Cornel Zwierlein | Independent Scholar (original) (raw)

Papers by Cornel Zwierlein

Aufklärung, 2023

John G.A. Pocock´s six-volume work Barbarism and Religion is a complex monument of close readings... more John G.A. Pocock´s six-volume work Barbarism and Religion is a complex monument of close readings on European Enlightenment historiography grouped around Edward Gibbon´s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776 –1788), but is by no means absorbed in an analysis of just this work. The article shows that in many respects Pocock´s B&R even moves quite consciously and wilfully away from the Gibbon: as early as 1776, Gibbon probably intended the overall concept of the history of the fall of the We-stern and Eastern Rome (476 to 1453) as an (also consciously chosen and eventually idio-syncratic) unit. Pocock, on the other hand, concentrates decidedly only on the „first fall“ only of the Latin Western Rome and therefore ends essentially with the 38th of 71 chapters of Gibbon´s work. Gibbon´s remaining work also includes the ur-republicanism of the Arabs and the rise of Islam and the Ottoman Empire as anew complex of motifs:This no longer falls into the binomial of the destructive causal engines ,barbarism´ and ,(Christian) religion´. The barbarian attacks, manifest again and again in eastern-western flows (Huns, Tartars, Mongols), are fed in geo-historical rhythms by nomadic warriors who ,push´ down from the global north (ranging from Scandinavia to China). They thus destroy the European empire in this physical domino effect, while christian religion ,destroys it from within´. Pocock analyzes Gibbon´s structural plot very illuminatingly, but the Islam/Ottoman Empire motif is ignored, so that the main protagonists of Pocock´s title, ,Christianity and Barbarians´, only grasp the half of Gibbon. The article attempts to point out the discrepancy in Pocock´s analytical concentration of interest if compared to Gibbon´s own emphasis; it tries to uncover Pocock´s semi-explicit methodological starting points, and tries –in an incomplete manner –to remind the large dimension of Gibbon´s eastern orientation and his sources.Gibbon´s eastern orientations was in itself strongly congruent with the axial shift of the British Empire in 1757/1776, taking into ac-count not only its Atlantic-American, but also the Euro-Asian dimension. Gibbon would perhaps be understood more as the most important early romantic historian than as the last British Enlightenment historian, as Pocock tried to contain or perhaps to domesticate him in this contextualizing manner.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Labelling Times. The ´Early Modern´ - European Past and Global Now, 2023

Using competing European perceptions of China, for example by the Curia, the Parisian République ... more Using competing European perceptions of China, for example by the Curia, the Parisian République des lettres and the Jesuits, the contribution shows how elements of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, the quarrel of rites and the Renaissance and enlightened comparison of peoples (civilization) got merged around 1700. The comparatism between antiquity and ´moderni´ became complexified by the additional comparison with non-European civilizations with their own history, difficult to synchronize. The discussion after Martino Martini about the age, form and production of Chinese 'history' is one issue, the question of the priority of technological inventions in Europe and Asia - such as paper, compass and gunpowder – is another. In the period that we call the 'early modern period', different 'early modern times' emerged, as comparatism always led to statements according to which one people or one's own region was 'earlier', 'later', 'not yet' there or formed in this way or had reached a certain point of civilization - a gesture that is isomorphic with the heuristic substrate of 'early modern' as a new epochal subdiscipline of academic historiography which only emerged during the Cold War after World War II.

campus Verlag, Frankfurt/M, 2023

The paper analyses some French "factums" (advocates´ pleas and memoirs) about corsairing and priz... more The paper analyses some French "factums" (advocates´ pleas and memoirs) about corsairing and prize cases during the War of the Spanish succession around 1700.

Politisches Denken. Jahrbuch, 2023

Bremen claims to be the oldest Republican city state in Europe that has still today the quality o... more Bremen claims to be the oldest Republican city state in Europe that has still today the quality of a (partially) independent state, different from Venice, Genova in Italy or the old Imperial cities in Germany like Cologne and Frankfurt/M. It is one of the 16 regions (Bundesländer) that constitute the Federal Republic of Germany. This article argues that the fundaments of Bremen's concept and self-definition as a state have been laid around 1600 by the Calvinist syndic Heinrich Krefting who used extensively Bodin's Les six livres de la République to proof Bremen's sovereignty. His treatise, the Discursus de Republica Bremensi (1602), remained in manuscript but circulated widely during early modern times in Germany and was a standard item in the libraries of Bremen's civic aristocratic families. Hermann Conring was refuting it extensively in 1652 in a printed treatise and Leibniz made use of it. The contribution analyses the text and its precursor by Johann Esich for the first time and shows how political theory was anticipating willfully and thereby constructing purposefully the reality of the independence and sovereignty of the Calvinist city state.

