Accueil » Sommaires » revue : Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales » vol. 73, no 1, janvier-mars 2018

Contenu du sommaire : Micro-analyse et histoire globale - Travail et société

Revue Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales Mir@bel
Numéro vol. 73, no 1, janvier-mars 2018
Titre du numéro Micro-analyse et histoire globale - Travail et société
Texte intégral en ligne Accessible sur l'internet

  • Micro-analyse et histoire globale

    • La microhistoire globale : affaire(s) à suivre - Romain Bertrand, Guillaume Calafat p. 1-18 accès libre
    • Une vie sur plusieurs continents : Microhistoire globale d'un agent arménien de la Compagnie des Indes orientales, 1666-1688 - Sebouh David Aslanian, Guillaume Calafat p. 19-55 accès libre avec résumé avec résumé en anglais
      RésumésEn 1666, Jean-Baptiste Colbert décidait d'engager Martin di Marcara Avachinz, un marchand arménien originaire de Perse et d'Inde, comme agent de la Compagnie française des Indes orientales nouvellement instituée. Ce dernier réussit à négocier, auprès du souverain du sultanat de Golconde, l'octroi d'un édit qui permettait aux Français d'ouvrir un comptoir dans le port de Masulipatam en 1669. Cependant, peu de temps après, Marcara fut brutalement arrêté, torturé et envoyé en France par ordre de son supérieur, François Caron. Cet article propose une analyse fouillée des factums, les mémoires judiciaires produits durant son procès tenu à Paris à la suite de sa libération en 1675. À travers une « microhistoire globale » de la vie de Marcara, suivie d'un continent à l'autre, il s'agit de mieux comprendre les mécanismes du commerce de longue distance dans l'océan Indien. L'enjeu est d'abord de comparer le réseau de la Compagnie française des Indes orientales et des autres compagnies à charte avec celui des diasporas négociantes « sans État », représentées ici par les marchands arméniens venus de la Nouvelle-Djoulfa, la ville d'où est originaire Marcara, à la périphérie de la capitale safavide Ispahan. L'article examine ensuite le fonctionnement et le rôle des factums dans la France de l'époque moderne. Enfin, il revient sur la façon dont l'histoire « exceptionnellement normale » de la vie de Marcara témoigne des perceptions françaises de l'Orient, notamment de l'hostilité et de la crainte à l'égard de certaines communautés de marchands, banquiers et courtiers arméniens et indiens.
      A Life Lived Across Continents: A Global Microhistory of an Armenian Agent of the Compagnie des Indes orientales, 1666-1688In 1666, French minister of finance Jean Baptist Colbert hired Martin di Marcara Avachinz, an Armenian merchant from Iran and India, as an agent for his newly established Compagnie française des Indes orientales. Soon after the Armenian secured a royal edict from the ruler of the sultanate of Golconda (Southern India) to set up a French trading center in the port of Masulipatam in 1669, he was summarily arrested, tortured, and sent to France by his superior François Caron. This article provides a close reading of judicial sources known as factums, produced during Marcara's sensational trial following his release from prison in 1675. Through a “global microhistory” of Marcara's life across continents, this essay seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of early modern long-distance trade in the Indian Ocean. It does so by comparing the network of the Compagnie des Indes orientales and other joint-stock corporations with the “stateless” nature of the trade diaspora network represented by Armenian merchants from Marcara's township of New Julfa on the outskirts of the Safavid capital of Isfahan. The essay sheds light on how factums functioned in early modern France and concludes by exploring how the “exceptionally normal” story of Marcara's life provides a useful window onto French perceptions of the Orient and the fear induced by certain mercantile communities such as Armenian and Indian bankers and brokers.
    • Gouverner les campagnes : Analyse micro-sociale et construction institutionnelle (Río de la Plata, fin du XVIIIe siècle) - Darío G. Barriera, Sébastien Malaprade p. 57-82 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      AbstractsAt the end of the eighteenth century, the Hispanic Monarchy imagined new solutions for governing its territories between the south of the Amazon, the Strait of Magellan, and the Andean cordillera. Populated by farmers and shepherds, these huge rural areas remained poorly known to the authorities. Yet among the reforms conducted in America by Charles III—including the adoption of the intendancy system—none tackled the administration of the countryside head-on. This problem is key for two reasons. In the first place, most of the population of the Río de la Plata lived in rural areas. Second, the enormous distances that separated these areas from the urban centers where representatives of the Monarchy resided (Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, or Madrid) posed a challenge that the authorities had to face in order to govern these populations. Shifting from a “top-down” perspective to a ground-level analysis attentive to local dynamics makes it possible to shed new light on how these spaces far removed from the centers of power functioned. Through the microhistorical analysis of a series of institutional transformations affecting the Río de la Plata, this article shows how the governed came to participate in the government of their region, mobilizing their networks to create a community and institutions on a local scale.
    • La nationalité en procès : droit international privé et monde méditerranéen - Jessica M. Marglin, Guillaume Calafat p. 83-117 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      This article uses a single, transnational legal case that played out between Italy and Tunisia in the 1870s and 1880s to tell a truly global history of international law—that is, one that goes beyond the boundaries of the West. Samama v. Samama was a fabulously complicated case that dragged on in Italian courts for almost a decade. The crux of the legal arguments concerned the nationality of Nissim Samama, a Jew born in Tunis; Samama's nationality, in turn, would determine which legal system regulated his estate. The Italian Civil Code enshrined respect for the national law of a foreigner, but such foreigners were presumed to be Western. A case involving the national law of Tunisia and the status of Jews called the very foundations of the international legal system into question. In putting Samama's nationality on trial, the case opened up debate over fissures in the emerging theory of international law: How could non-Western states like Tunisia fit into an international legal order? How did Islamic law intersect with international law? What was the status of Jewish nationhood in a world increasingly based on exclusive nationalities? The Samama case offers access to the voices of European international lawyers debating the ambiguities of their field, as well as those of Maghrebis articulating their own vision of international law. The resulting arguments exposed tensions inherent to an international legal system uncomfortably balanced between universalism and Western particularism.
    • Le crachoir chinois du roi : Marchandises globales, culture de cour et vodun dans les royaumes de Hueda et du Dahomey (XVIIe-XIXe siècle) - Roberto Zaugg, Antoine Heudre p. 119-159 accès libre avec résumé en 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.

