Cultural Transfers

Cultural transfers between eighteenth-century France and Britain did much to shape the intellectual identity of each nation. But what were the main channels of communication? How did they function? What was their impact?

In Cultural transfers: France and Britain in the long eighteenth century a team of specialists focuses on the networks and correspondences on which these exchanges were based, the concrete form they took and the material, political or ideological constraints which governed them. Particular attention is paid to the roles of:

• intermediaries such as diplomats, scientific institutions, or the Huguenot exiles who played a crucial part in disseminating English scientific, theological and political writings
• gazettes, learned periodicals, and government-sponsored journals where the French learned about British political debates and institutions
• translators, who could significantly alter texts in line with their own preconceptions and agendas or the expectations of their readers

This multidisciplinary book moves beyond the classic concern with ‘influences’ of one author or culture on another. It presents a new understanding of the hidden international networks that sustained the Republic of Letters and of the synthesis that emerged through contacts and interaction between French and British culture.