Cultural Transfers: France and Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century (review)

The result of a series of workshops held between 2005 and 2008 in conjunction with the interdisciplinary project 'Franco-British cultural transfers in the long-eighteenth century: agents, vectors, networks', this volume brings together nineteen English and French articles that present a wide range of detailed case studies on forms of intellectual exchange across the Channel. Divided into three sections, the study aims at highlighting the pivotal role that correspondence and networks (both private and official), journalism, and interpretative activities played during the period as motors of cultural exchange. To pre-empt possible criticism that the volume's tripartite structure might appear arbitrary, as the articles frequently broach two or even all three aspects, the editors have ordered the contributions according to each one's primary concern. In their Introduction, Ann Thomson and Simon Burrows highlight the need to go beyond the groundbreaking, but nowadays ultimately traditional, scholarship pursued in the field of Anglo-French relations, for instance by Georges Ascoli and Josephine Grieder. Thus Elizabeth Grist examines the international exchange of news, books, and journals taking place between Des Maizeaux and the Royal Society, while Joanna Craigwood focuses on the key role of diplomats as agents of cultural transfer through their participation in the international book exchange, and advocates the role of the books themselves as 'cultural ambassadors' (p. 68). Contributors and editors alike acknowledge the inevitability of having to situate a country's development in a wider context rather than in self-isolation. Calling for an explicitly comparative approach, the authors, many of whom will be well known to scholars of the eighteenth-century and comparative literature, succeed in setting off the process of complex dialectic and reciprocal dynamics of the international circulation and exchange of ideas that form the basis of common European culture. However, even though the volume successfully examines a fascinating range of significant instances of intellectual contacts, as well as the forms that these contacts took, it occasionally falls short of its declared ambition of 'attempt[ing] to provide a more integrated investigation of the question [of international exchanges], rather than a series of snapshots' (p. 2). While the respective thematic focus of each of the three sections and the shared time frame create a certain sense of cohesion between the individual case studies, the micro-histories presented in each contribution remain ultimately in juxtaposition with one another rather than forming an integrated whole. Nevertheless, because of their micro-historic quality, the contributions draw our attention to a fascinating range of concrete instances situated in the nooks and crannies of cultural history that form the inner life of the macro-history of cultural transfers and development. This collection of articles constitutes a valuable contribution to the field of comparative and interdisciplinary studies of European history of ideas and cultural development.