Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Influence américaine – France – 1789-1815 »

L’évaluation de l’impact de la Révolution américaine sur la Révolution française a toujours suscité des controverses, lesquelles restent largement ouvertes et le resteront probablement longtemps encore pour les historiens à venir. Dès l’origine, apparaît chez certains l’idée d’une filiation entre les deux révolutions dont l’expression la plus exemplaire se trouve peut-être dans cette réflexion du député girondin Brissot de Warville : « La révolution américaine a été la mère de la Révolution française ». Sans aller aussi loin, dans les années 50, Robert Palmer et Jacques Godechot soulignent les similitudes idéologiques entre les deux événements et étendant leur comparison au-delà du domaine franco-américain, développent l’idée d’une révolution atlantique. Thèse brillamment soutenue mais loin d’emporter une adhésion unanime. La tradition, remontant au moins à Alexis de Tocqueville, d’analyser la révolution française comme un phénomène spécifiquement français est restée bien vivace tant parmi les historiens marxistes que non-marxistes. Cependant, même s’ils insistent sur la difficulté de démontrer scientifiquement l’existence d’une relation de cause à effet entre les deux révolutions, du moins sur le plan strict du cours des événements, les observateurs les plus objectifs s’accordent en général sur au moins deux points. Premier point : la France a été, de tous les pays européens, le plus réceptif à la révolution américaine. Deuxième point : sans aller jusqu’à postuler un lien génétique entre les deux révolutions, on peut difficilement ignorer les arguments d’historiens tels que Gilbert Chinará, Bernard Fay et Durand Echeverria pour qui l’influence américaine avant et après 1789 ne saurait être mise en doute. Durand Echeverria, en particulier, montre dans un ouvrage au titre déjà éloquent.

L’évaluation de l’impact de la Révolution américaine sur la Révolution française a toujours suscité des controverses, lesquelles restent largement ouvertes et le resteront probablement longtemps encore pour les historiens à venir. Dès l’origine, apparaît chez certains l’idée d’une filiation entre les deux révolutions dont l’expression la plus exemplaire se trouve peut-être dans cette réflexion du député girondin Brissot de Warville : « La révolution américaine a été la mère de la Révolution française ». Sans aller aussi loin, dans les années 50, Robert Palmer et Jacques Godechot soulignent les similitudes idéologiques entre les deux événements et étendant leur comparison au-delà du domaine franco-américain, développent l’idée d’une révolution atlantique. Thèse brillamment soutenue mais loin d’emporter une adhésion unanime. La tradition, remontant au moins à Alexis de Tocqueville, d’analyser la révolution française comme un phénomène spécifiquement français est restée bien vivace tant parmi les historiens marxistes que non-marxistes. Cependant, même s’ils insistent sur la difficulté de démontrer scientifiquement l’existence d’une relation de cause à effet entre les deux révolutions, du moins sur le plan strict du cours des événements, les observateurs les plus objectifs s’accordent en général sur au moins deux points. Premier point : la France a été, de tous les pays européens, le plus réceptif à la révolution américaine. Deuxième point : sans aller jusqu’à postuler un lien génétique entre les deux révolutions, on peut difficilement ignorer les arguments d’historiens tels que Gilbert Chinará, Bernard Fay et Durand Echeverria pour qui l’influence américaine avant et après 1789 ne saurait être mise en doute. Durand Echeverria, en particulier, montre dans un ouvrage au titre déjà éloquent.

The revision of Romanticism in the last two or three decades went deeper than any other revolution in the canonization of western literature. Tom Wein (British Identities, Heroic Nationalisms and the Gothic Novel.1764-1824), Gary Kelly (English Fiction of the Romantic Period), Virgil Nemoianu (Taming Romanticism), or Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre (Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity) demystified the uncritical association of this literary trend with the revolutionary political ethos in 1789 France, casting light on the conservative, pastoriented yearnings of the major representatives. Such considerations, however, do not apply to the American scene, where politics and poetics, unaffected, or at least not directly affected by the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic wars remained faithful to the ideas of the French Revolution. Whereas Europe turned conservative, with the Great Powers forming suprastatal networks of influence (The Holy Alliance at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 bonding the Kingdom of Prussia, the Austrian and Russian empires, joined a few years later by France and the United Kingdom), America built a political system grounded in the rights of the individual and pursued ” dreams” of personal and national assertiveness (the ”city on the hill,” “from rags to riches”) in opposition to the European ”concert of nations” model. Our paper is pointing to a necessary dissociation of meliorist plots and narratives of healing in the romantic canon on either part of the Atlantic instead of subsuming them under a common poetics/politics heading.

