JHI Blog post on 18th-century French Cosmopolitanism
My PhD won De Gruyter’s 10th Anniversary OA Competition
Press Release
10 years of Open Access Books at De Gruyter – 10 Winning Titles!
Winning titles of De Gruyter’s Open Access Book Anniversary competition announced
Berlin, 27 September 2021
In late 2020, De Gruyter celebrated its 10th open access book anniversary with a call for book proposals and invited scientists and scholars globally to submit their book projects for OA publication. The 10 winning titles will be published by De Gruyter in OA without any author publication fees to support the development of open research.
With this prize, De Gruyter celebrates the 10 year anniversary of its first open access book publication. In 2010, De Gruyter published the Handbuch Bibliothek 2.0, its first open access book. Since then, the publishing house has developed into one of the world’s largest open access book publishers with over 3.000 open access books available on degruyter.com.
Under the headline “10 Topics, 10 Books, 10 Weeks” the publishing house based in Berlin received almost 120 entries for this competition within 10 weeks. An expert committee of renowned researchers from a variety of academic disciplines reviewed all of the submissions and ultimately had to make some hard choices.
Academics worldwide, from all subject areas, told De Gruyter about their monograph ideas, their envisioned audiences, and a little about themselves. After a thorough review process, De Gruyter is now very happy to announce the 10 winning titles:
- Peter Brown: “Meteorological disasters in medieval Britain (AD 1000-1500): Archaeological, historical and climatological perspectives within a wider European context”
- Alexandra Chiriac: “Performing Modernism. A Jewish Avant-garde in Bucharest”
- Özkan Ezli: „Narrative der Migration. Eine andere deutsche Kulturgeschichte“ (Narratives of Migration: The Other History of German Culture)
- Dominique Haensell: “Making Black History. Diasporic Fiction in the Moment of Afropolitanism”
- Katrin Kleemann: “A Mist Connection. An Environmental History of the Laki Eruption of 1783 and Its Legacy”
- Michael Navratil: „Kontrafaktik der Gegenwart. Politisches Schreiben als Realitätsvariation bei Christian Kracht, Kathrin Röggla, Juli Zeh und Leif Randt“ (Counterfactual Fiction of the Present: Political Writing as a Variation on Reality in Christian Kracht, Kathrin Röggla, Juli Zeh, and Leif Randt).
- Frank Ejby Poulsen: “A Cosmopolitan Republican in the French Revolution: The Political Thought of Anacharsis Cloots”
- Frédérique Renno: „Die deutschsprachige weltliche Liedkultur um 1600“ (Worldly Lied Culture in German around 1600)
- Atle Ottesen Søvik: “A Basic Theory of Everything: A Fundamental Theoretical Framework for Science and Philosophy”
· Lena Zschunke: „Engel in der Moderne. Eine Figur zwischen Exilgegenwart und Zukunftsvision“ (The Angel in Modernity. A figure between exiled presence and future vision)
“After the careful selection process by our experts, we can now announce the winners of our Open Access call for papers. We are very pleased with this selection of exciting, highly relevant publications that reflect the diversity of our OA book program. We are sure that the titles will get the attention they deserve through OA publication,” says Maria Zucker, Manager Open Access Books at De Gruyter.
The winners will receive an immediate Open Access publication available on www.degruyter.com plus services such as indexing and distribution. The books will also be available as print editions. Furthermore, the winning titles will be presented via short author interviews on the blog De Gruyter Conversations, starting with Dominique Haensell and her title “Making black history”. Dominique Haensell is editor-in-chief of the feminist Missy Magazine.
You can find further information on the competition here.
De Gruyter
Mauricio Quiñones
Manager Communications
Tel: +49 30 260 05 164
mauricio.quinones@degruyter.com
De Gruyter publishes first-class scholarship and has done so for more than 270 years. An international, independent publisher headquartered in Berlin — and with further offices in Boston, Beijing, Basel, Vienna, Warsaw and Munich — it publishes over 1,300 new book titles each year and more than 900 journals in the humanities, social sciences, medicine, mathematics, engineering, computer sciences, natural sciences, and law. The publishing house also offers a wide range of digital media, including open access journals and books. The group includes the imprints De Gruyter Akademie Forschung, Birkhäuser, De Gruyter Mouton, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, De Gruyter Saur, Düsseldorf University Press, Deutscher Kunstverlag (DKV) and Jovis Verlag, as well as the publishing services provider Sciendo. For more information, visit:www.degruyter.com
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https://blog.degruyter.com/10-years-of-open-access-books-at-de-gruyter-10-winning-titles/
Self-fashioning and rhetoric in the french revolution: Anacharsis Cloots, orator of the human race
Global Intellectual History. Published online 30 May 2018,
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2018.1479976
https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2018.1479976.
