COURSE CYCLE: Patrick BOUCHERON, Lieux de pouvoir (Paris: Collège de France, 6 JAN-31 MAR 2026)

The Collège de France (established by King Francis I in 1530) has published the list of free and openly accessible classes taught by Prof. Patrick Boucheron on the lieux de pouvoir.

More information here.

BOOK: Maksymilian DEL MAR, Neil MacCormick. A Life in Politics, Philosophy, and Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), ISBN 9781009609937, €58,36

 

(image source: CUP)

Abstract:

Neil MacCormick (1941–2009) was one of the twentieth century's most important legal philosophers and one of Scotland's most influential public intellectuals. This book tells the story of his political and philosophical life, from his intensely political childhood as the son of 'King John', one of the founders of the Scottish National Party, through to his involvement in Scottish politics – especially as the author of SNP's constitutional policy – and his role as a Member of the European Parliament, helping to draft the European Constitution. With special attention to MacCormick's character, this book offers a reading of his entire oeuvre, covering his contributions to theories of legal and moral reasoning, institutional legal theory, nationalism, post-sovereignty, subsidiarity, and constitutional pluralism in Europe. This book reads MacCormick as a highly creative thinker who excelled in the art of constructing inclusive middles and thereby developed his own distinctive approach to politics and philosophy.

Read more here: DOI 10.1017/9781009609937. 

(source: Legal History Blog)

BOOK: Vincent PETIT (dir.), La conjuration des hommes libres. Une histoire du serment politique (XVIII-XXIe siècle) [Histoire] (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2025), ISBN 9782753593459, € 18

 

(image source: Presses universitaires de Rennes)

Abstract:

L'histoire du serment politique en Occident est celle d'un long dévoiement. Ce rite habillé d'oripeaux antiques, médiévaux et religieux, avait été pensé comme l'instrument de la conjuration des hommes libres. Il sera devenu un des moyens de conjurer leur liberté. Alliance des hommes libres et égaux sous le regard de Dieu, il est progressivement encadré par les puissances politiques et ecclésiales, puis capté par l'État moderne à partir du XVIIe siècle. L'expérience révolutionnaire cherchera à redonner au serment son caractère démocratique et égalitaire, avant qu'au XIXe il ne devienne un rite de sujétion bureaucratique. Dans les régimes autoritaires et totalitaires, il exprime non seulement une fidélité politique mais il est la marque d'un biopouvoir par lequel l'individu abdique sa conscience et jusqu'à son propre corps dans le peuple, le parti, l'État, l'idéologie, le chef. C'est à une histoire politique enracinée dans les pratiques juridiques et les doctrines religieuses propres à l'Occident, et aujourd'hui négligée, que ce livre s'attache à donner une lecture originale et novatrice, puisqu'il s'agit de la première synthèse en français sur l'histoire du serment.

 Read more here.

BOOK: Isabella LAZZARINI, L'Italie des États territoriaux. XIIIe-XVe siècle (trad. Michèle GRÉVIN) [EHESS-Translations] (Paris: Editions de l'EHESS, 2024), ISBN 978-2-7132-3375-3, € 25

 

(image source: EHESS)

Abstract:

Vingt ans après sa publication, voici la traduction d’un classique résultant de plusieurs décennies de recherches, L’Italia degli Stati territoriali. Secoli XIII-XV. Isabella Lazzarini livre dans ce texte l’essence des débats qui ont agité l’historiographie italienne sur l’évolution de l’Europe politique et la naissance de l’État moderne. De plus, elle y propose une grammaire du fonctionnement politique des sociétés italiennes de la fin du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance. Cet ouvrage éclaire d’un jour nouveau le sujet complexe des « deux Italies ». À partir d’un vaste panorama historiographique, l’autrice y retrace le parcours qui mène des régimes politiques que tout oppose, tels que les communes, les royaumes ou les seigneuries, à la création d’États indépendants mais interconnectés. Réfutant la partition entre Italie du Nord, foyer de toutes les modernités (urbanisation, développement économique, etc.), et Italie du Sud, enlisée dans un supposé archaïsme (économique, social, politique, etc.), elle analyse le développement simultané de ces entités et la naissance d’un langage commun au sein du jeu global italien. Ce réseau de pouvoirs en équilibre instable, véritable laboratoire politique à l’échelle européenne dont il s’agit ici de faire la généalogie, dessine la voie italienne vers l’État moderne, barrée à la fin du XVe siècle par l’essor des royaumes de France et d’Espagne.

