Alex R Tipei | Université de Montréal (original) (raw)
Articles by Alex R Tipei
How to Make Friends and Influence People: Elementary Education, French "Influence," and the Balkans, 1815-1830s
Modern Intellectual History, 2017
This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded refo... more This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded reformers in France and the Balkans that came together in the early nineteenth century to further popular education. Examining interactions between actors in a cultural, scientific, and political center (France) and their allies on the periphery (in present-day Greece and Romania), the article reassesses these relationships, revealing the extent to which French individuals and organizations depended on such partnerships. Conceiving of joint Franco-Balkan reform agendas as programs of development, it offers a model and a vocabulary for the study of French soft power in post-Napoleonic Europe.
Papers and Talks by Alex R Tipei
A Different Kind of Debt: France, Greece, and Civilization
This paper explores how Adamantios Korais used the concept of civilization to encourage French ph... more This paper explores how Adamantios Korais used the concept of civilization to encourage French philanthropy in Southeastern Europe during the early nineteenth century. Focusing on Korais's speech "The Present State of Greek Civilization" (1803), the paper discusses how Korais shaped French notions of civilization and capitalized on scientific, cultural, and political trends in France to curry support for projects in the Hellenophone world.
This paper discussed what scholars in the humanities and liberal arts can learn from teaching in ... more This paper discussed what scholars in the humanities and liberal arts can learn from teaching in prison education programs, explored what prisoners have to gain from such endeavors, and addressed practical concerns potential prison educators might have. It was presented as part of a panel that included two students in the Indiana Women's Prison Post-College (graduate) Program and two instructors working in the same program.
Romanian Unification and European Civilization: Simeon Marcovici's National and International Aims
In 1837, Simeon Marcovici, the director of Sf. Sava who later held a number of significant positi... more In 1837, Simeon Marcovici, the director of Sf. Sava who later held a number of significant positions in the Wallachian administration, gave a speech to commemorate the end of the school year in Bucharest. The talk, Civilizatia (Civilization), later appeared in the Romanian-language press and marked the first printed appearance of the word civilization in Romanian. Marcovici used this lecture to both implicitly call for the union of the Danubian Principalities and to situate them in the cultural geography of Europe. To accomplish this, he deployed a pan-European discourse on civilization that had developed during the previous decades and drew on not only the writings of Enlightenment-era philosophers like Condorcet and French liberals like Guizot, but also on those of Balkan philanthropists and thinkers like Korais.
This paper explores how Marcovici used rhetorical strategies already in place to eek out a place for the Principalities in European politics, while simultaneously outlining an implicit, proto-nationalist political agenda. Marcovici was part of the last cohort educated in the Hellenophone Princely Academy of Bucharest and sent to Italy and France to study by the Eforia Scoala in 1820. Consequently, he was particularly well placed to bring ideas generated across Europe together in an intellectual effort to bolster his own agenda. As an educator whose pupils included a number of the central figures in the 1848 movement, moreover, the audience he commanded likewise renders an examination of his rhetoric and its place in a European context important for students of nineteenth-century Romanian, Balkan, and European history.
This paper examines French liberals’ attempts to develop a “soft” or cultural form of colonialism... more This paper examines French liberals’ attempts to develop a “soft” or cultural form of colonialism in the 1820s. Following Napoleon’s defeat, liberals set out to reinforce France’s image as a civilizational center. If France could not be a military or diplomatic “super-power,” it could at least be a cultural one. To be a center, however, French liberals needed to find a periphery. Greek- and Romanian-speakers represented a specific kind of prize—a periphery that allowed liberals to argue they were returning civilization to the heirs of antiquity. French liberals consequently forged alliances with Southeast European leaders who imported their models for social reform and cultural and economic practices in the Balkans. They drew on ideas put forward earlier by Joseph-Marie Degérando and Benjamin Constant about the role of culture and commerce in the modern world.
The paper explores the philanthropic organizations Constant, Degérando, and other notable liberals, including François Guizot, and Edme-François Jomard, formed to further specific social reform programs—organizations that became particularly important following the liberals’ 1821 electoral loss. Focusing on one such association, the Société pour l’instruction élémentaire (SIE), the paper traces liberals’ attempts to promote their version of the monitorial system for elementary education abroad. Liberals referred to their efforts, which were commensurate with both their political designs and academic projects, as “a peaceful form of conquest” that they undertook not as politicians per se, but as private individuals and public intellectuals. The SIE’s work in this capacity bore striking similarities to twentieth-century NGOs and can be understood as part of a developmental program, meant to “win the hearts and minds” of potential diplomatic and trade partners across the continent and create a Franco-centric, pan-European civilization.