Introduction Cookbooks are an exceptional written record of what is largely an oral tradition. They have been described as “magician’s hats” due to their ability to reveal much more than they seem to contain (Wheaton, “Finding”). The first book printed in Germany was the Guttenberg Bible in 1456 but, by 1490, printing was introduced into almost every European country (Tierney). The spread of literacy between 1500 and 1800, and the rise in silent reading, helped to create a new private sphere into which the individual could retreat, seeking refuge from the community (Chartier). This new technology had its effects in the world of cookery as in so many spheres of culture (Mennell, All Manners). Trubek notes that cookbooks are the texts most often used by culinary historians, since they usually contain all the requisite materials for analysing a cuisine: ingredients, method, technique, and presentation. Printed cookbooks, beginning in the early modern period, provide culinary historians with sources of evidence of the culinary past. Historians have argued that social differences can be expressed by the way and type of food we consume. Cookbooks are now widely accepted as valid socio-cultural and historic documents (Folch, Sherman), and indeed the link between literacy levels and the protestant tradition has been expressed through the study of Danish cookbooks (Gold). From Apicius, Taillevent, La Varenne, and Menon to Bradley, Smith, Raffald, Acton, and Beeton, how can both manuscript and printed cookbooks be analysed as historic documents? What is the difference between a manuscript and a printed cookbook? Barbara Ketchum Wheaton, who has been studying cookbooks for over half a century and is honorary curator of the culinary collection in Harvard’s Schlesinger Library, has developed a methodology to read historic cookbooks using a structured approach. For a number of years she has been giving seminars to scholars from multidisciplinary fields on how to read historic cookbooks. This paper draws on the author’s experiences attending Wheaton’s seminar in Harvard, and on supervising the use of this methodology at both Masters and Doctoral level (Cashman; Mac Con Iomaire, and Cashman). Manuscripts versus Printed Cookbooks A fundamental difference exists between manuscript and printed cookbooks in their relationship with the public and private domain. Manuscript cookbooks are by their very essence intimate, relatively unedited and written with an eye to private circulation. Culinary manuscripts follow the diurnal and annual tasks of the household. They contain recipes for cures and restoratives, recipes for cleansing products for the house and the body, as well as the expected recipes for cooking and preserving all manners of food. Whether manuscript or printed cookbook, the recipes contained within often act as a reminder of how laborious the production of food could be in the pre-industrialised world (White). Printed cookbooks draw oxygen from the very fact of being public. They assume a “literate population with sufficient discretionary income to invest in texts that commodify knowledge” (Folch). This process of commoditisation brings knowledge from the private to the public sphere. There exists a subset of cookbooks that straddle this divide, for example, Mrs. Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806), which brought to the public domain her distillation of a lifetime of domestic experience. Originally intended for her daughters alone, Rundell’s book was reprinted regularly during the nineteenth century with the last edition printed in 1893, when Mrs. Beeton had been enormously popular for over thirty years (Mac Con Iomaire, and Cashman). Barbara Ketchum Wheaton’s Structured Approach Cookbooks can be rewarding, surprising and illuminating when read carefully with due effort in understanding them as cultural artefacts. However, Wheaton notes that: “One may read a single old cookbook and find it immensely entertaining. One may read two and begin to find intriguing similarities and differences. When the third cookbook is read, one’s mind begins to blur, and one begins to sense the need for some sort of method in approaching these documents” (“Finding”). Following decades of studying cookbooks from both sides of the Atlantic and writing a seminal text on the French at table from 1300-1789 (Wheaton, Savouring the Past), this combined experience negotiating cookbooks as historical documents was codified, and a structured approach gradually articulated and shared within a week long seminar format. In studying any cookbook, regardless of era or country of origin, the text is broken down into five different groupings, to wit: ingredients; equipment or facilities; the meal; the book as a whole; and, finally, the worldview. A particular strength of Wheaton’s seminars is the multidisciplinary nature of the approaches of students who attend, which throws the study of cookbooks open to wide ranging techniques. Students with a purely scientific training unearth interesting patterns by developing databases of the frequency of ingredients or techniques, and cross referencing them with other books from similar or different timelines or geographical regions. Patterns are displayed in graphs or charts. Linguists offer their own unique lens to study cookbooks, whereas anthropologists and historians ask what these objects can tell us about how our ancestors lived and drew meaning from life. This process is continuously refined, and each grouping is discussed below. Ingredients The geographic origins