Staging Civilization: A Transnational History of French Theater in Eighteenth-Century Europe by Rahul Markovits (review)

During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, usage of the French language blossomed beyond France's borders, extending the range of the nation's cultural influence to the distant corners of Europe and beyond. In courts throughout the continent, fluency in French imparted social capital upon its speakers, and troupes of actors performed French works of theater and opera before royalty in cities such as Vienna, Warsaw, Berlin, Stockholm, and Saint Petersburg. In 1765, Nicolas Bricaire de La Dixmerie attributed the performance of French theatrical works abroad to an intrinsic literary superiority and asserted that such works could serve a civilizing function for the countries in which they were performed. By 1776, Louis-Antoine Caraccioli had coined the term "French Europe" to describe the dissemination of the French language and culture. In the years since, the concept of a "French Europe" has become rather commonplace in histories of the intellectual and literary development of Europe. But to what extent, if at all, might the consideration of a "French Europe" in the Enlightenment period obfuscate resistance to French cultural propagation? How might it have served as a tool for the justification of cultural imperialism in Europe? Until recently, study of the reach of France's cultural influence in Europe has focused largely on canonical works of literature, forgoing a discussion of other sites of cultural exchange such as forms of sociability—Freemasonry or the salons, for example—or clothing and fashion.

Rahul Markovits's scrupulously researched and brilliantly written monograph further explores the phenomenon of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French cultural dissemination in consideration of the emblematic case of theater. In bringing together a wide range of documents originating from twenty archives in seven different countries, Markovits provides a compelling reconsideration of "French Europe." Rather than deny the existence or usefulness of such a term, Markovits's study brings to light "the dynamics of a complex phenomenon of cultural dissemination" (9). In Staging Civilization, he deftly incorporates cultural theory and a broad scope of historical approaches ranging from the "soft power" of cultural imperialism to histories of court culture and literary transfer. In tracing the actors, performances, financial considerations, venues, and works that brought French theater to the rest of the continent, Markovits outlines the origins of the discourse on "French Europe," gleaned from a Voltairean understanding of civilization focused on cultural products, and its role as "a step on the road leading from the immanent civilizing process characteristic of the history of Europe as described by Enlightenment thinkers to the imperial project of imposing on Europe a civilization that had become French" (9). In her translation, Jane Marie Todd skillfully and meticulously brings the precision of Markovits's language and the compelling nature of his argument, originally published in 2014 under the title Civiliser l'Europe: Politiques du théâtre français au XVIIIe siècle, to Englishspeaking readers.

In the introduction to Staging Civilization, Markovits distinguishes the approach of his book from that of other studies that see cultural transfer occurring across a series of transmission points. His method takes inspiration from Norbert Elias's elaboration of a "configuration," contemplating the dissemination of French theater in Europe as a single, unified phenomenon that is itself a "dynamic network of interdependence that exerts its effects on all its components" (12). By theorizing the spread of French theater in this way, Markovits sidesteps rigid notions of cultural transfer that privilege the existence of a starting point, a point of arrival, and a path between the two.

Markovits divides Staging Civilization into two distinct sections: in part 1, titled "French Theater and the European Courts," he examines the tangible considerations and the underlying motivations that facilitated the emergence of French theater in the princely courts of Europe; in part 2, "From the Army Theater to Cultural Imperialism," he turns to diplomatic and military practices to assess the use of...