This is the transcription of an Original French letter by the Jesuit Dentrecolles from Peking to ... more This is the transcription of an Original French letter by the Jesuit Dentrecolles from Peking to his superior in Paris engaging polemically with Eusèbe Renaudot´s vision of China. I share it here in a rough version not thought to be of Theodor Mommsen standard, but readable enough, so that I can refer to it in an article to be published this year in a collective volume (2023); there was no technical possibility to include it in the volume itself.

Select Papers from the 4th International Conference on the Greek World in Travel Accounts and Maps - Textualising the Experience - Digitalising the Text: Cyprus through Travel Literature (15th-18th c.), 6-8 February 2019 University of Cyprus Nicosia, 2023

Reflections on the households, inventories, probate records of the French and British merchants o... more Reflections on the households, inventories, probate records of the French and British merchants on Cyprus, 17th to 18th century; comparison of archival records with the semantic potential of travel accounts

Oliver Cromwell und das Commonwealth. Staatsverständnisse zwischen Revolution und hergebrachter Ordnung, 2022

The Navigation Act was published first as a Law of Cromwell´s Commonwealth. The article does not ... more The Navigation Act was published first as a Law of Cromwell´s Commonwealth. The article does not discuss the old question of the ´authorship´ of the Act but how it can assessed within a context of imperial thought or a thought of growth and expansion of ´Britain´. Here, within a political and mercantilist discussion about British foreign politics ranging from Levellers (William Walwyn), to Thomas Violet, Thomas Worsley to royalist and republican uses of John Selden´s Mare clausum, the Navigation Act stands in a continuity of British empire-building between Republic and Restoration; despite some differences (e.g. Civil Law courts instead of Common Law courts for the jurisdiction concerning the Act after Cromwell) there is not too much rupture in terms of imperial discourse.

Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 2022

Palmyra 1691 – 1754. From the Oriental Interest of the Anglicans via the Temple Fascination of t... more Palmyra 1691 – 1754.

From the Oriental Interest of the Anglicans via the Temple Fascination of the Freemasons to Early Modern Archaeology

In 1691, William Hallifax, Anglican chaplain to the English Levant Company, visited the ruins of Tadmor (Palmyra) with a small group of travelers. His description of his trip and the ruins appeared in the “Philosophical Transactions” of the Royal Society and sparked a discussion about the history of the ruins and their enigmatic inscriptions in the Western Republic of Letters. This article examines three successive interpretations of the ruins. In the conservative wings of the Anglican Church, the city of Palmyra was thought to have been founded by Solomon. In the historical development of the city, parallels were seen with the episcopal sees of the early Christian church, which had supposedly consisted of quasi independent dioceses, governed by bishops of equal rank at the top, downplaying any supremacy of the pope or of a secular ruler. With this emphasis on the decentralized organization of the early Christian church, the so-called “non-juring” bishops and other members of the Anglican Church bolstered their own position in times of crisis. After the Glorious Revolution, Clergymen such as Abednego Seller and Thomas Smith no longer obeyed King William (and Queen Mary) in ecclesiastical matters and therefore needed an episcopal ecclesiology that, if thought through the end, should work without the idea of a supreme head, be it a pope or a Protestant monarch.

A direct line can be drawn from this perception, anchored in Christian Orientalism and older traditions of exegetical speculation and reconstruction of the buildings mentioned in the Bible (Noah’s Ark, the Tabernacle, the Temple of Solomon), to the reception of Palmyra among Newton’s disciples and the early Freemasons. In unison with geognostic research and debate about the shape, age, and structure of the earth, they speculated about the earliest history of architecture by noting correspondences between astronomical constellations and building forms and symbols on earth: Freemasons regarded the Temple of Solomon as the first great work of art of ‘Masonry’. Thus, Palmyra could be integrated into a whole series of ancient buildings and symbols, which referred back to the divine creation of the earth at the very beginning of time.