of the ingredients are of interest, as is the seasonality and the cost of the foodstuffs within the scope of each cookbook, as well as the sensory quality both separately and combined within different recipes. In the medieval period, the use of spices and large joints of butchers meat and game were symbols of wealth and status. However, when the discovery of sea routes to the New World and to the Far East made spices more available and affordable to the middle classes, the upper classes spurned them. Evidence from culinary manuscripts in Georgian Ireland, for example, suggests that galangal was more easily available in Dublin during the eighteenth century than in the mid-twentieth century. A new aesthetic, articulated by La Varenne in his Le Cuisinier Francois (1651), heralded that food should taste of itself, and so exotic ingredients such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger were replaced by the local bouquet garni, and stocks and sauces became the foundations of French haute cuisine (Mac Con Iomaire). Some combinations of flavours and ingredients were based on humoral physiology, a long held belief system based on the writings of Hippocrates and Galen, now discredited by modern scientific understanding. The four humors are blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. It was believed that each of these humors would wax and wane in the body, depending on diet and activity. Galen (131-201 AD) believed that warm food produced yellow bile and that cold food produced phlegm. It is difficult to fathom some combinations of ingredients or the manner of service without comprehending the contemporary context within they were consumeSome ingredients found in Roman cookbooks, such as “garum” or “silphium” are no longer available. It is suggested that the nearest substitute for garum also known as “liquamen”—a fermented fish sauce—would be Naam Plaa, or Thai fish sauce (Grainger). Ingredients such as tea and white bread, moved from the prerogative of the wealthy over time to become the staple of the urban poor. These ingredients, therefore, symbolise radically differing contexts during the seventeenth century than in the early twentieth century. Indeed, there are other ingredients such as hominy (dried maize kernel treated with alkali) or grahams (crackers made from graham flour) found in American cookbooks that require translation to the unacquainted non-American reader. There has been a growing number of food encyclopaedias published in recent years that assist scholars in identifying such commodities (Smith, Katz, Davidson). The Cook’s Workplace, Techniques, and Equipment It is important to be aware of the type of kitchen equipment used, the management of heat and cold within the kitchen, and also the gradual spread of the industrial revolution into the domestic sphere. Visits to historic castles such as Hampton Court Palace where nowadays archaeologists re-enact life below stairs in Tudor times give a glimpse as to how difficult and labour intensive food production was. Meat was spit-roasted in front of huge fires by spit boys. Forcemeats and purees were manually pulped using mortar and pestles. Various technological developments including spit-dogs, and mechanised pulleys, replaced the spit boys, the most up to date being the mechanised rotisserie. The technological advancements of two hundred years can be seen in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton where Marie-Antoinin Carême worked for the Prince Regent in 1816 (Brighton Pavilion), but despite the gleaming copper pans and high ceilings for ventilation, the work was still back breaking. Carême died aged forty-nine, “burnt out by the flame of his genius and the fumes of his ovens” (Ackerman 90). Mennell points out that his fame outlived him, resting on his books: Le Pâtissier Royal Parisien (1815); Le Pâtissier Pittoresque (1815); Le Maître d’Hôtel Français (1822); Le Cuisinier Parisien (1828); and, finally, L’Art de la Cuisine Française au Dix-Neuvième Siècle (1833–5), which was finished posthumously by his student Pluméry (All Manners). Mennell suggests that these books embody the first paradigm of professional French cuisine (in Kuhn’s terminology), pointing out that “no previous work had so comprehensively codified the field nor established its dominance as a point of reference for the whole profession in the way that Carême did” (All Manners 149). The most dramatic technological changes came after the industrial revolution. Although there were built up ovens available in bakeries and in large Norman households, the period of general acceptance of new cooking equipment that enclosed fire (such as the Aga stove) is from c.1860 to 1910, with gas ovens following in c.1910 to the 1920s) and Electricity from c.1930. New food processing techniques dates are as follows: canning (1860s), cooling and freezing (1880s), freeze drying (1950s), and motorised delivery vans with cooking (1920s–1950s) (den Hartog). It must also be noted that the supply of fresh food, and fish particularly, radically improved following the birth, and expansion of, the railways. To understand the context of the cookbook, one needs to be aware of the limits of the technology available to the users of those cookbooks. For many lower to middle class families during the twentieth century, the first cookbook they would possess came with their gas or electrical oven. Meals One can follow cooked dishes from the kitchen to the eating place, observing food presentation, carving, sequencing, and serving of the meal and table etiquette. Meal