The jurist and philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, and his lesser-known brother, Samuel, equally talente... more The jurist and philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, and his lesser-known brother, Samuel, equally talented but as a naval architect, engineer and inventor, had a long love affair with Russia. Jeremy hoped to assist Empress Catherine II with her legislative projects. Samuel went to St Petersburg to seek his fortune in 1780 and came back with the rank of Brigadier-General and the idea, famously publicised by Jeremy, of the Inspection-House or Panopticon. The Bentham Brothers and Russia chronicles the brothers’ later involvement with the Russian Empire, when Jeremy focused his legislative hopes on Catherine’s grandson Emperor Alexander I (ruled 1801-25) and Samuel found a unique opportunity in 1806 to build a Panopticon in St Petersburg – the only panoptical building ever built by the Benthams themselves. Setting the Benthams’ projects within an in-depth portrayal of the Russian context, Roger Bartlett illuminates an important facet of their later careers and offers insight into their world vi...
Russland zur Zeit Katharinas II. Absolutismus-Aufklaerung-Pragmatismus. Ed. E. Huebner et al., Koeln-Weimar-Wien: Boehlau Vg., 1998
Surveys the foundation (1765), the structure and the early years of the Russian Free Economic Soc... more Surveys the foundation (1765), the structure and the early years of the Russian Free Economic Society and traces in detail the origins, course and outcome of the famous prize essay competition on peasant land and freedom. It also examines the wider international resonance of the competition, and the further works of the winner, Beardé de l'Abbaye (whose winning entry, it was said, had been actually commissioned by the organizers).
ВИВЛIОθИКА: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, 2021
Louis Henri de Nicolay, un intellectuel strasbourgeois dans la Russie des Lumières. Sous la direc... more Louis Henri de Nicolay, un intellectuel strasbourgeois dans la Russie des Lumières. Sous la direction de Rodolphe Baudin et Alexandra Veselova [Études alsaciennes & rhénanes]. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2020. 279 pp. ISBN 9782868207548.
The ancient Hanseatic cities of the Baltic had always been cosmopolitan in their population: the ... more The ancient Hanseatic cities of the Baltic had always been cosmopolitan in their population: the vicissitudes of commerce brought numerous merchants of differing nationality, culture and religion to the Baltic coasts. Together with the Dutch, British shippers and merchants were pre-eminent in the Baltic trade, and representatives of British commercial houses established themselves in most of the principal port cities along the Baltic sea highway. In Konigsberg the long-settled Anglo-Scottish community was united in a ‘Brotherhood of the Great Britannic Nation’; from the early decades of Peter I’s new Imperial Russian capital, the British Factory was a significant presence in St Petersburg.1
An inaugural lecture delivered at the University of London on 14th March 2000SIGLEAvailable from ... more An inaugural lecture delivered at the University of London on 14th March 2000SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:8425.218(no 44) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
The second half of the eighteenth century marks a new phase in the peasant question in the Russia... more The second half of the eighteenth century marks a new phase in the peasant question in the Russian empire. While Vasilii Golitsyn in the late seventeenth century is reported to have thought in terms of serf emancipation — Professor de Madariaga has shown convincingly that the authority for this claim, Foy de la Neuville, is not reliable1 — early eighteenth-century concern, both official and unofficial, for the lot of the peasantry was largely confined to its economic well-being and stability. Such swallows as A. Kantemir and V. Tatishchev, attuned to the human dignity of rural folk, to philosophical issues of natural law and economic questions of labour productivity, did not as yet make a summer. (Tatishchev explicitly opposed the abolition of serfdom.) Even M. Lomonosov tended to view things in terms of the national interest, and made no criticism of the system of Russian serfdom as such.2 In the mid-century, however, things changed markedly. In the 1760s not only the defects of the servile system, but also the system itself, were held up for critical scrutiny. As Professor de Madariaga has put it: Two trends emerged, neither of which had much following among the nobility at large. The first, based on Russian tradition, … urged state regulation of the existing system, with a clear assertion that the serf was the subject of the state, not the slave of the landowner …. The second trend derived from the humanitarian and economic theories of the Enlightenment. Though unrelated to Russian realities, it opened men’s minds to new ideas — and indeed it led eventually to the development of a counter-movement — a completely new school of defenders of serfdom, an institution which had never needed defending before.3
The jurist and philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, and his lesser-known brother, Samuel, equally talente... more The jurist and philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, and his lesser-known brother, Samuel, equally talented but as a naval architect, engineer and inventor, had a long love affair with Russia. Jeremy hoped to assist Empress Catherine II with her legislative projects. Samuel went to St Petersburg to seek his fortune in 1780 and came back with the rank of Brigadier-General and the idea, famously publicised by Jeremy, of the Inspection-House or Panopticon. The Bentham Brothers and Russia chronicles the brothers’ later involvement with the Russian Empire, when Jeremy focused his legislative hopes on Catherine’s grandson Emperor Alexander I (ruled 1801-25) and Samuel found a unique opportunity in 1806 to build a Panopticon in St Petersburg – the only panoptical building ever built by the Benthams themselves. Setting the Benthams’ projects within an in-depth portrayal of the Russian context, Roger Bartlett illuminates an important facet of their later careers and offers insight into their world vi...