  • Travail et société

    • Écrire l'histoire du travail aujourd'hui : Le cas de l'Empire romain (note critique) - Christel Freu p. 161-184 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      Three recently published books raise the question of labor in the Roman Empire. The present article aims to investigate the sources privileged by historians, the scale of observation on which their analysis is situated, and the theoretical assumptions that guide them. These reflections show that there are multiple ways of writing labor history, currently divided into different subfields which do not always communicate with one another. Thanks to new readings of ancient literature and epigraphy, and to the contribution of papyri and archaeology, the traditional history of work and trades has been widely renewed. An important line of questioning examines the reasons for the high degree of trade specialization in the Roman Empire, as well as the existence of a true division of labor. Archaeology helps us understand the technologies and processes of production, making it possible to establish a typology of the socioprofessional identities, from employers to employees, that existed in the shops and workshops of the Roman world. A quite different approach investigates the organization of labor from a macroeconomic perspective, seeing it as a force mobilized by employers: comparisons between the productivity of slaves and that of free workers have been replaced by analyses of the transaction costs of free hired labor versus servile manpower. Finally, debate continues between historians who consider that the labor market of the Roman Empire was limited by clientelist networks and servile labor, and those who describe a free-market economy where labor had become a commodity.
    • Concurrence et collaboration dans le monde du livre vénitien, 1469-début du XVIe siècle - Catherine Kikuchi p. 185-212 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      The early history of printing in Europe is one of great economic and commercial success, but also of significant risks taken by those involved. The supply of paper, essential to the functioning of a press, could cause conflicts and required constantly available capital: the profitability of the book industry depended on the growth of the market. In Venice, anyone could set up as a printer, creating competition that was strongly criticized by printers and booksellers in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. This prompted them to formulate the economic risks they faced in supplica addressed to the Venetian authorities, and to conceptualize the realities of their situation, especially in terms of competition. This word, always used in a pejorative sense, is nevertheless rare in both theoretical and practical documents of the time. However competitive this economic milieu was, it was counterbalanced by the necessity of collaboration, a phenomenon that can be studied through Social Network Analysis. Trust was restored through the constitution of dense collaborative networks, in which competitors became partners. Yet this also enabled some actors to establish strong consortia, leading to the kind of oligopolistic economy typical of industries without state regulation.

  • Comptes rendus