times and structure changed over time. During the Middle Ages, people usually ate two meals a day: a substantial dinner around noon and a light supper in the evening (Adamson). Some of the most important factors to consider are the manner in which meals were served: either à la française or à la russe. One of the main changes that occurred during the nineteenth century was the slow but gradual transfer from service à la française to service à la russe. From medieval times to the middle of the nineteenth century the structure of a formal meal was not by “courses”—as the term is now understood—but by “services”. Each service could comprise of a choice of dishes—both sweet and savoury—from which each guest could select what appealed to him or her most (Davidson). The philosophy behind this form of service was the forementioned humoral physiology— where each diner chose food based on the four humours of blood, yellow bile, black bile, or phlegm. Also known as le grand couvert, the à la française method made it impossible for the diners to eat anything that was beyond arm’s length (Blake, and Crewe). Smooth service, however, was the key to an effective à la russe dinner since servants controlled the flow of food (Eatwell). The taste and temperature of food took centre stage with the à la russe dinner as each course came in sequence. Many historic cookbooks offer table plans illustrating the suggested arrangement of dishes on a table for the à la française style of service. Many of these dishes might be re-used in later meals, and some dishes such as hashes and rissoles often utilised left over components of previous meals. There is a whole genre of cookbooks informing the middle class cooks how to be frugal and also how to emulate haute cuisine using cheaper or ersatz ingredients. The number dining and the manner in which they dined also changed dramatically over time. From medieval to Tudor times, there might be hundreds dining in large banqueting halls. By the Elizabethan age, a small intimate room where master and family dined alone replaced the old dining hall where master, servants, guests, and travellers had previously dined together (Spencer). Dining tables remained portable until the 1780s when tables with removable leaves were devised. By this time, the bread trencher had been replaced by one made of wood, or plate of pewter or precious metal in wealthier houses. Hosts began providing knives and spoons for their guests by the seventeenth century, with forks also appearing but not fully accepted until the eighteenth century (Mason). These silver utensils were usually marked with the owner’s initials to prevent their theft (Flandrin). Cookbooks as Objects and the World of Publishing A thorough examination of the manuscript or printed cookbook can reveal their physical qualities, including indications of post-publication history, the recipes and other matter in them, as well as the language, organization, and other individual qualities. What can the quality of the paper tell us about the book? Is there a frontispiece? Is the book dedicated to an employer or a patron? Does the author note previous employment history in the introduction? In his Court Cookery, Robert Smith, for example, not only mentions a number of his previous employers, but also outlines that he was eight years working with Patrick Lamb in the Court of King William, before revealing that several dishes published in Lamb’s Royal Cookery (1710) “were never made or practis’d (sic) by him and others are extreme defective and imperfect and made up of dishes unknown to him; and several of them more calculated at the purses than the Gôut of the guests”. Both Lamb and Smith worked for the English monarchy, nobility, and gentry, but produced French cuisine. Not all Britons were enamoured with France, however, with, for example Hannah Glasse asserting “if gentlemen will have French cooks, they must pay for French tricks” (4), and “So much is the blind folly of this age, that they would rather be imposed on by a French Booby, than give encouragement to an good English cook” (ctd. in Trubek 60). Spencer contextualises Glasse’s culinary Francophobia, explaining that whilst she was writing the book, the Jacobite army were only a few days march from London, threatening to cut short the Hanoverian lineage. However, Lehmann points out that whilst Glasse was overtly hostile to French cuisine, she simultaneously plagiarised its receipts. Based on this trickling down of French influences, Mennell argues that “there is really no such thing as a pure-bred English cookery book” (All Manners 98), but that within the assimilation and simplification, a recognisable English style was discernable. Mennell also asserts that Glasse and her fellow women writers had an enormous role in the social history of cooking despite their lack of technical originality (“Plagiarism”). It is also important to consider the place of cookbooks within the history of publishing. Albala provides an overview of the immense outpouring of dietary literature from the printing presses from the 1470s. He divides the Renaissance into three periods: Period I Courtly Dietaries (1470–1530)—targeted at the courtiers with advice to those attending banquets with many courses and lots of wine; Period II The Galenic Revival (1530–1570)—with a deeper appreciation, and sometimes adulation, of Galen, and when scholarship took centre stage over practical use. Finally Period III The Breakdown of Orthodoxy (1570–1650)—when, due to the ambiguities and disagreements within and between