Read more here. 

VIDEOS: Journée d'études autour de l'histoire politique et constitutionnelle du pr. Marcel Morabito [Association des historiens du droit de l'Ouest] (Nantes: Nantes Université, 14 APR 2023)

(image source: LGDJ)

The Association des historiens du droit de l'Ouest posted videos from a conference dedicated to the most recent edition of prof. Marcel Morabito's classic Histoire constitutionnelle de la France de 1789 à nos jours (LGDJ, currently 17th edition) on Youtube. 

Introduction by Prof. Xavier Godin:

"Ecrire l'histoire politique et constitutionnelle" by Prof. Marcel Morabito:

"Retour sur l'élaboration et le contexte de l'élaboration de l'Histoire politique et constitutionnelle de Marcel Morabito, par un humble tributaire" by dr. Yann-Arzel Durelle-Marc

"L'histoire constitutionnelle est-elle tributaire du présent ?" by prof. François Saint-Bonnet

"Penser le droit constitutionnel avant les constitutions: le point de vue d'une médiéviste" by prof. Corinne Leveleux-Texeira

"Prendre l'histoire constitutionnelle au sérieux" by prof. Grégoire Bigot

"Considérations juridiques sur la tradition juilletiste réceptionnée au sein de la IIe république: apport du droit parlementaire à l'histoire constitutionnelle" by dr. Samuel Sanchez

"Marcel Morabito, théoricien du droit" by Prof. Ariane Vidal-Naquet

BOOK: Sarah MILOV, The Cigarette : A Political History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019). ISBN 9780674241213, €31.50

(Source: HUP)

Harvard University Press has recently published a political history of the cigarette.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Tobacco is the quintessential American product. From Jamestown to the Marlboro Man, the plant occupied the heart of the nation’s economy and expressed its enduring myths. But today smoking rates have declined and smokers are exiled from many public spaces. The story of tobacco’s fortunes may seem straightforward: science triumphed over our addictive habits and the cynical machinations of tobacco executives. Yet the reality is more complicated. Both the cigarette’s popularity and its eventual decline reflect a parallel course of shifting political priorities. The tobacco industry flourished with the help of the state, but it was the concerted efforts of citizen nonsmokers who organized to fight for their right to clean air that led to its undoing.

After the Great Depression, public officials and organized tobacco farmers worked together to ensure that the government’s regulatory muscle was more often deployed to promote tobacco than to protect the public from its harms. Even as evidence of the cigarette’s connection to cancer grew, medical experts could not convince officials to change their stance. What turned the tide, Sarah Milov argues, was a new kind of politics: a movement for nonsmokers’ rights. Activists and public-interest lawyers took to the courts, the streets, city councils, and boardrooms to argue for smoke-free workplaces and allied with scientists to lobby elected officials.

The Cigarette restores politics to its rightful place in the tale of tobacco’s rise and fall, illustrating America’s continuing battles over corporate influence, individual responsibility, collective choice, and the scope of governmental power.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Milov is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia. A former fellow of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, she has written on the tobacco industry, the rise of e-cigarettes, and the grassroots fight to battle climate change. Her research explores how organized interest groups and everyday Americans influence government policy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Tobacco in Industrializing America

2. Tobacco’s New Deal

3. Cultivating the Grower

4. The Challenge of the Public Interest

5. Inventing the Nonsmoker

6. From Rights to Cost

7. Shredding a Net to Build a Web

Conclusion: “Weeds Are Hard to Kill”: The Future of Tobacco Politics

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

More info here

CALL FOR PAPERS: Beloved Enemy – United Kingdom and Spain in the 18th century (24-25 February 2020, University College London) (DEADLINE: 31 October 2019)

(Source: Society for Nautical Research)

We learned of a call for papers on Anglo-Spanish relations, including political relations and consular activities, during the 18^th century.

