Speakers
- AffiliationThe Ecole Normale Supérieure - PSL
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Details
Le Débarquement des François, pour l'etablissement de la nouvelle colonie, dans le port de la nouvelle Cayenne ou la France Equinoxialle, Paris, Basset, 1763. Source: gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France.
In 1763, an engraving was published in Paris to advertise French colonization in Guyana. Depicting a wealthy land, rich in promises, and couples engaged in gallant conversations, the image promoted a peaceful colonization. It ephemerally reenacted a gallant aesthetic born in Louis XIV’s reign which contributed to frame the imaginary of French empire and colonies until the Regency years. How did this imaginary take form around 1700? How was it articulated to the gallant aesthetics of Louis XIV? From the islands of love to the fêtes galantes and the rise of gallant myths and epics, this lecture will explore gallantry as an ideal of civilization and commerce between sexes and nations and how it contributed to shape French imperial imagination and its transformation into an irenic trope of colonization.
Summary
By Kirstin Ohrt
Charlotte Guichard (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Charlotte Guichard presented “Empire of Galanterie: The transformations of the Imperial Imagination in 18th-century France” as part of the ART 502 lecture series to a filled auditorium yesterday afternoon.
Visual representations of galanterie, said Guichard, framed France’s approach to promoting colonization in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Originating from 17th-century literature, galanterie offered a form of politeness that promoted equality and playfulness between the sexes in France while also suggesting a preeminence over other European nations. It shaped the imperial imagination, providing a “peaceful trope of polite commerce,” she said.
Focused on maritime galanterie, Guichard showed several examples by Jean-Antoine Watteau depicting colonizers embarking on or disembarking from enchanted voyages to “islands of love.” No indigenous people are depicted. In fact, Louis XIV sent young, poor French women known as the “filles du roi,” or daughters of the king, to prevent mixed marriages between French colonizers and indigenous women.
Galanterie became a sweeping campaign to push its expansion agenda; it painted love as the antidote to savagery and camouflaged the cruelty of conquest.