Europe's Borderlands: The Balkans, the Nineteenth Century, and "French Influence"
This paper addresses the methodological problems associated with the study of “French influence” ... more This paper addresses the methodological problems associated with the study of “French influence” in the early nineteenth-century Hellenophone world. An amorphous term, “French influence” has been a perennial theme in the historiography of France and more acutely in that of the Balkans. As Paula Young Lee points out, the concept influence has given the writing of history an “internal coherence.” Yet historians have rarely considered term itself. To demonstrate the nebulous nature of the word, Young traces its history from the influence of the stars on human fortunes to the notion of influenza, or an infection characterized by a vague set of symptoms. “French influence” in the current historiography can be likened to a catalogue of a vague set of effects or symptoms– the appearance of French Enlightenment thought in the libraries of upper-class Orthodox Christians in Moldova, the use of French neologisms in Modern Greek, the adoption of didactic methods. The causes of these effects, however, are rarely analyzed, accentuating the sense of a one-side narrative where “French influence” did its work on weak Southeast Europeans, while West Europeans remained immune to Balkan discourses, politics, and culture. This paper considers how historians can study not just at the effects of “French influence,” but also its causes. By looking at a few a key examples, it describes how French and Balkan elites worked together to bring institutions like schools to the region. It suggests that by using methods associated with actor-network theory or transculturation, sources reveal a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship between French and Hellenophone leaders.
On the Edge of Civilization: French Monitorial Schools in the Balkans before and after the Greek State
Founded in 1815, the Paris-based Société pour l’instruction public promoted the spread of Lancast... more Founded in 1815, the Paris-based Société pour l’instruction public promoted the spread of Lancastrian schools in France, on the continent, and around the world. Hellenophone leaders and notables numbered among its foreign members and correspondents, some of whom went about setting up schools in the Balkans. Joined in the goal of bring civilization to those on its periphery, the French association often offered its Southeast European members material and moral support. Following the Greek War of Independence, these institutions served as the basis of a national educational system in Greece, while in the Danubian Principalities, the war closed many Lancastrian schools. This paper examines the networks of individuals that crisscrossed the region and the continent, permitting the organization of these establishments in the first place and traces how a project initially intended to serve a universalizing purpose was transformed into a tool of nationalism.
Invited Comments by Alex R Tipei
Reviews by Alex R Tipei
Balkan Transitions to Modernity and Nation-States: Through the Eyes of Three Generations of Merchants (1780s–1890s) by Evguenia Davidova
Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2016
Editorial Pieces by Alex R Tipei
Why All Humanists Should Go to Prison
Academics could learn a lot by volunteering in prison education programs.
Dissertation by Alex R Tipei
Papers by Alex R Tipei
Korais’s Greece and Napoleon’s Empire: The Egyptian Campaign, Race Science, and the Europeanization an Idea
War, culture and society, 1750-1850, 2023
Care and the Politics of Sentiment (comment)
Civilization and the xenoi (comment)
And Mama Studied with Me: Elementary Education, Modernization, Gendered Curricula, and the Reconfiguration of the Public and Private in the Danubian Principalities and Greek Lands, 1810s-1840s
East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures
This article argues that discussions about and plans for female education emerged in early ninete... more This article argues that discussions about and plans for female education emerged in early nineteenth-century Southeast Europe in connection with broader programs of modernization. It suggests that when officials and educators in the early Greek state and Danubian Principalities created curricula for women, they seldom took regional realities or the needs of potential pupils into account. Rather, the courses of study they proposed more closely reflected the aspirations these regional elites had for their communities. The article explores how education helped (re)inscribe gender roles within modern institutions and allowed state officials and educators to formalize boundaries between the public and private spheres. Modernization, primary instruction, and gendered hierarchies were intimately related.
How to Make Friends and Influence People: Elementary Education, French “Influence,” and the Balkans, 1815–1830S
Modern Intellectual History, 2017
This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded refo... more This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded reformers in France and the Balkans that came together in the early nineteenth century to further popular education. Examining interactions between actors in a cultural, scientific, and political center (France) and their allies on the periphery (in present-day Greece and Romania), the article reassesses these relationships, revealing the extent to which French individuals and organizations depended on such partnerships. Conceiving of joint Franco-Balkan reform agendas as programs of development, it offers a model and a vocabulary for the study of French soft power in post-Napoleonic Europe.