A third approach to Palmyra emerged with the sober description by the English scholar Robert Wood, who dropped all links to mythical prehistoric times and analysed the ruins of Palmyra primarily as a document of the period around 250 AD. An example of the early forms of modern archaeological historicism, Wood’s way of thinking was close to that of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. All three forms of reception of Palmyra in the Western Republic of Letters became an integral part of European cultural memory that survives the physical destruction of the ruins in 2015.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The Power of the Dispersed https://brill.com/view/title/55993, 2022

Can dispersed things have power?-Certainly not in a direct way. A chair on its own cannot perform... more Can dispersed things have power?-Certainly not in a direct way. A chair on its own cannot perform an action, though we can speak as if it does or imagine a world where this is the case in which it might. But since Actor-Network Theory has long taught us not only to think of human beings and animals as actors in history, but also about the malleable relationships between things and humans that allow objects to have a form of agency of their own. The question remains an open and valid one. Actor-network theory first concentrated on the artificial environment of the laboratory: Latour and his followers tried to demonstrate that historians need not make their protagonist the human researcher and genius who initiated and carried out a process of scientific research, but that alternative points of view are possible. For example, one can take the perspective of cholera virus cultures, which had been separated from their natural habitat between four walls and can concentrate on their relationship with a team of researchers in the laboratory. Latour's approach acknowledges that biologists also exist outside of the laboratory-telling stories about the experiments, being influenced by social networks, guided by non-scientic preferences-and because and despite of all that they and their microbial subjects form a unique unit with characteristic rules, timescapes and patterns of socio-material behavior.1

https://brill.com/view/title/55993, 2022

Early Modern travelers often did not form part of classic ‘diaspora’ communities: they frequently... more Early Modern travelers often did not form part of classic ‘diaspora’ communities: they frequently never really settled, perhaps remaining abroad for some time in one place, then traveling further: not ‘blown by the wind’, but by changing and complex conditions that often turned out to make them unwelcome anywhere. The dispersed developed strategies of survival by keeping their distance from old and new temporary ‘homes’, and by manipulating, shaping, using information and foreign representations of their former country and situation.

The volume assembles case studies from the Mediterranean context, the Americas and Japan. They ask for what kind of ‘power(s)’ and agency dispersed people had, counterintuitively, through the connections they maintained with their former homes, and through those they established abroad.

Contributors include: Eduardo Angione, Iordan Avramov, Marloes Cornelissen, David Do Paço, José Luis Egío, Maria-Tsampika Lampitsi, Paula Manstetten, Simon Mills, David Nelson, Adolfo Polo y La Borda, Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Cesare Santus, Stefano Saracino, and Cornel Zwierlein.

Pedralbes, 2020

In early modern times, European international relationships with the Ottoman Empire and in the Me... more In early modern times, European international relationships with the Ottoman Empire and in the Mediterranean were characterized by a complex system of consular networks privileged by the sultan or the North-African deys and beys by way of capitulations. Security was mostly addressed in terms of safety for the free practice of trade and commerce. The transformation of this situation between the late eighteenth century until around 1840 is characterized by complex entanglements of continuity and rupture between early modern and modern realities: the infrastructure of the consular system persisted for a long time, while the invasion of Egypt (1797), the continental Napoleonic Wars, the Greek War of Independence (starting 1822) and the invasion of Algeria (1830) were profoundly changing the region. «Security», as conceived by liberal men of politics like Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant and Jeremy Bentham, became a central term to order the emerging new realities in terms of state and international politics. At the same time, while one conceives of the European allies' invasion of Greece as perhaps the first modern humanitarian

De Europa, 2019

An overview concerning the new trend of History/ies of Security

Early Modern Mediterranean History has produced far less studies in the larger field of History o... more Early Modern Mediterranean History has produced far less studies in the larger field of History of Knowledge and Science than one would expect. The Braudelian legacy implied, for a long time, a priority of marco-scale economic history; the microhistorical turn has challenged the Braudelian view, but it remained still very much concentrated on socio-economic subjects. A panel organized on the 2017 meeting of the German Association of Early Modern History (featuring also Guillaume Calafat, Fernando Clara and Erik de Lange) was addressing that gap with several contributions. Here the one on Geography and Geology

Nach der ersten „ptolemäischen“ Kartographierevolution ab 1450 setzte um 1700 eine zweite Wandlung auch der Wahrnehmung des Mittelmeers in der Folge der Kontroverse zwischen Newtonianern und französischen Akademiegeographen ein. Die Debatte, wie die Längengradwerte „endgültig“ genau bestimmt werden könnten, die bis in die 1760er-Jahre noch nicht präzise instrumentell messbar waren, führte im Mittelmeerraum auch zur Rezeption der mittelalterlichen arabischen Geographen. In Paris ergaben sich hieraus erstaunliche Resultate („Schrumpfung“ der Meeresbreite um 1 000 Kilometer). In der Geologie griffen etwa Kaplane der Levant Company wie Thomas Shaw und der Konsul, dann Levante-Inspektor, Benoît de Maillet, auf bis dahin nicht erschlossene arabische Handschriften zurück; etwa, um die Nilometer-Messungen in Kairo seit dem Frühmittelalter zu ermitteln: Es deutet sich hier um 1730 die frühe Idee an, solche Messungen als „Proxy-Daten“ für Thesenbildungen zur geologischen Formationsbildung durch Langzeit-Berechnung von Sedimentablagerungen zu verwenden.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