authoritative texts, authors were freer to pick the ideas that best suited their own. Nutrition guides were consistent bestsellers, and ranged from small handbooks written in the vernacular for lay audiences, to massive Latin tomes intended for practicing physicians. Albala adds that “anyone with an interest in food appears to have felt qualified to pen his own nutritional guide” (1). Would we have heard about Mrs. Beeton if her husband had not been a publisher? How could a twenty-five year old amass such a wealth of experience in household management? What role has plagiarism played in the history of cookbooks? It is interesting to note that a well worn copy of her book (Beeton) was found in the studio of Francis Bacon and it is suggested that he drew inspiration for a number of his paintings from the colour plates of animal carcasses and butcher’s meat (Dawson). Analysing the post-publication usage of cookbooks is valuable to see the most popular recipes, the annotations left by the owner(s) or user(s), and also if any letters, handwritten recipes, or newspaper clippings are stored within the leaves of the cookbook. The Reader, the Cook, the Eater The physical and inner lives and needs and skills of the individuals who used cookbooks and who ate their meals merit consideration. Books by their nature imply literacy. Who is the book’s audience? Is it the cook or is it the lady of the house who will dictate instructions to the cook? Numeracy and measurement is also important. Where clocks or pocket watches were not widely available, authors such as seventeenth century recipe writer Sir Kenelm Digby would time his cooking by the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Literacy amongst protestant women to enable them to read the Bible, also enabled them to read cookbooks (Gold). How did the reader or eater’s religion affect the food practices? Were there fast days? Were there substitute foods for fast days? What about special occasions? Do historic cookbooks only tell us about the food of the middle and upper classes? It is widely accepted today that certain cookbook authors appeal to confident cooks, while others appeal to competent cooks, and others still to more cautious cooks (Bilton). This has always been the case, as has the differentiation between the cookbook aimed at the professional cook rather than the amateur. Historically, male cookbook authors such as Patrick Lamb (1650–1709) and Robert Smith targeted the professional cook market and the nobility and gentry, whereas female authors such as Eliza Acton (1799–1859) and Isabella Beeton (1836–1865) often targeted the middle class market that aspired to emulate their superiors’ fashions in food and dining. How about Tavern or Restaurant cooks? When did they start to put pen to paper, and did what they wrote reflect the food they produced in public eateries? Conclusions This paper has offered an overview of Barbara Ketchum Wheaton’s methodology for reading historic cookbooks using a structured approach. It has highlighted some of the questions scholars and researchers might ask when faced with an old cookbook, regardless of era or geographical location. By systematically examining the book under the headings of ingredients; the cook’s workplace, techniques and equipment; the meals; cookbooks as objects and the world of publishing; and reader, cook and eater, the scholar can perform magic and extract much more from the cookbook than seems to be there on first appearance. References Ackerman, Roy. The Chef's Apprentice. London: Headline, 1988. Adamson, Melitta Weiss. Food in Medieval Times. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood P, 2004. Albala, Ken. Eating Right in the Renaissance. Ed. Darra Goldstein. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. Beeton, Isabella. Beeton's Book of Household Management. London: S. Beeton, 1861. Bilton, Samantha. “The Influence of Cookbooks on Domestic Cooks, 1900-2010.” Petit Propos Culinaires 94 (2011): 30–7. Blake, Anthony, and Quentin Crewe. Great Chefs of France. London: Mitchell Beazley/ Artists House, 1978. Brighton Pavilion. 12 Jun. 2013 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/interactive/2011/sep/09/brighton-pavilion-360-interactive-panoramic›. Cashman, Dorothy. “An Exploratory Study of Irish Cookbooks.” Unpublished Master's Thesis. M.Sc. Dublin: Dublin Institute of Technology, 2009. Chartier, Roger. “The Practical Impact of Writing.” Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. A History of Private Lives: Volume III: Passions of the Renaissance. Ed. Roger Chartier. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap P of Harvard U, 1989. 111-59. Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. New York: Oxford U P, 1999. Dawson, Barbara. “Francis Bacon and the Art of Food.” The Irish Times 6 April 2013. den Hartog, Adel P. “Technological Innovations and Eating out as a Mass Phenomenon in Europe: A Preamble.” Eating out in Europe: Picnics, Gourmet Dining and Snacks since the Late Eighteenth Century. Eds. Mark Jacobs and Peter Scholliers. Oxford: Berg, 2003. 263–80. Eatwell, Ann. “Á La Française to À La Russe, 1680-1930.” Elegant Eating: Four Hundred Years of Dining in Style. Eds. Philippa Glanville and Hilary Young. London: V&A, 2002. 48–52. Flandrin, Jean-Louis. “Distinction through Taste.” Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. A History of Private Lives: Volume III : Passions of the Renaissance. Ed. Roger Chartier. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap P of Harvard U, 1989. 