Jeffrey Merrick's comments on Orest's essay on Jamerey-Duval

[we have retained his page numbers as a rough guide
to where a statement may be found in the webpage]

16 February 2005

Dear Orest,

Thanks for sending your essay on Jamerey-Duval. I have to confess that I haven't read his Mémoires from cover to cover, and your analysis of the text makes me realize that I should do so. A few comments....

1. On p. 1 you characterize the Mémoires as "a work of political philosophy." On p. 2, you specify "engaged political philosophy" because J-D sought to "bear witness," but on p. 6, you note J-D did not have any "real experience of politically partisan engagement." On pp. 2 and 5, you distinguish from "philosophical history" and mirror of princes. On p. 8, he expects readers to know "political philosophy and history." On p. 13, he repudiated fiction and consumed "history, philosophy, geography, travel accounts." On p. 14, his criticism of Christianity provided grounds for "critical political reflection," followed by "political thought, if not political theory." At the beginning, "political philosophy," but at the end, "political thought." The latter, looser language makes more sense to me. You address the question of genres, and you locate J-D within a tradition of reading/writing, but you also show that someone with an interest in the past and the present, with some time to read and a point to make, connected history and politics in a more flexible and selective manner, without accepting or contesting the systematic arguments of Bossuet or Locke. Did he read Fénelon and Vauban (Lionel Rothkrug)?

2. J-D's main theme = despotism. On p. 3, you identify two features. On the one hand, taxes and wars. On the other hand, the cult of kingship (Peter Burke), which does not turn up throughout the essay (until p. 15) in the way that taxes and wars do. Given J-D's knowledge of Roman history, it's not clear to me, on p. 3, why he didn't compare despotic Roman emperors and French kings, why his familiarity with Oriental Despotism prevented him from doing so. Why not use Rome as well as Turkey in order to criticize France? Because the Mémoires political thought, rather than political philosophy, so J-D did not accumulate comparisons systematically, invoked the one most on his mind because of its visibility in early 18th century? On p. 4, in discussing J-D's passion for history, you mention the political (despotism) first and the practical (coins) second, in order of importance rather than chronology? Why didn't he compare Roman and French numismatic iconography in his critique of despotism? It seems to me that there's some tension in the essay between history + politics and history/politics. On pp. 3-4, history does not seem to enable or channel political thought. But at the end, pp. 16-17, you disagree with Goulemot about history and politics. J-D's criticism of ancient busts at Versailles, on p. 14, suggests some sense of the limited usefulness of antiquity or at least recognition that the cult of kingship appropriated antiquity for its own purposes. Roman history (republic vs. empire) constituted contested territory, but the Oriental past and present did not?

3. One of your most interesting points = J-D's laments re: liberty. By the 1730s, the theme of lost liberty played a significant role in the political-religious conflicts that spanned the reign of Louis XV. See, for example, the notorious pamphlet Judicium francorum published, if I remember correctly, in 1732 and promptly condemned. Nothing in the text about the recycling and revision of 16th and 17th-century debates re: use/abuse of authority in the 18th century? On p. 8, he could have used a Roman or a Gaul for ventriloquism, but he used an Englishman, which suggests, again, that he expressed himself politically more than historically, in terms that worked for contemporaries? By describing the English as free and "brusque et dédaigneux," he implicitly connects French slavery and civility? Your splendid JMH article re: courtesy and absolutism! This striking quotation justifies your use of the word "ethnographic" on p. 1. J-D relates material conditions and collective dispositions (like European observations of "others" around the globe whose languages they did not understand?) to government. As I write these comments, J-D sounds less curieux and more philosophe! Back to liberty. Still on p. 8, How interesting that his mother's remarriage restricted or at least endangered his liberty, since father king. By comparison, on pp. 9-10, what about the "yoke of women" = common trope in political thought? The quotation on p. 9 deserves commentary. In theory, the father and the king had no interests different from those of their subordinates. OK for subjects to identify their interests with responsible king, but not with selfish desires and arbitrary will of those who act despotically. Enough biographical evidence to link his life (he lost liberty when his mother remarried [at what age?] but escaped from the yoke of women [he left home and never married]) and politics? I'm not sure that the essay prepares the reader for your point, on p. 15, that J-D blames the French, not just French kings and associates.

4. Miscellaneous. On p. 7, why the reference to Pacific islanders? Did J-D read and mention Bougainville? On p. I 1, significance of lacking words to express love of history? On p. 12, J-D anticipates Rousseau? He looks backward and forward (16th-c historicism and Voltairean modernism on p. 14), but you seem to emphasize the role of the past in his perceptions of the present. Couldn't he have absorbed love of solitude from older rather than newer sources? Doubts about or fear of imagination, on p. 13, shared by advocates of tradition and Enlightenment because of dissent from norms or departure from reason. In the last paragraph, does the fact that his experiences marked him deeply explain "necessity to share them"?

As for French comments on anti-French sentiments, I'm afraid I don't have any texts to suggest. Maybe in English and French voyages across the Channel or in books comparing societies and manners throughout Europe or around the globe. I looked through such sources for comments on suicide in England and France, but I didn't keep those notes. In your bigger and better library, LC subjects "France Relations Great Britain" and "Great Britain Relations France" might turn up something useful? How about reviews in literary periodicals of English or French books critical of France?

Best wishes,
jmerrick@uwm.edu