The previous chapter discussed how informal learning occurred in both private and public life. It... more The previous chapter discussed how informal learning occurred in both private and public life. It also discussed that what was learned in informal learning settings was often shared with others in an environment that was convivial, and that what children learned often supported the Greek state's interests and agendas. This chapter delves into the Greek family, the community, and the role(s) they played in the lives of children in informal learning settings. It concludes with informal learning within Greek minority communities such as the Arvanites, Vlachs, and Slavic-speaking groups. The family was important throughout Greece and considered a fundamental unit where values and customs were transmitted to children. In rural communities, the family and other members of the community directed much of the learning for children. In cities like Athens, this varied depending on social class and economic status. Were social groups mostly endogamous or could one move up the social strata through marriage or by any other means? What was the division of educational labor in the family in rural and urban areas of Greece? What was the importance of literacy and leisure among members of the family? Some of these questions are addressed in this chapter. FAMILY AND MARRIAGE After the Greek Revolution (1827), Greece was predominantly a ruralbased society. 1 Life continued to look much like it did during Ottoman times (1453-1821), and in some parts of Greece, life had not changed
Formal and Informal Education during the Rise of Greek Nationalism: Learning To Be Greek by Theodore G. Zervas
Journal of Modern Greek Studies
Audience Matters: ‘Civilization-Speak’, Educational Discourses, and Balkan Nationalism, 1800–1840
European History Quarterly
This article tracks how political and intellectual leaders from south-eastern Europe used the con... more This article tracks how political and intellectual leaders from south-eastern Europe used the concept of civilization, or a particular type of ‘civilization-speak’, from the end of the eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. It compares and contrasts how they employed civilization-speak in different linguistic milieus – French, Modern Greek, and Romanian – and how they deployed it to further changing political aims during a period of political upheaval in the Balkans. It traces how civilization-speak served initially as a tool for extracting support from west European, especially French, patrons, and was later refashioned into a rhetorical instrument of nationalism. This study places the intellectual and political history of south-eastern Europe during the era in a pan-European context and adds nuance to discussions about the development of nationalism in the region.
How to Make Friends and Influence People: Elementary Education, French "Influence," and the Balkans, 1815-1830s
Modern Intellectual History, 2017
This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded refo... more This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded reformers in France and the Balkans that came together in the early nineteenth century to further popular education. Examining interactions between actors in a cultural, scientific, and political center (France) and their allies on the periphery (in present-day Greece and Romania), the article reassesses these relationships, revealing the extent to which French individuals and organizations depended on such partnerships. Conceiving of joint Franco-Balkan reform agendas as programs of development, it offers a model and a vocabulary for the study of French soft power in post-Napoleonic Europe.
A Different Kind of Debt: France, Greece, and Civilization
This paper explores how Adamantios Korais used the concept of civilization to encourage French ph... more This paper explores how Adamantios Korais used the concept of civilization to encourage French philanthropy in Southeastern Europe during the early nineteenth century. Focusing on Korais's speech "The Present State of Greek Civilization" (1803), the paper discusses how Korais shaped French notions of civilization and capitalized on scientific, cultural, and political trends in France to curry support for projects in the Hellenophone world.
This paper discussed what scholars in the humanities and liberal arts can learn from teaching in ... more This paper discussed what scholars in the humanities and liberal arts can learn from teaching in prison education programs, explored what prisoners have to gain from such endeavors, and addressed practical concerns potential prison educators might have. It was presented as part of a panel that included two students in the Indiana Women's Prison Post-College (graduate) Program and two instructors working in the same program.
Romanian Unification and European Civilization: Simeon Marcovici's National and International Aims
In 1837, Simeon Marcovici, the director of Sf. Sava who later held a number of significant positi... more In 1837, Simeon Marcovici, the director of Sf. Sava who later held a number of significant positions in the Wallachian administration, gave a speech to commemorate the end of the school year in Bucharest. The talk, Civilizatia (Civilization), later appeared in the Romanian-language press and marked the first printed appearance of the word civilization in Romanian. Marcovici used this lecture to both implicitly call for the union of the Danubian Principalities and to situate them in the cultural geography of Europe. To accomplish this, he deployed a pan-European discourse on civilization that had developed during the previous decades and drew on not only the writings of Enlightenment-era philosophers like Condorcet and French liberals like Guizot, but also on those of Balkan philanthropists and thinkers like Korais.
This paper explores how Marcovici used rhetorical strategies already in place to eek out a place for the Principalities in European politics, while simultaneously outlining an implicit, proto-nationalist political agenda. Marcovici was part of the last cohort educated in the Hellenophone Princely Academy of Bucharest and sent to Italy and France to study by the Eforia Scoala in 1820. Consequently, he was particularly well placed to bring ideas generated across Europe together in an intellectual effort to bolster his own agenda. As an educator whose pupils included a number of the central figures in the 1848 movement, moreover, the audience he commanded likewise renders an examination of his rhetoric and its place in a European context important for students of nineteenth-century Romanian, Balkan, and European history.