265–307. Folch, Christine. “Fine Dining: Race in Pre-revolution Cuban Cookbooks.” Latin American Research Review 43.2 (2008): 205–23. Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy; Which Far Exceeds Anything of the Kind Ever Published. 4th Ed. London: The Author, 1745. Gold, Carol. Danish Cookbooks: Domesticity and National Identity, 1616-1901. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2007. Grainger, Sally. Cooking Apicius: Roman Recipes for Today. Totnes, Devon: Prospect, 2006. Hampton Court Palace. “The Tudor Kitchens.” 12 Jun 2013 ‹http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/stories/thetudorkitchens› Katz, Solomon H. Ed. Encyclopedia of Food and Culture (3 Vols). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. Kuhn, T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1962. Lamb, Patrick. Royal Cookery:Or. The Complete Court-Cook. London: Abel Roper, 1710. Lehmann, Gilly. “English Cookery Books in the 18th Century.” The Oxford Companion to Food. Ed. Alan Davidson. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1999. 277–9. Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín. “The Changing Geography and Fortunes of Dublin’s Haute Cuisine Restaurants 1958–2008.” Food, Culture & Society 14.4 (2011): 525–45. Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín, and Dorothy Cashman. “Irish Culinary Manuscripts and Printed Cookbooks: A Discussion.” Petit Propos Culinaires 94 (2011): 81–101. Mason, Laura. Food Culture in Great Britain. Ed. Ken Albala. Westport CT.: Greenwood P, 2004. Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1996. ---. “Plagiarism and Originality: Diffusionism in the Study of the History of Cookery.” Petits Propos Culinaires 68 (2001): 29–38. Sherman, Sandra. “‘The Whole Art and Mystery of Cooking’: What Cookbooks Taught Readers in the Eighteenth Century.” Eighteenth Century Life 28.1 (2004): 115–35. Smith, Andrew F. Ed. The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. New York: Oxford U P, 2007. Spencer, Colin. British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History. London: Grub Street, 2004. Tierney, Mark. Europe and the World 1300-1763. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1970. Trubek, Amy B. Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2000. Wheaton, Barbara. “Finding Real Life in Cookbooks: The Adventures of a Culinary Historian”. 2006. Humanities Research Group Working Paper. 9 Sep. 2009 ‹http://www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/HRG/article/view/22/27›. Wheaton, Barbara Ketcham. Savouring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300-1789. London: Chatto & Windus, 1983. White, Eileen, ed. The English Cookery Book: Historical Essays. Proceedings of the 16th Leeds Symposium on Food History 2001. Devon: Prospect, 2001.

Née à partir des convulsions qui secouèrent le monde atlantique à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, la Gironde développa son républicanisme à partir de la matrice américaine. Dans leur combat abolitionniste et dans leurs regards critiques sur les systèmes politiques anglo-saxons, les futurs chefs girondins construisirent les soubassements de la constitution qu'ils eurent à charge de rédiger sous la Convention. À partir de 1792 en effet, une fois la monarchie abattue et la république mise en place, les girondins furent contraints à transformer leurs réflexions en innovation. Autorité judiciaire, pouvoir exécutif et pouvoir législatif durent être entièrement refondus. Les enseignements tirés de l'échec de la Constitution de septembre 1791 et de leur lecture des constitutions anglaise et américaine furent déterminants dans cette refondation. Plus encore, les girondins se distinguèrent par une pensée constitutionnelle tout à fait originale, un constitutionnalisme dynamique articulé autour de la notion de progrès, reposant sur un système éducatif et un droit inaltérable à changer de constitution afin de l'adapter au changement social. Ce constitutionnalisme dynamique voulait surmonter l'impossibilité de créer une constitution parfaite en permettant aux générations futures, définitivement débarrassées des préjugés de l'Ancien Régime, de modifier la constitution. Cependant, si les girondins avaient à cœur de faire persévérer leurs idéaux républicains dans le temps, ils souhaitaient étendre ces idéaux dans l'espace, au-delà des frontières françaises. D'où les plans grandioses d'une républicanisation de l'ordre international qui, mal exécutés, scellèrent leur sort
Born during the great upheaval which had shaken the whole Atlantic world at the end of the 18th century, the Gironde built its republicanism from the American matrix. During the fight for the abolition of slavery and through their critical views on Anglo-American political systems, the future Girondins chiefs elaborated the foundation of the constitution that they had to write under the Convention. Actually, in 1792, with the monarchy definitively down and the republic established, the Girondins were compelled to materialise their previous reflections. Judicial authority, legislative and executive branches, needed to be entirely rebuilt. The failure and fall of the 1791 Constitution and also their considerations on American and English constitutions were decisive for this rebuilding. Moreover, the Girondins must be distinguished for their original constitutionnal thought: a dynamic constitutionalism coherent with the concept of progress, based on an educational system and an imperishable right to change the constitution to adapt it to social change. This dynamic constitutionalism aimed to avoid the impossibility to create in one shot the perfect constitution. The next generations, totally free from the Old Regime prejudices, would have been able to improve the constitution. However, while the Girondins wanted to assure the endurance of their republican ideas for the years to come, they also wanted to expend these ideas through the world, beyond the French borders. This is the reason why they had elaborated a great design to republicanize the International relationships. A design which, clumsily executed, was, for the Girondins, the first step to the guillotine