ABSTRACT
This article analyses what Anacharsis Cloots (1755–1794) meant when he chose the name Anacharsis and called himself ‘Orator of the human race’. It argues that it was an act of self-fashioning by a foreigner in the French Revolution trying to find his place by representing other foreign populations in the new nation of free and equal citizens. Cloots, therefore, saw the Revolution as a performance on the global stage. Cloots chose Anacharsis as first name as an act of rejection against Christianity, but also because Anacharsis was a philosopher of Ancient Greece he identified with. Cloots chose the function of orator against ‘feudalism’ because, in the Roman republic, Cicero described the orator as a hero—a philosopher pondering the truth and convincing his audience with rhetorical skills. The orator is delivering universal truths and that is also why Cloots chose to publish pamphlets rather than treatises, in line with the rhetoric of the Enlightenment and the rhetoric of the Revolution. His political thought should therefore be considered seriously as the work of a political philosopher.
The Education of Anacharsis Cloots (1755–1794) at the Berlin Académie militaire des nobles (1770–1773)
History of European Ideas. Published online 12 June 2018, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01916599.2018.1477615
https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2018.1477615.
ABSTRACT
This article examines the education that Anacharsis Cloots (1755–1794) received during his stay at the Berlin Académie des nobles (1770–1773). Cloots wrote at several occasions about his education there, notably naming Sulzer as a philosophical influence 10 years later. Examining the pupils’ life at the Académie, Sulzer’s teaching, and the detailed study schedule, this paper wonders what elements may have influenced Cloots. It is likely that Sulzer taught the philosophy of Wolff, but it is difficult to ascertain his influence on Cloots. There are similarities between Wolff’s civitas maxima and Cloots’s ‘universal republic’ that justify further studies.
KEYWORDS: Anacharsis Cloots, Prussia, education, 18th century, Johann Georg Sulzer, Christian Wolff
Mortier — Le rêve universaliste de l’orateur du genre humain
Mortier, R. (2000). Le rêve universaliste de l'”Orateur du Genre humain”. In R. Mortier, Les Combats des Lumières (pp. 385-394). Paris: Aux amateurs de livres international.
The Universalist idea was not something new or invented in the eighteenth century. However, the transformation of the feeling of being human into concrete political and social systems is something that appeared in the eighteenth century, with the abbé Castel de Saint-Pierre’s Project of Perpetual Peace (Mortier, 2000: 385). The project was not very ambitious and only projected an arbitrary system by a superior international institution capable of imposing its decisions to the sovereign national institutions. Very interestingly, Rousseau’s protector, Mrs. Dupin, asked him to summarise his voluminous works. Although Rousseau found the project unrealistic, he nevertheless took it as the starting point of his own political reflexion and published an Extract in 1761 (Mortier, 2000).
This project, because it was unrealistic, discouraged for a long time any universalistic political vision. However, the French Declaration of the rights of Man and of the citizen renewed the Universalist ideal as it was directed to humanity in general.
Cloots was very impressed by this and made his mission to make the French revolution a model of political organisation to the world because of its principles and its example (Mortier, 2000: 388).
In February 1792 he published La République universelle, ou Adresse aux tyrannicides, par Anacharsis Cloots, orateur du genre humain. He does not believe in a federative system. He proposes a radical unification by a process of spontaneous adhesion (Mortier, 2000: 389). Believing in liberal economics, unity should prevail because of the advantages of being in such a “wide society”. Every man should benefit from the effects of the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen, and for this we should build a universal republic on the ruins of the thrones. The will is one, action is one, because interest is one (Mortier, 2000: 390).
The republic may be built in several steps though, starting from France, diffusing through Europe. It is a gallocentric universalism (Mortier, 2000: 390). But it is gallocentric because France and Paris are the centres of freedom. Of course, everyone is sceptical towards any “imperialist” expansion from a particular country, even if it is for “freedom”. All things being equal, one can think of contemporary debate about “eurocentrism” and the western values dominating.