BRILL, 2021

Over 8,200 large city fires broke out between 1000 and 1939 CE in Central Europe. Prometheus Tame... more Over 8,200 large city fires broke out between 1000 and 1939 CE in Central Europe. Prometheus Tamed inquires into the long-term history of that fire ecology, its local and regional frequencies, its relationship to climate history. It asks for the visual and narrative representation of that threat in every-day life. Institutional forms of fire insurance emerged in the form of private joint stock companies (the British model, starting in 1681) or in the form of cameralist fire insurances (the German model, starting in 1676). They contributed to shape and change society, transforming old communities of charitable solidarity into risk communities, finally supplemented by networks of cosmopolite aid. After 1830, insurance agencies expanded tremendously quickly all over the globe: Cultural clashes of Western and native perceptions of fire risk and of what is insurance can be studied as part of a critical archaeology of world risk society and the plurality of modernities.

UTB, 2020

A student book for introducing into the History of Early Modern Political Thought and Rule

Il pensiero politico, 2019

In general overviews of the development of the early modern History of International Law, neither... more In general overviews of the development of the early modern History of International Law, neither the Rota Romana nor the Congregazione di Propaganda fide play a role. This article shows that they may claim to have a place in it at least for the period of c. 1650 and c. 1750 and with regard to maritime law: treating cases of Maltese corsairing and privateering of ships and goods against orthodox Greeks, the papal jurists protected the Greeks although they were recognized to be schismatic against the catholic order. The arguments were based not only on canon law, but on the early modern Grotian theory of international law, receiving in the core of the Roman institutions ´Protestant´ theory against a different vision developed by the Maltesians, foremost by the jurist and later cardinal Gaimbattista de Luca. The latter combined concepts of just war from the crusader period with a quasi ´Erastian´ concept of state and of an International system composed of such states where the border of the political power would be coextensive with that of each church. According to da Luca and the Maltesians, Greeks who remained under Ottoman rule for centuries were to be treated just as part of that state and could be object of a ´just war´. In contrast, the Roman curia supported a neo-Thomist vision of the International system consisting of two separate spheres of the political and the ecclesiastical power where the borders of influence, rights and legal claims of Christians were not coextensive with the borders of the states. In the end, the Roman courts were effective in enforcing their point of view and in establishing a formal hierarchy of instances of appeal. By that, this development reveals to be a process of juridification and securitization of a maritime zone by way of international law. The Roman point of view can even be understood to anticipate, in a reversed form, elements of the later nineteenth century concepts of ´humanitarian intervention´ which were first established and tried with regard to the oppression of the Greeks by the Ottomans after 1822/7.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2020

One of the most important Orientalists, EusèbeRenaudot (1648-1720), was central in at least three... more One of the most important Orientalists, EusèbeRenaudot (1648-1720), was central in at least three major debates of his time: the late confessionalist anti-Protestant debate about the conceptions of the Eucharist; the hundred-year-long clash between the Jesuits and their enemies during the controversy of rites; and the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Analyzing Renaudotʼs large collection of unpublished manuscript treatises, it is argued that the early modern concept of ‟world history," with its actors, civilizations, and even historical or cultural regions like the "Middle East," emerged as something of a by-product of competing visions within those debates.