Throughout the eighteenth century, relations between Spain and the United Kingdom were both complex and tense. Its territorial losses in the Indies and on the Iberian Peninsula itself at the hands of the British Crown were a huge moral blow and further evidence of the new role that Spain had begun to play on the international stage, now subordinated to France. The country did not only have to keep a close eye on the actions of its ally, which were always in its own interests, but also on Great Britain’s expansionist policy whose waves were already being felt on its coasts. Eighteenth-century French Europe was incapable of concealing the intense but fickle relations between Spain and Great Britain, from the moment that the Bourbons ascended to the throne until the demise of the Ancien Régime, after which these two former enemies set aside their differences to become allies during the Peninsula War.

The intention here is not to analyse the complexity of foreign policy at the time, but to determine the intensity of the contacts between both countries and the influence that they exerted on one another. For the wars, which were always followed by peace accords and commercial treaties—leading in turn to the presence of merchants and consuls, technological espionage, the intellectual corpus of the Enlightenment, the translation of literature, admiration and suspicion, maritime couriers, etc.—show that, beyond the enmity, open confrontation and hostility, between the coasts of Spain and the United Kingdom there was always some degree of contact. This ebbed and flowed with the tides of war and peace, but persisted in that shared ocean, the best channel of communication at the time and also the best way of isolating and blockading the enemy.

The symposium’s organisers welcome proposals for papers covering all aspects of relations between Spain and the United Kingdom during the eighteenth century, including (but not limited to) the following:

– Maritime history

– Naval warfare

– Economic history

– Foreign relations

– Political and policy history

– Scientific and technological influence – Cultural and intellectual history

– Propaganda: the image of the other

– Consular activities

– Living and working in hostile territory – Privateers

– Smuggling

Authors are kindly requested to send the title and abstract (200-300-word) of their proposals for papers, plus a brief CV (no more than one page), to reyes@udc.es or manuel-reyes.hurtado@ucl.ac.uk, before the deadline on 31 October 2019

More information on the conference website

JOURNAL: Journal of the History of Ideas LXXX (2019), No. 2 (Apr)

(image source: JHI Blog)

Value, Justice, and Presumption in the Late Scholastic Controversy over Price Regulation (Andreas Blank)
Abstract:

In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, theories of price regulation were developed in order to analyze the demands of justice in situations where markets cease to function—be it through natural conditions, wars, or artificially induced shortages in supply. This article investigates the relevance of the methodological notion of presumption for the legally binding power of laws concerning price regulation. In particular, the relation between presumptions (assumptions that are taken to be true unless and until proven false), the cost-and-labor theory of value, and the question of the morally binding power of laws concerning legal prices are explored.

The Language of “Political Science” in Early Modern Europe (Sophie Smith)
Abstract:

Historians of early modern “scientia civilis” focus on two main understandings of that concept: the juridical and the rhetorical. This article focuses on another way of thinking about civil science in the early modern period, the origins and development of which are in the Aristotelian commentary tradition. This article begins with political science in Aristotle then turns to the works of commentators from Albert the Great in the thirteenth century, to the Oxford philosopher John Case in the late sixteenth. It ends on ways that this history offers new perspectives on Hobbes’s science of politics, and on the broader historiography.

 The Construction of the Concepts “Democracy” and “Republic” in Arabic in the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean, 1798–1878 (Wael Abu Uksa)
Abstract:

This article illuminates the construction of the concepts “democracy” and “republic” in the Arabic-speaking regions of the eastern and southern Mediterranean between 1798 and 1878. Examining these ideas through conceptual analysis on two levels, language construction and political discourse, the article reveals the layers these concepts acquired and their reception in the context of state reforms in the Ottoman Empire. While both “democracy” and “republic” evolved in Arabic after the French Revolution and acquired their modern morphological forms and content primarily between the 1820s and 1876, “republic” came into use and was perceived as relevant to local circumstances earlier than “democracy.”

For these and more articles, see the journal's blog.