This paper examines French liberals’ attempts to develop a “soft” or cultural form of colonialism... more This paper examines French liberals’ attempts to develop a “soft” or cultural form of colonialism in the 1820s. Following Napoleon’s defeat, liberals set out to reinforce France’s image as a civilizational center. If France could not be a military or diplomatic “super-power,” it could at least be a cultural one. To be a center, however, French liberals needed to find a periphery. Greek- and Romanian-speakers represented a specific kind of prize—a periphery that allowed liberals to argue they were returning civilization to the heirs of antiquity. French liberals consequently forged alliances with Southeast European leaders who imported their models for social reform and cultural and economic practices in the Balkans. They drew on ideas put forward earlier by Joseph-Marie Degérando and Benjamin Constant about the role of culture and commerce in the modern world.
The paper explores the philanthropic organizations Constant, Degérando, and other notable liberals, including François Guizot, and Edme-François Jomard, formed to further specific social reform programs—organizations that became particularly important following the liberals’ 1821 electoral loss. Focusing on one such association, the Société pour l’instruction élémentaire (SIE), the paper traces liberals’ attempts to promote their version of the monitorial system for elementary education abroad. Liberals referred to their efforts, which were commensurate with both their political designs and academic projects, as “a peaceful form of conquest” that they undertook not as politicians per se, but as private individuals and public intellectuals. The SIE’s work in this capacity bore striking similarities to twentieth-century NGOs and can be understood as part of a developmental program, meant to “win the hearts and minds” of potential diplomatic and trade partners across the continent and create a Franco-centric, pan-European civilization.
Europe's Borderlands: The Balkans, the Nineteenth Century, and "French Influence"
This paper addresses the methodological problems associated with the study of “French influence” ... more This paper addresses the methodological problems associated with the study of “French influence” in the early nineteenth-century Hellenophone world. An amorphous term, “French influence” has been a perennial theme in the historiography of France and more acutely in that of the Balkans. As Paula Young Lee points out, the concept influence has given the writing of history an “internal coherence.” Yet historians have rarely considered term itself. To demonstrate the nebulous nature of the word, Young traces its history from the influence of the stars on human fortunes to the notion of influenza, or an infection characterized by a vague set of symptoms. “French influence” in the current historiography can be likened to a catalogue of a vague set of effects or symptoms– the appearance of French Enlightenment thought in the libraries of upper-class Orthodox Christians in Moldova, the use of French neologisms in Modern Greek, the adoption of didactic methods. The causes of these effects, however, are rarely analyzed, accentuating the sense of a one-side narrative where “French influence” did its work on weak Southeast Europeans, while West Europeans remained immune to Balkan discourses, politics, and culture. This paper considers how historians can study not just at the effects of “French influence,” but also its causes. By looking at a few a key examples, it describes how French and Balkan elites worked together to bring institutions like schools to the region. It suggests that by using methods associated with actor-network theory or transculturation, sources reveal a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship between French and Hellenophone leaders.
On the Edge of Civilization: French Monitorial Schools in the Balkans before and after the Greek State
Founded in 1815, the Paris-based Société pour l’instruction public promoted the spread of Lancast... more Founded in 1815, the Paris-based Société pour l’instruction public promoted the spread of Lancastrian schools in France, on the continent, and around the world. Hellenophone leaders and notables numbered among its foreign members and correspondents, some of whom went about setting up schools in the Balkans. Joined in the goal of bring civilization to those on its periphery, the French association often offered its Southeast European members material and moral support. Following the Greek War of Independence, these institutions served as the basis of a national educational system in Greece, while in the Danubian Principalities, the war closed many Lancastrian schools. This paper examines the networks of individuals that crisscrossed the region and the continent, permitting the organization of these establishments in the first place and traces how a project initially intended to serve a universalizing purpose was transformed into a tool of nationalism.
Balkan Transitions to Modernity and Nation-States: Through the Eyes of Three Generations of Merchants (1780s–1890s) by Evguenia Davidova
Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2016
Why All Humanists Should Go to Prison
Academics could learn a lot by volunteering in prison education programs.
