Un modèle britannique au 18ème siècle ? - Conférence

By Jean-François Dunyach, Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the Sorbonne University.

‘Will we never take anything from the English but their clothes?’ exclaimed Louis-Sébastien Mercier in his *Tableau de Paris* in 1783. In the 18th century, Britain was indeed as fascinating as it was unsettling: a limited monarchy, a maritime power, commercial prosperity, freedom of the press, scientific dynamism and institutional stability seemed to make it a political and social laboratory for Enlightenment Europe. But was this ‘British model’ a reality, a myth, or a polemical construct? This lecture will examine the driving forces, limitations and contradictions of an exception that was often invoked more than it was realised. In the shadow of the proclaimed English liberties lay cruel social and religious inequalities; beneath the glorious imperial expansion and peaceful trade lay internal tensions, the inhumane slave trade and the American Revolution; and despite constitutional ‘modernity’, persistent conservatism.