Contact Information

Room: H015
Phone: 024 76150072
Email: f.gottmann@warwick.ac.uk

Office Hours: Wed 12-1 and Thurs 2-3

 

Working with the Europe's Asian Centuries Project

I am the project member primarily interested the French East India Company. My work looks at the impact of Asian fabrics in ancien régime France, from their increased imports with the foundation of the French East India Company in 1664, to their oft repeated prohibitions from 1686 onwards, the lifting of the bans in 1759, and their role in French politics and thought up to 1780, when the last edition of Raynal’s History of the Two Indies was published. For more info click here.

Research Interests

Intellectual, Cultural, and Economic History of the eighteenth century, especially in France: Enlightenment literature and thought, social and political philosophy, political economy, gender and the Enlightenment; trade, commercial culture, the East India Companies. My current research focusses on the introduction of fine Asian manufactured goods, especially Indian cottons, into France.

Teaching

Undergraduate:

HI 272 The World of Consumption 1600-1800

HI 174 The Enlightenment

Graduate:

HI916 Consumption and Culture in the Eighteenth Century

Academic Profile

• Research Fellow, Centre for Global History, History Department, Warwick University (2010-2014)
• Heath Harrison Teaching Fellow, University of Oxford (2007-2009)
• D.Phil, University of Oxford: ‘The Eighteenth-Century Luxury Debate: the case of Voltaire’ (2007-2010). Supervisor: Dr. Jonathan Mallinson, examiners: Professor Nicholas Cronk (Oxford), Professor John Robertson (Cambridge)
• M.St., University of Oxford: ‘Women and the Luxury Debate: the case of Françoise de Graffigny’ (2006-2007)
• B.A., University of Oxford and Université Toulouse le Mirail: Modern History and French (2002-2006)

Publications

• 'French-Asian Connections: The Compagnies des Indes, France's Eastern Trade, and New Directions in Historical Scholarship', ​The Historical Journal 56 (June 2013), pp. 537-552 click here to view this article
  
• 'Intellectual History as Global History: Voltaire's Fragments sur l'Inde and the problem of Enlightened commerce' forthcoming in New Global Connections: India and Europe in the Long Eighteenth Century ed. by Gabriel Sanchez, Simon Davies, and Daniel Roberts (Oxford: SVEC)
  
• 'Du Châtelet, Voltaire, and the Transformation of Mandeville's Fable,' History of European Ideas, Volume 38, Issue 2, June 2012, pp.218-232 click here to view this article
• D.Phil Thesis: 'The eighteenth-century luxury debate: the case of Voltaire' (Oxford, 2010) click here for abstracts and preview
• 'Materialism and Morality: Diderot and Sade in Light of the Luxury Debate' SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century): 2008:06, pp. 217-226
• Reviews: French Studies: A l’Ombre des Lumières: Littérature et pensée françaises du XVIIIe siècle, ed. by Trude Kolderup & Svein-Eirik Fauskevag (Paris: Solum & L’Harmattan, 2009); Guillaume-Thomas Raynal: Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes. Édition critique. Tome I. Sous la direction d'Anthony Strugnell. Ferney-Voltaire: Centre International d’Etude du XVIIIe Siècle, 2010; Patrick Neiertz, Voltaire et l'économie politique (SVEC 2012:10) forthcoming. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies: The Colonial Machine. French Science and Overseas Expansion in the Old Regime. By J. McClellan III, F. Regourd. Turnhout: Brepols. 2011. forthcoming.
  
• Encyclopedia entries: 'Françoise de Graffigny', The Literary Encyclopedia (www.litencyc.com)

Selected Papers

• Congrès de l’Association Française d’Histoire Économique 2013, Roubaix, France: 'Echec de la vertu ou vertu de l’échec? Le discours économique de la querelle sur la prohibition destoiles peintes en France (1749-1759)' (Oct 2013)
• Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, US: Eighteenth-Century Studies: Maritime World Workshop. Presentation: ‘Maritime History as Connected History’ (May 2013)
• Université Paris-Diderot, LARCA, EA 4214, and University of Chicago Center in Paris: Colloqium, The Turn to Consumption: Perspectives on the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Europe'. Presentation: 'Europe's Asian Centuries, 1600-1830: Asian manufactured goods, European consumption' (May 2013)
• Yale University, New Haven, US: Conference on "The Companies: Continuities, Transition, or Disjuncture?" organised by Emily Erikson and Julia Adams. Presentation: ‘The French East India Company: Asian trade and its impact on metropolitan France’ (May 2013)
• Yale University: Conference on ‘Political Economy and Empire in the Early Modern World.' Organised by the transatlantic Political Cultures Working Group (Steve Pincus and Joanne Freeman), Yale University, New Haven, US: : joint paper together with Maxine Berg, Tim Davies, Meike Fellinger, Hanna
  Hodacs, and Chris Nierstrasz ‘Private Trade and Monopoly Structures: the East India Companies and the Commodity Trade to Europe in the Eighteenth Century’(May 2013)
• Palazzo Pesaro-Papafava, Venice, Italy: Conference co-organizer together with Maxine Berg, Helen Clifford, Hanna Hodacs, and Chris Nierstrasz: Goods from the East: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830. Paper: ‘Troublesome Textiles: Asian Cottons in France’ (January 2013)
• Leiden University: Leiden Warwick Symposium. Presentation "Forbidden passions: Indian Textiles in Eighteenth Century France" (May 2012)
• International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Congress, Graz, Austria: 'Voltaire’s Fragments sur l’Inde and the Problematic Nature of Indian-European Exchange in the later 18th Century' (July 2011)
• Princeton University, NJ, USA: 'The Ethics of Progress and Consumerism – Debates in 18th-Century Political Economy' (April 2010)
• American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, Albuquerque, NM, USA: 'Mandeville, Du Châtelet and Voltaire: The Intellectual Foundations of Voltaire’s Defence of Luxury and Commercial Society’ (March 2010).