Kirjahaku

Eighteenth-century France is understood to have been the dominant cultural power on that era's international scene. Considering the emblematic case of the theater, Rahul Markovits goes beyond the idea of "French Europe" to offer a serious consideration of the intentions and goals of those involved in making this so. Drawing on extensive archival research, Staging Civilization reveals that between 1670 and 1815 at least twenty-seven European cities hosted resident theater troupes composed of French actors and singers who performed French-language repertory. By examining the presence of French companies of actors in a wide set of courts and cities throughout Europe, Markovits uncovers the complex mechanisms underpinning the dissemination of French culture. The book ultimately offers a revisionist account of the traditional Europe française thesis, engaging topics such as transnational labor history, early-modern court culture and republicanism, soft power, and cultural imperialism.

What was an Indian prince doing in the retinue of a French envoy at Constantinople in 1796? When Sultan Selim III, struck by the sight of a fellow Muslim in a French cortège, asked how he got there, he was told the traveller’s extraordinary story.It had begun in 1772 with the annexation by the East India Company of Broach, a coastal town in Gujarat. Twenty years later, four sons of the town’s deposed nawab headed towards London to seek redress. One of them, Ahmad Khan, reached Paris during the Reign of Terror and told his story to the new Revolutionary regime. Yet, although his tale was true, he was not the man he claimed to be. Uncovering the elusive paper trail of a group of travellers across early colonial India, the Ottoman Empire and Revolutionary France, Rahul Markovits pieces together an astonishing range of fragments from a vast multilingual archive to illuminate in vivid detail how navigating regimes of protection and assistance was key to their securing a passage to Europe. The petitions the travellers submitted along the way and the stories of travails they contained were instrumental in fuelling their journey. They are also recognisably counter-narratives to dominant Eurocentric accounts of the Age of Revolutions. Taking readers backstage to challenge them into thinking how these stories can be turned into history, A Passage to Europe – looking at the material world of travellers, “passing” strategies, identification, translation and mistranslation, and the global micro-politics of mobility more generally – represents a brilliant and immensely readable contribution to connected histories.