MBHS Seminar at McGill University: French Connections: British Expatriates in Late Eighteenth-Century France

The Montreal British History Seminar & the Groupe de recherche en histoire des sociabilités present: Simon Macdonald - Postdoctoral Fellow in History, McGill

Abstract:

The diverse British presence in late 18th-century France is extraordinarily well documented because of the seizure of expatriates’ personal papers, private collections and other assets during the French Revolution. These sources reveal the activities of numerous Britons as workers, leisured travellers, government agents, international financiers, and expatriate Catholic institutions. Each had very different relationships with France, with Britain, and with the wider world. This paper examines these, and how they were changing. Franco–British relations during the 18th century are often reductively characterised as a simple matter of antagonism: but this paper argues that Paris, as a nexus for European elites, sociability, and commerce, constituted a key sorting-house for the maintenance and enactment of varied British links with the wider Continent, with expatriates forming essential intermediaries in these processes.

4 pm, Thursday, 23 October 2014, McGill: Thomson House 404 (3650 Rue McTavish, Montréal)

Now in its 18th year, the MBHS provides a forum for faculty and students sharing a research interest in any phase of British History (very broadly defined). Papers of about 45-50 minutes are followed by discussion and adjournment to less formal venues. For information, please contact: Elizabeth Elbourne (elizabeth.elbourne@mcgill.ca) or Brian Lewis (brian.lewis@mcgill.ca).