Cette thèse contribue à la réflexion sur le lien entre révolution commerciale et révolution politique à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Plus précisément, elle analyse le problème lié de l'Exclusif colonial et de la liberté du commerce, à la fois comme objet de l'économie politique, comme ensemble de normes juridiques et comme pratique marchande, pour mettre en lumière la variété formelle des associations politiques esquissées à l'ère révolutionnaire. Ce travail prend pour objet d'étude les rapports politiques et économiques entre la colonie la plus riche du monde, Saint-Domingue, la métropole et les États-Unis, de l'alliance franco-américaine de 1778 à la naissance d'Haïti en 1804. En s'appuyant sur la nouvelle histoire atlantique et de la nouvelle histoire impériale, il s'agit de pousser jusqu'au bout la remise en cause de l'État-nation comme horizon indépassable. Cette thèse conteste l'idée d'après laquelle la Révolution française marqua seulement la fondation d'un État-nation unitaire et centralisé, établi sur le principe de la souveraineté nationale comme expression politique de la communauté des citoyens. Elle replace aussi les États-Unis dans leur histoire post-coloniale et rappelle que l'indépendance n'était pas la seule issue possible à la Révolution de Saint-Domingue. Émerge ainsi la multiplicité des expérimentations impériales qui se déroulèrent dans le monde atlantique, à différentes échelles, en deçà et au-delà des frontières nationales, et participant d'une économie mondialisée. En rompant la ligne droite qui conduirait de la Révolution à l'État-nation, il devient possible de suivre les sinuosités et les croisements d'histoires révolutionnaires entremêlées
This dissertation addresses the question of the links between the commercial revolution and the political revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. In particular, it analyses the connected issue of the colonial exclusif and of liberty of trade; as a problem of political economy, as a sum of legal norms and as commercial practices. This enables to shed light on the variety of political associations that emerged in the Age of Revolutions. The case study is the political and economic relationships between the wealthiest colony in the world, Saint-Domingue, the metropole and the United States, From the 1778 French-American alliance to the birth of Haiti i 1804. This dissertation aims at questioning the so-called rise of the nation-state. It disputes the idea that the French Revolution exclusively created a unitary and centralized nation-state, founded on national sovereignty and defined as the political expression of the community of citizens. It also places the United States in its postcolonial history and reminds that independence was not the only possible end to the revolution in Saint-Domingue. This illuminates the multiplicity of imperial experimentations that took place in the Atlantic World at different scales, both within and beyond national borders and in the framework of a globalized economy. Thus, it becomes possible to follow the sinuous paths and crossings of intertwined revolutions

La conquête de l’Italie par les troupes du directoire, de 1796 à 1799, crée les conditions d'un choc culturel majeur, et pose la question de la capacité des modèles révolutionnaires français à s'exporter. Cette étude entend examiner ce transfert, essentiellement à partir de la "politique du sensible" élaborée par les français et par les "jacobins" italiens, qui est le principe de base de la propagande et de la pédagogie révolutionnaire. Ce sont donc les images, les symboles et emblèmes, les rituels qui constituent l'objet de la recherche. Une première partie est consacrée a l'iconographie de la période : constitution de l'image de Bonaparte en héros libérateur, puis étude d'un large corpus d'allégories et caricatures. On s'intéresse ensuite aux sources imprimées (presse, pamphlets. . . ) et au discours des républiques-sœurs italiennes sur elles-mêmes : négation du passe et invention d'un récit historique de légitimation recours au modèle antique et identification de héros "nationaux". La "régénération" italienne est théorisée, et ses moyens de persuasion (notamment la fête civique et le théâtre) font ici l'objet d'un examen attentif. Une troisième partie enfin est consacrée a la mise en œuvre de cette politique : abolition des emblèmes et symboles de l'ancien régime, mise en place de ceux de la révolution, qui touchent tant l'individu (cocarde) que les communautés entières (arbre de la liberté), programme ambitieux des rituels républicains (fêtes de la fédération cisalpine et romaine, mises en scène de la "libération" des villes italiennes et de leur reconnaissance envers la "grande nation"). La question du religieux, pierre angulaire de cette pensée et de cette pratique des "signes extérieurs", est posée en conclusion, à propos de la récupération, à Naples, du miracle de saint-janvier par les révolutionnaires.

