Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: culture and power during the long eighteenth century
- 2 When culture meets power: the Prussian coronation of 1701
- 3 Military culture in the Reich, c. 1680–1806
- 4 Diplomatic culture in old regime Europe
- 5 Early eighteenth-century Britain as a confessional state
- 6 ‘Ministers of Europe’: British strategic culture, 1714–1760
- 7 Confessional power and the power of confession: concealing and revealing the faith in Alpine Salzburg, 1730–1734
- 8 The transformation of the Aufklärung: from the idea of power to the power of ideas
- 9 Culture and Bürgerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany
- 10 The politics of language and the languages of politics: Latin and the vernaculars in eighteenth-century Hungary
- 11 ‘Silence, respect obedience’: political culture in Louis XV's France
- 12 Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere
- 13 The court nobility and the origins of the French Revolution
- 14 The French Revolution and the abolition of nobility
- 15 Foreign policy and political culture in later eighteenth-century France
- 16 Power and patronage in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte
- 17 Between Louis and Ludwig: from the culture of French power to the power of German culture, c. 1789–1848
- Index
15 - Foreign policy and political culture in later eighteenth-century France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: culture and power during the long eighteenth century
- 2 When culture meets power: the Prussian coronation of 1701
- 3 Military culture in the Reich, c. 1680–1806
- 4 Diplomatic culture in old regime Europe
- 5 Early eighteenth-century Britain as a confessional state
- 6 ‘Ministers of Europe’: British strategic culture, 1714–1760
- 7 Confessional power and the power of confession: concealing and revealing the faith in Alpine Salzburg, 1730–1734
- 8 The transformation of the Aufklärung: from the idea of power to the power of ideas
- 9 Culture and Bürgerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany
- 10 The politics of language and the languages of politics: Latin and the vernaculars in eighteenth-century Hungary
- 11 ‘Silence, respect obedience’: political culture in Louis XV's France
- 12 Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere
- 13 The court nobility and the origins of the French Revolution
- 14 The French Revolution and the abolition of nobility
- 15 Foreign policy and political culture in later eighteenth-century France
- 16 Power and patronage in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte
- 17 Between Louis and Ludwig: from the culture of French power to the power of German culture, c. 1789–1848
- Index
Summary
Amidst the panoply of political-cultural studies of eighteenth-century France published in the past two decades, foreign policy has been relatively neglected. Given the importance of the states-system in furnishing a comparative, competitive context for critical public discussion at the time, this is perhaps surprising, until one recalls how unfashionable foreign policy has been among historians during the past generation. It was never thus among the later eighteenth-century ‘public’. Readers within this self-consciously important community tended to be urban, literate and comfortably off, perhaps employed in one of the professions, in trade, or as royal officials. They were often members of literary salons or reading clubs, whose purchase of legal titles (and promotion of illegal ones) helped to create a ‘buzz’ – that is to say, a ‘public opinion’ – and a potential readership of thousands for all sorts of titles, including those on political economy and diplomacy. The extant correspondence between the premier commis at the foreign ministry, Rayneval, and the head of the bureau de la librairie, Neville, confirms the interest of contemporary writers and publishers, as well as readers, in questions of foreign policy. Though increasingly flexible in what they would sanction – for reasons of commerce as much as common sense – the authorities naturally strived to suppress anything which might be construed as prejudicial comment on the interests or conduct of France and her allies.
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- Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century , pp. 304 - 324Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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