skip to main content
Idioma:
Tipo de recurso Mostra resultados com: Mostra resultados com: Índice

A Compromised Commerce with East India: Lucien Bonaparte’s La Tribu indienne, ou Édouard et Stellina (1799)

Moore, Fabienne

Studies in romanticism, 2020-09, Vol.59 (3), p.273-298 [Periódico revisado por pares]

Boston: Johns Hopkins University Press

Texto completo disponível

Citações Citado por
  • Título:
    A Compromised Commerce with East India: Lucien Bonaparte’s La Tribu indienne, ou Édouard et Stellina (1799)
  • Autor: Moore, Fabienne
  • Assuntos: 19th century ; Anti-colonialism ; Bonaparte, Lucien (1775-1840) ; Colonialism ; Criticism and interpretation ; History ; Ideology ; Imperialism ; Indigenous peoples ; International trade ; Novels ; Plot (Narrative) ; Politics ; Portrayals ; Statesmen
  • É parte de: Studies in romanticism, 2020-09, Vol.59 (3), p.273-298
  • Descrição: With the exception of Cecilia Feilla’s critical edition, biographers and critics have dismissed the novel as a failed, or unimportant work, or confined themselves to an aesthetic reading of the text as proto-Romantic, disconnected from any colonial and imperial context.3 Yet the text is symptomatic of conflicting ideological forces cemented into the narrative: it bears the trace of Lucien’s readings of Enlightenment authors and of his subsequent rallying behind his brother Napoleon’s ambition to recapture a lost colonial glory with the Egyptian expedition he began in 1798, mostly welcome and understood in France as a strategy to block England’s trade routes toward India.4 The year 1801 saw the departure of the expedition of Charles Leclerc (Pauline Bonaparte’s husband, Lucien’s brother-in-law) to reconquer Saint Domingue, a colony that was still French, but de facto largely independent under Toussaint Louverture’s governorship. Because of England’s declaration of war, French policy dictated the imperative to defend the colonies against a British takeover.5 In what follows, I argue that Lucien Bonaparte’s novel is an exemplary text for illuminating France’s compromised position at the turn of the nineteenth century, caught between the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen and the ambition to recapture lost colonies (or gain new ones) the better to compete with England. Lucien Bonaparte destroyed all copies soon after his participation in the Dix-huit Brumaire coup (November 9, 1799) in support of his older brother Napoleon, who had named him Interior Minister in December 1799.15 Whether the book’s destruction was ordered by Napoleon himself is unclear, but the novel’s devastating portrayal of colonial malpractice and lack of allegiance to a politics of conquest certainly jeopardized its author’s political ambitions after the Dix-huit Brumaire coup.16 Lucien Bonaparte’s equivocal post-revolutionary novel thus offers an intriguing paradigm for understanding the link between French Enlightenment thought and the emergence of the First Empire. 17 On the other hand, Diderot ultimately did not/could not question the very principle of the right to conquer and exercise power over indigenous populations. [...]Diderot envisioned France as a model for what we could call “colonialisme éclairé.” The story related in the novel is compromising (compromettante) because of its message, captured in the final lines, which contemporaries most often excerpted: “Heureux les pays sauvages inconnus aux nations policées de l’Europe et qui ne possèdent rien qui puissent attirer ses avides spéculateurs!” [Blessed are wild countries unknown to Europe’s civilized nations and which possess nothing that can attract avid speculators!] (114).18 Couched as a Beatitude (“Blessed are . . .” ), the anti-European spirit of these lines ran counter to Napoleon’s imperial projects for Europe, a fact that likely justified getting rid of a novel that incriminated its author.19 The relationship between the two brothers was always a mix of mutual support and antagonism, admiration and resentment, punctuated by clashes of competing literary and political ambitions between Napoleon’s aspirations as a writer and his military genius on the one hand, and, on the other, the “génie des arts” whom Lucien aspired to be.20 If at first sight the novel seemed so compromising as to explain its author’s decision to eliminate all copies, I argue that the novel is instead compromised (compromis), in the sense that it makes questionable concessions throughout: its overt anti-colonialism covers up equivocal writing practices.
  • Editor: Boston: Johns Hopkins University Press
  • Idioma: Inglês
Voltar para lista de resultados

  • Realização: ABCD-USP USP   Logos de Redes Sociais: Freepik

Buscando em bases de dados remotas. Favor aguardar.