Journal of Modern European History, 2020

European merchants in their factories ('nations') in the Eastern Mediterranean under Ottoman rule... more European merchants in their factories ('nations') in the Eastern Mediterranean under Ottoman rule were not really colonizers; in early modern times, they were somehow privileged guests. However, they deserve an important part in a long-term history of types of 'close distance' and forms of segregational coexistence. Different from recent studies that stress a strong overall interaction, understanding, sharing, and exchange between Europeans and Ottoman subjects, it is proposed to distinguish three levels: (1) The daily commercial interaction of Western Europeans with their Ottoman counterparts; (2) the stronger involvement in some politico-religious struggles (the 1724 schism in the patriarchate of Antioch serves as example): also here, one has still to distinguish between real interest in the religious cause and other activities as credit lending; (3) the care for and maintenance by the Europeans of their own Western national culture abroad: these cultural activities served more to (eventually unconsciously) perform 'boundary work' and to close up the 'nation'. These early modern forms of close distance and segregation were only isomorphic but not homologous with later highly conscious colonial and modern imperial forms of contact between 'West' and 'East' as in the nineteenth-century European settlements in Istanbul. Keywords Aleppo, Boddington family, book history, boundary work, Greek orthodox schism of 1724, khans, Levant Company, levels of knowledge, Mediterranean, merchant culture, Ottoman Empire, patriarchate of Antioch, segregation Before 1830, Western merchant 'colonies' in the Mediterranean were never really colonial settlements, as they remained at all times under Ottoman overlordship. However, taking into account their embeddedness in the local foreign environment of the Mediterranean cities, and the antiquity and quantity of their roots, the Western merchant settlements in the Mediterranean were one of the most important fields, if not the pioneering one, for which the Europeans acquired institutional and administrative know-how for the establishment of a proto-imperial network of representatives and formally regulated living conditions abroad. From the entry of Northern

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Journal of Modern European History, 2020

The history of segregation is usually concentrating on modern racial forms of it, in colonial set... more The history of segregation is usually concentrating on modern racial forms of it, in colonial settings or in large urban conglomerates. Mathematical definitions of segregation refer to the ratio between the type of segregated element (e.g. Blacks) in a given larger area and its sub-area. We are suggesting that pre-modern as well as postcolonial forms of segregation are far less determined by this space/race-alignment. For a long-term history of segregation concerned with many other dominating themes and objects of segregation (such as religion, non-racist ethnicity), we propose to concentrate on the fluid cognitive dimension of what segregation is, close distance: 'distance' can refer to physical space, but it is also far more open to cognitive forms of distance. 'Closeness' aims to draw attention to the fact that both the processing and enacting of separation and difference, from the early to the late period of colonialization, may have nothing to do with how far away or how close together people actually live. Ignorance and ignoring are one of the most important elements of this epistemic core of segregational behaviour and of what creates close distance in societies.

Simpliciana, 2019

Grimmelshausen is known as the most important German author of the seventeenth century, witness o... more Grimmelshausen is known as the most important German author of the seventeenth century, witness of the Thirty Years War with his ´Simplicissimus´ and the cycle of novels that followed that first important one. This article shows how his work after the Simplicissimus can be conceived of as a search for understanding the post-war world: Aggressive mercantilism of the trading empires was replacing the war with the sword, a form of sublimation of violence. His Continuatio, the the perception of the Mediterranean and of world-wide travel in it right toward India and Australia reveals to be something like "Writing after the catastrophe" (not really ´Poetry after Auschwitz´, but 300 years earlier, a similar attempt to find words for a changing reality).

Aufklärung, 2023

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Labelling Times. The ´Early Modern´ - European Past and Global Now, 2023

campus Verlag, Frankfurt/M, 2023

Politisches Denken. Jahrbuch, 2023

Oliver Cromwell und das Commonwealth. Staatsverständnisse zwischen Revolution und hergebrachter Ordnung, 2022

Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 2022

Palmyra 1691 – 1754. From the Oriental Interest of the Anglicans via the Temple Fascination of t... more Palmyra 1691 – 1754.

From the Oriental Interest of the Anglicans via the Temple Fascination of the Freemasons to Early Modern Archaeology

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The Power of the Dispersed https://brill.com/view/title/55993, 2022

https://brill.com/view/title/55993, 2022

Pedralbes, 2020

De Europa, 2019

An overview concerning the new trend of History/ies of Security

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

BRILL, 2021

UTB, 2020

A student book for introducing into the History of Early Modern Political Thought and Rule

Il pensiero politico, 2019

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2020

Journal of Modern European History, 2020

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Journal of Modern European History, 2020

Simpliciana, 2019

This contribution will analyse the presence of Western travel literature - which forms also the c... more This contribution will analyse the presence of Western travel literature - which forms also the corpus
of the Zephyros project - in the libraries of Western merchants in the Levant. The study is based on
archival material from London/Kew, Paris, Nantes, mostly the chancery records of the Levantine consulates
where library catalogues of deceased or bankrupt merchants were noted. An astonishing high number of
those same travel accounts that are used for content analysis in the Zephyros project were in possession
by the British and French merchants in the Levant: Surprisingly, they read in the Levant itself about the Levant
by help of those publications in Western languages. The contribution will ask for how to understand this, and how
the Western perception of the Levant was travelling with Westerners themselves into the Levant.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Second part of a two-place Conference sponsored by the Harvard History and German Department, Hen... more Second part of a two-place Conference sponsored by the Harvard History and German Department, Henkel foundation, the German Science Foundation and the German Historical Institute Paris

