Im Rahmen des Kolloquiums „Globalgeschichte – Wissensgeschichte – Global Foodways“ (in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Historischen Seminar der Universität Erfurt) spricht Prof. Dr. Emma Spary (Cambridge) am Dienstag, 15. Juli, über „‘Artificial fruits‘: Nature, culture and colonialism in eighteenth-century France“ im Seminarraum des Forschungszentrums Gotha der Universität Erfurt. Beginn des Vortrags in englischer Sprache ist um 18.15 Uhr, der Eintritt ist frei. Alle Interessierten sind herzlich willkommen.

Eighteenth-century French projects for colonial cultivation provoked debate over the state of nature and the moral implications of human intervention in it. As a result, French writings on natural, acclimatised and colonial fruits were politicised during the closing decades of the Old Regime. Descriptions of the distribution of fruits around the globe and discussions of the source of the Earth’s fruitfulness enshrined proposals for the improvement of French society by recourse to Nature. However, Revolutionary legislators would inherit two conflicting models: Nature as foresightful and perfect, versus Nature as lacking and miserly. Both these views informed policy decisions about whether the virtuous Republican State ought to support or restrain cultivation and its sciences, botany, rural economy and horticulture.

Emma Spary lectures at the University of Cambridge. Her publications include Utopia’s Garden (2000), Eating the Enlightenment (2012) and Feeding France (2014). She has also co-edited Cultures of Natural History (1996) and Sammeln als Wissen (2001).