing anthropological, political, and social features of otherness, but also as a process of negotiating civil identities, and finally as a cultural agent in the “rule of the colonial difference” (Chatterjee). From these standpoints, the research will focus on three specifics subjects: a) the emergence of historical representations of the «first French Empire» with reference to the debate about France as a colonial power and the limits and forms of its establishments and commerce in the Deux Indes, (cf. Guyon, Mirabeau, Voltaire, Roubaud, Raynal, Anquetil-Duperron); b) the shaping of historical paradigms, specifically those of «modern age» and «European civilization» as they arose from the historical debate about the colonies of the ancients and the colonies of the moderns (cf. Raynal, Sismondi, Leroy-Beaulieu); c) the relationship between culture and power: in this case, the purpose is to explore the limits of interpreting culture as a mere product or instrument of dominance (cf. Said, Chakrabarty, Chatterjee, Guha, and, for a constructive criticism, Cooper). This research aims at pointing out the specificity of an European (specially French) memory and historical consciousness about colonial encounters in the 18th and 19th centuries, and at a better comprehension of the colonial knowledge, assessing its real cultural dimensions beyond the sharp recent criticisms about its understanding and dealing with otherness, in the past as well as in the present (cf. Blanchard-Bancel-Lemaire, Le Cour Grandmaison).

II. The starting point of this second research line is the first appearance of Turkish military forces in the Italian peninsula, that is to say in Friuli-Veneto in the period from 1472-99 and after the conquest of Otranto in 1480-81. Certain aspects of these military events will be re-examined, not merely as conflicts between states, armies or religions, but from the standpoint of the daily involvement of the populations concerned: resistance and slavery, but also forms of compromise. The heroic-hagiographic view still predominant should be corrected when we come down from the global or collective perspective to the level of single individuals. Most of all, we need to reflect on the fact that at this juncture, for the first time, the infidels Turks, the official enemies of Christianity, arrived in the flesh and en masse; they left the vagaries of tales, fears, distant and stereotyped images. More than the sudden incursions into the Venetian Terraferma, it was the fourteen-months siege of Otranto which supplied contemporaries with elements of observation and awareness. The image of the Turk and the Muslim was reformulated accordingly: still greatly feared, mostly at the official level; but also more concrete, fed by behaviours, rites, culture, even religious intercourses. From memories of Otranto a new narrative tradition appeared, in which religious and war themes intersected, mixing myths of martyrdom and unavowed weaknesses (affective and sexual). This outlook continued until the second siege of Vienna in 1683, when a new cycle of wars brought the global myth of Ottoman invincibility to an end, giving new form to everyday perceptions as well. In dealing with investigations focussed on the line between socio-political history and cultural history, no historical source can be excluded. Nevertheless, the following series of items remains of greatest interest: diplomatic relations; manuscript and printed chronicles; criminal and inquisitional archives; iconography in all of its forms. The narrative technique of the final accounts will make up an essential part of the process of learning and understanding, as is today generally recognised in historiography. It is superfluous to add that the excess of stimuli from current events imposes special methodological and terminological vigilance.
II.2. Another research line concerns the “Forms of presentation/exhibition/exposition of living human diversity in early modern Europe”. This research on living ethno-expositions and ethnic spectacles in Europe between 18th and 19th centuries will be carried on so to include the wide typological varieties of exhibitions of exotic living bodies realized in the context of the spectacular, ceremonial and symbolic exhibitions of power especially since the end of the 15th century. It is intended to investigate, according to a comparative method, the development of the exhibiting practices of living human beings that accompanied the life of European societies between the 16th and the 19th centuries, from the age of monarchies and the courts, of (wonders, curiosities, monstrosities, natural history specimens) collecting, of scientific cabinets and academies, to the age of the scientific education and popularization and its growing hybridization with the great mass social entertainment. The analysis of these phenomena of social, political, ideological and collective psychologies history will help make clear some aspects of the history of Western colonial and imperial powers stressing some specific forms of representation of the human diversities as “remote” and “alien”, and more typically as objects of dominion. Objectives: achievement of a volume actually under preparation on “Powers and the exotic bodies: exhibiting, exposing and representing human diversity”
II.3. The representation of the black persona in 18th and 19 centuries French culture. The research wants to bridge an apparent gap on this topic, focussing on the years from 1794 (first abolition of colonial slavery, then re-established in 1802) to 1825, when Saint-Domingue turned a free country with the name of Haiti. This is a period on which, albeit the excellent works by Yves Benot, much is still to be investigated, especially from a literary point of view. The only reliable reference is Léon-François Hoffmann, Le nègre romantique (1973), that starts from the late 18th century: but this is in essence an inventory, not accompanied by a comprehensive critical analysis of the recorded materials. This thorough re-reading is made necessary by the historical-anthropological researches of the last thirty years. An aspect to be considered with particular attention is the rich literary production by female writers, who try to find a mirror of their own personal experience in the colonial settings, with heroes or heroines cut off by slavery or by the colour of their skin. In colonial diversities and specificities they read their own diversity and their segregation as civil women. They are women writers not well known, not even by the specialists, such as Adèle Daminois, Sophie Douin, Claire Duras. Their works have never been object of a systematic study, keeping in view a general interpretation of this phenomenon. In an epoch when, under the spur of ‘gender studies’, a re-reading is under way of every literary periods and movements, important elements could emerge from this comparison between marginal realities that convene and dialogue on the written page.

III. The third research direction aims at studying Venetian sovereignty in Istria, Dalmatia and the Greek islands (Ionian Islands, Crete) in the 17th and 18th centuries from a political and social point of view, in order to understand the nature of the relations between Venetian aristocracy and its subjects in their different aspects (administration, tribunals, feuds and informal justice, patronage of Venetian nobles and local elites). From this perspective, religion shall be one of the major concerns: in the 17th and 18th centuries the orthodox subjects of the Republic ( both “Greeks” and “Serbs”, with different liturgical languages) could be attracted by the liberal policy of the Austrian Empire and by the protection offered by the Czar. Therefore it will be studied the shifting Venetian attitude on different issues, like Roman missions in the Balkans and “uniatism”, the conflict on the archbishop of Philadelphia (actually living in Venice as the religious leader of the local Greek community), and the different opinions of the Venetian legal advisers (consultori) on the best way to do with the “Greeks” and their religious identity. An edition of these legal advices (consulti), issued by theologians and lawyers, such as Fulgenzio Micanzio and Antonio Montegnacco, will be part of this work. This research shall also include the analysis and the edition of ecclesiastical documents issued by Roman catholic prelates (“Apostolic Visitors”) in Istria and Dalmatia, from Agostino Valier, bishop of Verona, at about the end of the 16th century, onwards: these documents contain precious information on both religion and society not to be found elsewhere.