The way to achieve this is through propaganda and not violence, freedom is a plant that grows on every soil and if people are ignorant but free, minds should mature through books (Mortier, 2000: 392).
A unique soverign, universal will rise, he prophetises, “one common interest, one common law! One reason, one nation!” (Mortier, 2000: 392).
Cloots was not a realist, and he did not care about the political realities of his time. He made powerful enemies, chiefly Robespierre, who sent him to the guillotine 24 March 1794.
Avenel’s biography of Anacharsis Cloots
Avenel, Georges (1865), Anacharsis Cloots: L’orateur du genre humain, Paris : Librairie internationale.
This is one of the very first biography existing on this not so well-known history character of the French Revolution, Anacharsis Cloots. The merit of this book is its weakness: the tone in which it is written. The author is writing in a romantic apologetic tone, which hampers a reflective and critical appraisal of Cloot’s writings and actions. On the other hand, it blows life into a colourful character with an original and synthesising thought. And what a life! Until it was cut short by the revolutionary guillotine, his Prussian origins causing him suspicions of espionage and conspiracy against the Revolution.
Summary abstracts:
Cloots, away from France for some time, came back in 1789 and arrived in Paris 4 August. He saw the national assembly and was taken by enthusiasm. He saw in it the real ecumenical assembly, presided by common sense that will eliminate all the canons of the so-called universal conciliabules (Avenel, 1865: 131).
He claimed that the Assembly should be in Paris, and not in Versailles, “the glory of the eighteenth century is to have created the city” (Avenel, 1865: 137). Other were opposed because the country would not accept Parisian law. He answered “you will all accept it, you, France, and the Universe. Paris is the capital-city of the globe.” (Avenel, 1865: 138)
22 May 1790 a decree by the Assembly gave the nation the right to declare war and peace. Cloots acclaimed this decree because it was signifying the end of the secrecy of alliances in cabinets, of Westphalian treaties and this kind of diplomacy (Avenel, 1865: 175). Paradoxically (for our contemporary eyes) it is the idea of the nation that gave him the idea of the ideal of solidarity of people: if people of the French provinces could unite to form a French nation, calling themselves “brothers,” why not the peoples of the world?
The Parisian commune decreed 5 June 1790 to ask the Assembly for a Parisian federation of France on the Bastille Day 14 July 1790. This event made Cloots dream of a Parisian federation not only of all France but of the whole universe. He wanted to make the same demand but of humankind, including refugees of all countries who had been proscribed from the city (Avenel, 1865: 175-176).
This is what he did, quite famously, on 19 June, Day of the anniversary of the “serment du Jeu de Paume,” “Embassy of humankind,” when he entered the Assembly, or the “ecumenical council of reason”, with a delegation representing humankind, and him being its orator (Avenel, 1865: 177). They were 36 representing “humanity”: Englishmen, Prussians, Sicilians, Dutchmen, Russians, Poles, Germans, Swedes, Italians, Spaniards, peoples from some of the French provinces, Indians, Arabs and Chadians.
He declared that the party on Bastille Day will not only be the one of Frenchmen but also the one of Humankind. The wakening of the French people has been heard away and has awakened other peoples from a long slavery. The wisdom of the decrees voted by the children of France give troubles to despots and hope for nations. Sovereignty resides in the people, but the people is everywhere under the control of despots who consider themselves sovereigns. (Avenel, 1865: 183-184).
Baron Menou answered to him that he proved that all other nations equally own the progress one nation makes in philosophy and the knowledge of human rights. Therefore, the civic national party shall include any free man who wants to join.
From then on is the nickname “Orator of humankind”. Cloots explains that an orator of humankind is “a man penetrated by love for human dignity; an orator with a scorching love for freedom and who inflame with horror against tyrants; it is a man who, after having received the sanction of his universal apostolate inside the constituting body of the universe, only devotes himself to the free defence of all the million slaves…” He will exile himself from his native land to stay in the capital of independence. His mission will only come to an end when oppressors of the humankind will be overthrown. (Avenel, 1865: 188-189)
He changed his first name Jean-Baptiste because of its Christian origin into Anacharsis, the name of a young Greek philosopher, originally a Scythe who travelled from North to educate himself in Attic and Ionia. He also Frenchifyed his surname as a tribute to France, the country in which freedom was born and from where it should be spread to the world.
frankejbypoulsen.net 