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

First part of a two-place Conference sponsored by the Harvard History and German Department, Henk... more First part of a two-place Conference sponsored by the Harvard History and German Department, Henkel foundation, the German Science Foundation and the German Historical Institute Paris

Science Center 469, 6pm

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The main purpose and object of the British and French Mediterranean Empires was trade in its prot... more The main purpose and object of the British and French Mediterranean Empires was trade in its proto-national mercantilist competition. But they needed, searched for and produced also a certain general historical knowledge. There has been done several research on individual actors or on the printed works (Barbary and Enlightenment and beyond). Here more attention will be paid to the steady administrative production of general historical (non)knowledge about the Levant in mémoires historiques, descriptions of ‘the present state and the history of…’ given regions within the French and British imperial communication. The administrators and decision-makers in London and Paris/Versailles, from the kings down to the simple clerk, constantly tried to be oriented in the best possible way about the specifities and particularities of the Mediterranean realities (as of the other outposts and markets of the world). But the ‘best possible’ information of the French and British was full of lacunae from our ex-post point of view. A look on the contents of the libraries owned by Europeans in the Levant suggests likewise that they cultivated very much their own home culture in the échelles. The microhistory on the everyday work of cultural brokers, drogmen, enfants de langues, on the know-how of economic exchange between ‘Europeans’ and ‘Levantines’ (Ottomans, Armenians, Greeks, Jews…) up to a degree that the old dichotomy of European/non-European has vanished with good reasons. This contribution tries nevertheless to show that a distinction of levels of interaction and epistemic exchange might be useful, and that on that level of general knowledge about the historia (in the early modern wider sense), we might call that what is visible parallel societies, despite their highly effective exchange and coexistence.

Sources come from the usual archives (PRO, BL, AN, AE, Bodleian, CUL). The contribution draws on the third of four chapters of book manuscript which will be circulated.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

BRILL, 2021

Politische Theorie und Herrschaft der Frühen Neuzeit, 2020

Migration is a problem of highest importance today, and likewise is its history. Italian migrants... more Migration is a problem of highest importance today, and likewise is its history. Italian migrants that had to leave the peninsula in the long sixteenth century because of their heterodox Protestant faith is a topic that has its deep roots in Italian Renaissance scholarship since Delio Cantimori: It became a part of a twentieth century form of Italian leyenda negra in liberal historiography. But its international dimension and Central Europe (not only Germany) as destination of that movement has often been neglected. Three different levels of connectivity are addressed: the materiality of communication (travel, printing, the diffusion of books and manuscripts); individual migrants and their biographies and networks; the cultural transfers, discourses, ideas migrating in one or in both directions.

Dans cet ouvrage, Cornel Zwierlein montre comment la maîtrise à la fois des causes et des con... more Dans cet ouvrage, Cornel Zwierlein montre comment la maîtrise à la fois des causes et des conséquences des risques d’incendie urbain a joué un rôle important dans l’émergence des sociétés de prévention modernes.
Cet ouvrage est divisé en sept parties. Après une introduction qui s’appesantit sur les sources et l’état actuel de la recherche, la deuxième partie du livre est consacrée aux risques dans le monde pré-moderne. À propos de l’essor des assurances maritimes et de leur légitimation au travers de la théologie chrétienne et de la loi romaine, Cornel Zwierlein décrit ces premières assurances comme des « artifices comptables » mercantiles conçus pour rapprocher des distances spatiales et non temporelles. Malgré la nouvelle terminologie applicable au risque et aux nouveaux instruments tels que les polices et primes d’assurance, les assurances de l’époque pré-moderne manquaient de perspectives d’avenir (Zukunftsausrichtung). A contrario, la croissance rapide des assurances incendie vers 1700 a été un élément déterminant pour le développement d’un mode de pensée prospective dans les sociétés du début de l’ère moderne.
Dans la troisième partie de son ouvrage, Cornel Zwierlein décrit la réalité des incendies ainsi que leur perception. Il compare les embrasements des villes d’Europe au début de l’ère moderne aux catastrophes nucléaires impossibles à assurer. Après avoir analysé 8 200 incendies urbains en Allemagne et en Autriche, l’auteur traite du fossé (le fire gap) qui sépare les villes pré-modernes facilement inflammables des villes modernes. Selon lui, le nombre d’incendies dans les villes allemandes a commencé à baisser avec l’apparition des premières assurances incendie au cours du XVIIIe siècle. Le déclin des risques d’incendie était le reflet de nouvelles stratégies militaires ainsi que de l’évolution des infrastructures urbaines et de la police des incendies. En ce qui concerne ce dernier point, les jeunes États territoriaux comme la Prusse ont progressivement pris le pas sur les anciennes villes libres comme Cologne. Vers le milieu du XVIIIe siècle, les penseurs du Siècle des Lumières ont commencé à appliquer des « méthodes scientifiques » pour combattre les risques d’incendie. Cependant, il était relativement fréquent que ces penseurs se contentent de recycler des pratiques vernaculaires bien établies.

