Since decades, scholars are arguing whether Enlightenment provided for the cultural and intellectual origins of modern colonialism. On one hand, postcolonial authors believe that enlightened rationalism helped delegitimize non-European cultures. On the other hand, numerous historians of ideas and literature ‘defend’ at least some 18th-century philosophes whom they consider to have been ‘anti-colonialists’. The aim of the workshop is to concretise the terms of the debate. It will contextualise ideas and make the link between intellectual, social and political history. For this reason, the focus of the workshop lies on ‘imperial actors’, that is people appropriating ‘enlightened’ constructions of reality in order to position themselves in an imperial field. ‘Enlightenment’ will not be understood here as a fix set of ideas, but as the claim of eighteenth-century elites to hold the torch of reason in the darkness, that is to create a ‘reasonable’ and ‘natural’ social order and to educate people. The aim of the workshop is to explore the different appropriations of that claim by competing groups of actors. The interactions between ‘foreign’, ‘native’, and ‘hybrid’ elites are of special interest in this framework.

The workshop will focus on two topics:

1. Transcontinental points of views: Writing about change and revolution around 1800
In recent times, scholars endeavour to write a global history of enlightenment. The conference aims to contribute to these explorations. Actors claiming to be ‘enlightened’ and seeking to ‘enlighten’ others often mentally situated peoples living in different parts of the world in a global framework and built transcontinental imagined communities. The workshop will compare appropriations of concepts of global change around 1800 in different world regions and the constructions of identities and political legitimacy linked to them. The conference will explore the writings and practices both of actors of European origin in overseas regions, and of non-Europeans engaging with ‘enlightened’ concepts originating from Europe. Revolutionary action as well as the reflection about revolution will play a critical role.

2. The construction of similarity: Policies towards indigenous peoples and indigenous agency in imperial border regions after 1750
Since Said’s Orientalism, postcolonial discourse has insisted on “othering” processes. However, colonial discourse was as much about the construction of sameness as about the construction of otherness. In the second half of eighteenth century, several continental and overseas empires adopted officially an assimilationist policy. The workshop will explore this phenomenon, comparing the theory and practice of policy towards natives in the Russian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Habsburg empires. It will also address the responses of indigenous peoples to the official political line, and the way they shaped political practice.