Dans sa phase republicaine, la revolution francaise offre une lecture de rousseau qui unifie l'homme sensible et le penseur politique dans le modele theorique du legislateur. Apres la terreur, l'acquis du penseur est repris par kant et fichte, tandis qu'en france sa sensibilite s'inscrit dans une nouvelle lecture, le romantisme
In the republican phase of french revolution, rousseau's readers unify the sensitive man and the poltical thinker in the theoretical pattern of legislator. After the terror, kant and fichte inherit the thinker's attainments ; in the same time, in france, his sensitiveness fits into a new reading, romantism

Cette thèse se propose d'offrir une interprétation de la divergence de l'état de droit de la liberté d'expression face à la protection de la dignité humaine et de la vie privée aux États-Unis et en France pour la rendre compréhensible. La question concerne au fond la précompréhension de la liberté en Europe continentale et aux États-Unis, ainsi que du rôle de l'État en vue de définir le contenu et les limites de la liberté, c'est cette précompréhension inspirée par une conception différente de philosophie politique qui se reflète dans l' appréciation de la liberté d'expression dans les deux ordres juridiques qui constituent l'objet de notre étude. Cette différence a ses origines à notre avis dans les mouvements révolutionnaires qui ont posé les fondements des deux démocraties. Cette conception a été inévitablement influencée par les problèmes politiques de cette époque de même que par le poids des idées intellectuelles qui ont précédé les deux mouvements. Leur évolution au cours du temps a apporté des nuances aux idées politiques de la fondation, nuances tout aussi utiles à notre compréhension. La France constitue un cas exemplaire pour l'Europe continentale dans la mesure où les idées principales qui sont sous-jacentes à la Révolution française en ce qui concerne la compréhension de la liberté et du rôle de l'État ont influencé considérablement la conception de la démocratie dans les autres pays européens
This dissertation aims at proposing an interpretation concerning the divergence of the legal status of freedom of expression in relation to the protection of human dignity and privacy in the United States and in Europe. The question concerns in our opinion the fore-understanding of liberty in continental Europe and in the United States, as well as the role of the state to define the content and the limits of liberty. It is this understanding inspired by a different conception of political philosophy which is reflected in the legal appreciation of the two legal orders this difference has its origins in the revolutionary movements, which posed me foundation of the two democracies. This conception was also inevitably influenced by the political problems of the same time as well as by the weight of the intellectual ideas, which preceded the two movements. Their evolution in the course of time brought nuances to the political ideas of the foundation which are equally useful to our understanding. France is an exemplary case for continental Europe since the principal ideas underlying the French revolution concerning the understanding of liberty and the role of the state influenced considerably the conception of democracy in the other European states

La Révolution française s’inscrit dès ses débuts dans un cadre international : tout au long des années 1780, les réformes entreprises dans les pays voisins de la France, mais aussi les crises politiques comme celle vécue par les Provinces-Unies, ont eu un large écho dans le débat politique intérieur. La signature du traité de commerce franco-anglais de 1786 est considérée comme une erreur politique dans un contexte qui voit l’opinion publique française s’alarmer du décrochage subi par l’économie du pays face au rival britannique. La Révolution remet en cause les bases fondamentales de la société française mais aussi ses rapports avec les puissances voisines, dont le langage diplomatique n’est plus compréhensible. L’entrée en guerre, en 1792, est inéluctable. Victorieuse sur le terrain militaire, la France n’est cependant pas pour autant épargnée par les crises politiques engendrées par les expérimentations constitutionnelles successives mises en place. En 1800, Napoléon Bonaparte s’empare du pouvoir et entreprend de consolider l’héritage révolutionnaire, à l’intérieur des frontières, mais aussi à l’extérieur. Bien qu’il prétende fermer le cycle commencé en 1789, Napoléon lui donne une nouvelle dimension dont la finalité est bien de construire un Empire. Cela sous-entend de reconstruire l’appareil diplomatique et de doter les États alliés ou satellites d’institutions inspirées du modèle qu’il incarne en reprenant à son profit les codes et symboles de la monarchie. Pourtant ce modèle n’est pas sans faiblesse. Le présent travail cherche à présenter le rôle de la famille Bonaparte dans l’appropriation des idées révolutionnaires et dans leur transmission à travers l’Europe
From its beginning, the French Revolution was the part of an international framework: throughout the 1780s, reforms and crisis in the foreign countries had a large echo in the internal political debate. The conclusion of the Franco-British commercial treaty in 1786 has been seen as a major political error by a growing part of the French public opinion. People were alarmed by the capability of the country’s economy to face the weight of British rival. The Revolution soon questions the fundamental bases of French society but also its relations with foreign powers, whose diplomatic language is no longer understandable. In 1792, the entry into the war was inevitable. Glorious in the military field, France was not however spared by the political crises engendered by the successive constitutional experiments. In 1800, the general Napoleon Bonaparte seized power and consolidated the revolutionary legacy, within the borders, but also abroad. Although he claimed to close the cycle started in 1789, Napoleon gave it a new dimension whose purpose was to build an Empire beyond natural borders. This implied a new diplomatic organisation and endowing allied or satellite states with institutions inspired by the model he personally embodied by using the codes and symbols of the monarchy for his own benefits. Yet this model was not without weakness. This work aims to present the role of the Bonaparte family in the appropriation of revolutionary ideas and in their transmission across Europe