Dans la partie suivante, l’auteur analyse Londres et Hambourg en tant que laboratoires de nouveaux systèmes de sécurité. Vers la fin du XVIIe siècle, les deux villes ont mis au point deux formes très différentes d’assurance incendie. À Londres, le grand incendie de 1666 et la révolution financière qui a suivi ont vu éclore dans le pays des compagnies d’assurance incendie fondées sur le profit comme la Sun Insurance. À l’opposé, la General-Feuer-Cassa de Hambourg (créée en 1676) était une instance municipale centralisée (obrigkeitliche) qui versait des dommages incendie aux membres cotisants tout en évaluant régulièrement la valeur des maisons de ces derniers. Le modèle de cette caisse publique, ultérieurement repris par Leibniz, fut intégré dans les théories du caméralisme d’État en tant que moyen pour préserver, voire augmenter, la richesse globale d’un État via des investissements tournés vers l’avenir. Désormais, le risque d’incendie n’allait plus être supporté par des individus. En interprétant l’incendie comme un risque naturel exceptionnel – un casus fortuitus –, les caméralistes ont affecté le rôle d’assureur général à l’État, qui avait la responsabilité de protéger ses sujets générateurs de valeur. C’est ainsi que les modèles inspirés de Hambourg ont été adoptés par les États territoriaux comme la Prusse au XVIIIe siècle.

Après une micro-analyse de Hambourg et de Londres, la cinquième partie du livre de Cornel Zwierlein propose une macro-analyse de la « société de sécurité normale » (Sichere Normalgesellschaft) qui a vu le jour aux alentours de 1700.
Ayant fixé les origines des « sociétés normales » modernes aux environs de 1700, Cornel Zwierlein continue à analyser le devenir des assurances incendie au XIXe siècle dans la dernière partie de l’ouvrage. Face au constat de déclin des assurances incendie publiques en Allemagne au début du XIXe siècle, il étudie l’expansion générale des assurances incendie de type britannique à Hambourg, Bombay, New-York et Istanbul, et arrive ainsi à la conclusion qu’une certaine dimension spatiale a réintégré la pensée assurantielle : alors que la titrisation des assurances contre les risques futurs allait devenir la marque des société européennes modernes, leur diffusion dans le monde ne s’est pas effectuée de manière uniforme. Au lieu de cela, les assureurs européens ont défini les villes extérieures en zones modernes assurables et zones non modernes non assurables. Les notions européennes de sécurité normale se sont de plus en plus définies par opposition aux espaces et structures extra-européens ou autochtones. Réparties en zones européennes « modernes » et extra-européennes non modernes, des villes comme Bombay intégraient plusieurs éléments de modernité en termes de production de sécurité, même si ce zonage n’avait pas grand-chose à voir avec la réalité de l’éclatement d’incendies. Selon Cornel Zwierlein, la propagation des régimes européens d’assurance dans le monde a transformé la dichotomie moderne / non moderne du Siècle des lumières en dichotomie européen / extra-européen. Conçus en tant que méthodes universelle de colonisation du futur, les facteurs spatiaux ont de ce fait réintégré l’histoire des assurances.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

