Seventeenth-Century Europe in Eighteenth-Century Russia? (Pour prendre congé du dix-huitième siècle russe)

Abstract

Centuries are conveniently employed as units of periodization, at any rate in modern European historiography. Such a division of time implies that each possesses a physiognomy of its own, distinguishing it from those preceding and those following it, and imparting some sort of coherence to all events that occurred within its limits. That the strict chronological boundaries of a may not always be observed in such periodization (for example, 1715 to passes as the eighteenth in French history) need not unduly disturb us. The minor chronological discrepancies do point, however, to a significant aspect of this standard as a unit of periodization. The fact that the unit varies depending on which element of past life (political, economic, religious, cultural, or any other) is chosen as the determining criterion means that the century differs from country to country. Traditionally, reigns have served to define a historical period, although specific political events, for instance revolutions, may have been more significant. In some instances, a has been defined in terms of events in different realms of public life; thus, in the case of France, the eighteenth denotes both the of Enlightenment and the prodrome of 1789 and all that. I restate here the obvious in order to call attention to an aspect of historical reflection that is not always acknowledged: one may, for example, speak of eighteenth-century France or of Germany in the eighteenth century, but it is quite possible that, depending on the criteria used, features associated with one in one country may appear in a different chronological unit in another country. Periodization of modern European history has traditionally been based on the experience of France: politically, the seventeenth in that country stretches from the assassination of Henry IV in 1610 to the death of Louis XIV in 1715, while the eighteenth ends abruptly and symbolically on July 14, (or, according to some historians, on the night of August 4 of the same year). In cultural terms the seventeenth in France is the period of classical literature, just as the eighteenth is the age of the philosophes. This periodization is inadequate, however, when we talk about the social and economic history of the country. We see, for example, that economically and socially the Ancien Regime prevailed well into the nineteenth century. Similar chronological discrepancies can be found in the socioeconomic history of other