For many Europeans, the French Revolution and Napoleon’s conquests marked the end of an historical era if not, perhaps,
the end of time itself. In the years after 1789, political transformations and military conflicts intensified and spread to encompass most of the continent. Whether bemoaned as disasters or celebrated as accomplishments, the events of 1789-1815 made understanding the past both more difficult and more urgent. No one could turn back the clocks. (Though some tried.) In formal history writing, as well as in many domains we today consider distinct—politics, the sciences, architecture—men and women endeavored to explain how the present related to the past. The past might be deliberately or accidentally rejected (as by revolutionaries or in a natural disaster) or it might be used as a model. Yet no matter how they understood it, people could not actually live in the past. Instead, intentionally and unintentionally, in politics and in the arts, nineteenth-century Europeans forged a new world with reference to the old.

In this colloquium, we will look at a range of these nineteenth-century ways of (re)constructing the past and imagining the future. Many of our readings will be primary sources, including selections from historical-political writers and from natural-history authors. While the bulk of our examples will be drawn from the French, German, or British context, southern and eastern Europe are also very much part of this story.