Russland zur Zeit Katharinas II. Absolutismus-Aufklaerung-Pragmatismus. Ed. E. Huebner et al., Koeln-Weimar-Wien: Boehlau Vg., 1998
Surveys the foundation (1765), the structure and the early years of the Russian Free Economic Soc... more Surveys the foundation (1765), the structure and the early years of the Russian Free Economic Society and traces in detail the origins, course and outcome of the famous prize essay competition on peasant land and freedom. It also examines the wider international resonance of the competition, and the further works of the winner, Beardé de l'Abbaye (whose winning entry, it was said, had been actually commissioned by the organizers).
ВИВЛIОθИКА: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, 2021
Louis Henri de Nicolay, un intellectuel strasbourgeois dans la Russie des Lumières. Sous la direc... more Louis Henri de Nicolay, un intellectuel strasbourgeois dans la Russie des Lumières. Sous la direction de Rodolphe Baudin et Alexandra Veselova [Études alsaciennes & rhénanes]. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2020. 279 pp. ISBN 9782868207548.
The ancient Hanseatic cities of the Baltic had always been cosmopolitan in their population: the ... more The ancient Hanseatic cities of the Baltic had always been cosmopolitan in their population: the vicissitudes of commerce brought numerous merchants of differing nationality, culture and religion to the Baltic coasts. Together with the Dutch, British shippers and merchants were pre-eminent in the Baltic trade, and representatives of British commercial houses established themselves in most of the principal port cities along the Baltic sea highway. In Konigsberg the long-settled Anglo-Scottish community was united in a ‘Brotherhood of the Great Britannic Nation’; from the early decades of Peter I’s new Imperial Russian capital, the British Factory was a significant presence in St Petersburg.1
An inaugural lecture delivered at the University of London on 14th March 2000SIGLEAvailable from ... more An inaugural lecture delivered at the University of London on 14th March 2000SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:8425.218(no 44) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
The second half of the eighteenth century marks a new phase in the peasant question in the Russia... more The second half of the eighteenth century marks a new phase in the peasant question in the Russian empire. While Vasilii Golitsyn in the late seventeenth century is reported to have thought in terms of serf emancipation — Professor de Madariaga has shown convincingly that the authority for this claim, Foy de la Neuville, is not reliable1 — early eighteenth-century concern, both official and unofficial, for the lot of the peasantry was largely confined to its economic well-being and stability. Such swallows as A. Kantemir and V. Tatishchev, attuned to the human dignity of rural folk, to philosophical issues of natural law and economic questions of labour productivity, did not as yet make a summer. (Tatishchev explicitly opposed the abolition of serfdom.) Even M. Lomonosov tended to view things in terms of the national interest, and made no criticism of the system of Russian serfdom as such.2 In the mid-century, however, things changed markedly. In the 1760s not only the defects of the servile system, but also the system itself, were held up for critical scrutiny. As Professor de Madariaga has put it: Two trends emerged, neither of which had much following among the nobility at large. The first, based on Russian tradition, … urged state regulation of the existing system, with a clear assertion that the serf was the subject of the state, not the slave of the landowner …. The second trend derived from the humanitarian and economic theories of the Enlightenment. Though unrelated to Russian realities, it opened men’s minds to new ideas — and indeed it led eventually to the development of a counter-movement — a completely new school of defenders of serfdom, an institution which had never needed defending before.3
Uploads