L’›arrangement expérimental‹ de ce travail est un triangle européen formé par la France, Savoie-P... more L’›arrangement expérimental‹ de ce travail est un triangle européen formé par la France, Savoie-Piémont et le sud-ouest de l'Allemagne. Il entreprend d’étudier, dans une perspective qui les compare d’une part et tient compte de l’histoire de leurs relations d’autre part, Savoie-Piémont et le sud-ouest allemand en vue des théories de la délibération. L’objet commun auquel se réfèrent les délibérations étudiées dans chacun des cas est donné par la France, c’est-à-dire par les guerres de religion françaises. Comme cela, le ›triangle‹ est complet. Les ›théories‹ de délibération deviennent ce que nous appelons des ›cadres de pensée‹ , quand elles sont mises en pratique. Ces cadres de pensée émergent, se transmettent, et éventuellement, entrent en conflit les uns avec les autres, dans ces deux régions.
En ce qui concerne Savoie-Piémont, nous partons de l’hypothèse que ce territoire est une sorte de ›nuovo stato‹ dans le sens de Machiavel : quand le territoire était restitué à Emanuele Filiberto après 23 ans d’occupation française, l’état devait au fond être constitué de nouveau. Nous interprétons cette ›reconstitution de l’état‹ spécialement comme implémentation et mise en vigueur d'une cadre de pensée, c'est-à-dire de la méthode du ›discorso‹ pour la délibération politique, une méthode qui s’était développée depuis Machiavel (nous allons revenir de suite à ce terme de ›discorso‹). Car, quand la forme de la délibération étatique change, ›l’état‹ change finalement lui-même. Pour ce qui est du sud-ouest allemand, nous supposons que dans la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle, trois ›cadres de pensée‹ y concouraient : deux nouveaux, celui du ›discorso‹, et celui de la ›lex Dei‹ (surtout celle réformée et calviniste), ainsi que l’ancien de la normativité de l’Empire (pour les définitions, cf. infra). La perception étatique est ainsi analysée, dans une comparaison germano-italienne, à partir des ›cadres de pensée‹ (ou des herméneutiques) respectifs concernant la délibération. La première raison pourquoi nous prenons les guerres de religion françaises comme l'objet principale de l'observation est que ce phénomène concernait simplement de la façon la plus directe les affaires étrangères des deux régions frontalières. La deuxième raison consiste en une hypothèse de départ, selon laquelle la perception continue de ces guerres, leur assimilation et la réaction à elles peuvent à leur tour expliquer, à l’aide des ›cadres de pensée‹ précisés préalablement et expliqués dans leur historicité, des évolutions historiques en Italie et en Allemagne, comme ›effet‹ des guerres de religion françaises.

Après cette introduction brève dans notre interrogation, nous résumerons le cours de la présentation et les résultats, d’abord en gros :
Le travail se divise en quatre étapes. Dans le premier chapitre (B), il s’agit d’expliciter ce que veut dire le terme machiavélien de ›discorso‹, et comment ce concept devient, à partir de 1500 environ, le nom d’une méthode empirique, en particulier une méthode de délibération politique. L’évolution ultérieure de ce ›cadre de pensée‹ lié au ›discorso‹ est tracée à partir de 1500 jusqu’environ 1560, c’est-à-dire jusqu’au moment où Savoie-Piémont était refondé et, d’après notre hypothèse, caractérisé désormais par la mise en vigueur de ce cadre.
Dans le deuxième chapitre (C) nous nous plaçons sur un niveau tout à fait différent : nous adoptons une perspective extérieure, en expliquant l’émergence et l’évidence du ›cadre de pensée‹ du ›discorso‹ après 1500 dans une perspective d’histoire de la communication, c’est-à-dire à partir des conditions médiatiques dans l’Italie de cette époque, et de leur effet sur la perception de la politique actuelle.
Dans le troisième chapitre (D), nous poursuivons le nouveau ›cadre de pensée‹ du ›discorso‹ dans la pratique, c’est-à-dire à propos des processus de délibération en Savoie-Piémont de la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle. L’accent est mis ici sur la perception des guerres de religion françaises et sur les décisions qui s’y réfèrent ; néanmoins, ›l’intérieur‹ de l’auto-construction étatique, étant en interdépendance permanente avec ›l’extérieur‹, est traité dans des paragraphes intercalés systématiquement.
Le quatrième chapitre (E) est divisé en deux : premièrement, nous renouons avec le chapitre C, en analysant la situation dans l’Empire autour de 1550 / 1560 dans une perspective d’histoire de la communication et de la perception. Ceci sert encore une fois le but d’expliquer pourquoi et en quelle configuration les ›cadres de pensée‹ ont une évidence pour les délibérations dans l’Empire. Dans la deuxième partie, nous retraçons trois ›cadres de pensée‹ concurrents dans l’Empire de la deuxième moitié du siècle. Premièrement, celui du ›discorso‹, qui, en tant qu’objet d’un transfert culturel, fait son entrée venant de l’ouest. Deuxièmement, celui de la ›lex Dei‹, qui désigne l’herméneutique calviniste réformée, laquelle représente une herméneutique normative, quoique très flexible et large, même pour les actions de ce monde-ci. Et troisièmement, celui de la normativité de l’Empire, qui représente le cadre traditionnel de délibération dans les institutions, et conforme aux normes de l’Ancien empire.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Selected contributions from the Harvard - Paris conference 2015

http://www.droz.org/eur/fr/6371-9782600019279.html

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact