| Titre | Le crachoir chinois du roi : Marchandises globales, culture de cour et vodun dans les royaumes de Hueda et du Dahomey (XVIIe-XIXe siècle) | |
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| Auteur | Roberto Zaugg, Antoine Heudre | |
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Revue | Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales |
| Numéro | vol. 73, no 1, janvier-mars 2018 Micro-analyse et histoire globale - Travail et société | |
| Rubrique / Thématique | Micro-analyse et histoire globale |
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| Page | 119-159 | |
| Résumé anglais | As key players of the transatlantic slave trade, the monarchies of Hueda and Dahomey (in modern-day southern Benin) connected themselves to global commodity flows. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, imported merchandise fueled practices of conspicuous consumption and ritualized largesse, the performance of which was pivotal in consolidating the rulers' power. Focusing on specific items (tobacco, porcelain), as well as on behavioral practices (smoking, spitting), this article examines how these goods were materially and symbolically integrated into courtly culture and associated with religious beliefs and ritual practices of Vodun. In order to track recurring aspects of courtly scenography, to compare the signification of bodily practices in different parts of the world, and to identify material links engendered by global trade, it combines microhistorical investigation based on written records with archaeological findings, anthropological observations, and the analysis of visual sources and sculptural artefacts. This contribution argues that royal palaces constituted crucial laboratories of aesthetic change and new cultures of elite consumption. In this process, exogenous elements not only enriched the material culture of the palaces, celebrating the rulers' global splendor; they were also charged with new meanings that inscribed foreign goods and related practices into specifically regional cultural codes. | |
| Article en ligne | http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=ANNA_731_0119 |
