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In 1786 Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld & his precepteur Lazowski journeyed to Scotland to learn about farming improvements. This record of places & people, the terrain they travelled & houses they visited, is full of contemporary details.
Looking at England in the early months of 1785, covering twenty or even thirty miles a day and making detailed and intelligent notes at night, the two La Rochefoucauld brothers, Francois and Alexandre, and their tutor, saw landscapes still visible today; but the world of momentous industrial invention and optimism that they envied, as patriots, is one we can now only envy them for knowing and admire them for recording. Norman Scarfe presents the three documentary sources of the book (all previously unpublished) in his own spirited translation, while the many illustrations bring the travellers' experiences vividly to life. His epilogue traces the divergent attitudes of the brothers at the onset of the Revolution and beyond: the elder loyally serving Louis XVI, the younger establishing his cotton-mill on English lines, then joining the entourage of Napoleon.
This collection of essays explores how Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment developments in the earth sciences and related fields (paleontology, mining, archeology, seismology, oceanography, evolution, etc.) impacted on contemporary French culture. They reveal that geological ideas were a much more pervasive and influential cultural force than has hitherto been supposed. From the mid-eighteenth century, with the publication of Buffon's seminal Théorie de la Terre (1749), until the early twentieth century, concepts and figures drawn from the earth sciences inspired some of the most important French philosophers, novelists, political theorists, historians and popularizers of science of the ti...
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"This book traces the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and William Short that was developed in years shared in France, carried forward through the French Revolution, Short's return to the United States, and on into Jefferson's retirement. It describes Jefferson's lifelong concern for Short's moral well-being and his practical management of Short's career and estate. It analyses disagreements between the two men over land use, American politics, French culture, and the meaning of the French Revolution. It places Short's disinclination to follow Jefferson's advice within the larger context of the problematic transfer of republican values in the Early National period of US History, while describing how each man sought to make an imaginary yet heartfelt father-son relationship work"--
This major work, written by one of the leading historians of France's ancien regime, is the first in-depth study of the French upper clergy during the key period of the Catholic Reformation following the Council of Trent. In describing the creation, character, and role of these early French bishops, it also sheds light on social mobility, education, the career patterns and prospects of particular groups, the workings of patronage and clientage networks, and the wider dimensions of royal policy and patronage at this time. Joseph Bergin begins by analysing the structures of the French church and the process by which individuals were nominated and confirmed as bishops. He then presents a collec...
The Story of Civilization, Volume X: winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a history of civilization in France, England, and Germany from 1756, and in the rest of Europe from 1715 to 1789.
Remembering Napoleon is a biographical account based on years of intimate friendship and professional association of the author with Napoleon. Bourrienne, the author of this memoir met Bonaparte at the Military Academy at Brienne in Champagne when eight years old. His book gives a vivid, intimate, detailed account of his interactions with Napoleon and his mother, brothers and sisters, with his first wife Joséphine de Beauharnais and her children. His narrative is invigorated by many dialogues, not only of those in which he was a speaker but even of conversations that he only was told about by others. As an author, Bourrienne tired to put his friendship with Napoleon aside and to be balanced. He gives many examples of Napoleon's brilliance, his skill at governance, and his deft political maneuvers, while deploring his inexorable grabs for personal and familial power and wealth, his willingness to sacrifice French lives, and his abhorrence of a free press.