Korais’s Greece and Napoleon’s Empire: The Egyptian Campaign, Race Science, and the Europeanization an Idea
War, culture and society, 1750-1850, 2023
Care and the Politics of Sentiment (comment)
Civilization and the xenoi (comment)
And Mama Studied with Me: Elementary Education, Modernization, Gendered Curricula, and the Reconfiguration of the Public and Private in the Danubian Principalities and Greek Lands, 1810s-1840s
East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures
This article argues that discussions about and plans for female education emerged in early ninete... more This article argues that discussions about and plans for female education emerged in early nineteenth-century Southeast Europe in connection with broader programs of modernization. It suggests that when officials and educators in the early Greek state and Danubian Principalities created curricula for women, they seldom took regional realities or the needs of potential pupils into account. Rather, the courses of study they proposed more closely reflected the aspirations these regional elites had for their communities. The article explores how education helped (re)inscribe gender roles within modern institutions and allowed state officials and educators to formalize boundaries between the public and private spheres. Modernization, primary instruction, and gendered hierarchies were intimately related.
How to Make Friends and Influence People: Elementary Education, French “Influence,” and the Balkans, 1815–1830S
Modern Intellectual History, 2017
This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded refo... more This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded reformers in France and the Balkans that came together in the early nineteenth century to further popular education. Examining interactions between actors in a cultural, scientific, and political center (France) and their allies on the periphery (in present-day Greece and Romania), the article reassesses these relationships, revealing the extent to which French individuals and organizations depended on such partnerships. Conceiving of joint Franco-Balkan reform agendas as programs of development, it offers a model and a vocabulary for the study of French soft power in post-Napoleonic Europe.
The previous chapter discussed how informal learning occurred in both private and public life. It... more The previous chapter discussed how informal learning occurred in both private and public life. It also discussed that what was learned in informal learning settings was often shared with others in an environment that was convivial, and that what children learned often supported the Greek state's interests and agendas. This chapter delves into the Greek family, the community, and the role(s) they played in the lives of children in informal learning settings. It concludes with informal learning within Greek minority communities such as the Arvanites, Vlachs, and Slavic-speaking groups. The family was important throughout Greece and considered a fundamental unit where values and customs were transmitted to children. In rural communities, the family and other members of the community directed much of the learning for children. In cities like Athens, this varied depending on social class and economic status. Were social groups mostly endogamous or could one move up the social strata through marriage or by any other means? What was the division of educational labor in the family in rural and urban areas of Greece? What was the importance of literacy and leisure among members of the family? Some of these questions are addressed in this chapter. FAMILY AND MARRIAGE After the Greek Revolution (1827), Greece was predominantly a ruralbased society. 1 Life continued to look much like it did during Ottoman times (1453-1821), and in some parts of Greece, life had not changed
Formal and Informal Education during the Rise of Greek Nationalism: Learning To Be Greek by Theodore G. Zervas
Journal of Modern Greek Studies
Audience Matters: ‘Civilization-Speak’, Educational Discourses, and Balkan Nationalism, 1800–1840
European History Quarterly
This article tracks how political and intellectual leaders from south-eastern Europe used the con... more This article tracks how political and intellectual leaders from south-eastern Europe used the concept of civilization, or a particular type of ‘civilization-speak’, from the end of the eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. It compares and contrasts how they employed civilization-speak in different linguistic milieus – French, Modern Greek, and Romanian – and how they deployed it to further changing political aims during a period of political upheaval in the Balkans. It traces how civilization-speak served initially as a tool for extracting support from west European, especially French, patrons, and was later refashioned into a rhetorical instrument of nationalism. This study places the intellectual and political history of south-eastern Europe during the era in a pan-European context and adds nuance to discussions about the development of nationalism in the region.
Europe’s Borderland: The Balkans, the Nineteenth Century, and French Influence
How to Make Friends and Influence People: Elementary Education, French "Influence," and the Balkans, 1815-1830s
Modern Intellectual History, 2017
This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded refo... more This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded reformers in France and the Balkans that came together in the early nineteenth century to further popular education. Examining interactions between actors in a cultural, scientific, and political center (France) and their allies on the periphery (in present-day Greece and Romania), the article reassesses these relationships, revealing the extent to which French individuals and organizations depended on such partnerships. Conceiving of joint Franco-Balkan reform agendas as programs of development, it offers a model and a vocabulary for the study of French soft power in post-Napoleonic Europe.
How to Make Friends and Influence People: Elementary Education, French "Influence," and the Balkans, 1815-1830s
Modern Intellectual History, 2017
This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded refo... more This article challenges the notion of French “influence.” It traces a network of like-minded reformers in France and the Balkans that came together in the early nineteenth century to further popular education. Examining interactions between actors in a cultural, scientific, and political center (France) and their allies on the periphery (in present-day Greece and Romania), the article reassesses these relationships, revealing the extent to which French individuals and organizations depended on such partnerships. Conceiving of joint Franco-Balkan reform agendas as programs of development, it offers a model and a vocabulary for the study of French soft power in post-Napoleonic Europe.