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Cornel Zwierlein, de la Ruhr-Universität Bochum, présentera sa communication « The French and British in the Mediterranean, 1650-1750 – and the questions a History of ignorance asks for » le jeudi 20 octobre 2016, de 17h30 à 19h30. Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e , salle D421.Résumé :The history of the French and British trading empires in the earlymodern Mediterranean is used as a setting to test a new general approachto a history of ignorance: how can we understand the very act ofignoring – in all kinds of political, economic, religious, cultural andscientific communication – as a fundamental trigger that sets epistemesin motion? Is the ‘structure’ of the Scientific Revolution between 1650and 1750 just one specific type of what were in fact many epistemicmovements taking place at the same time – different, but comparable?What was the role here of the European empires? The book deconstructscentral categories like the mercantilist ‘national’, the exchange of‘confessions’ between Western and Eastern Christians, and the bridgingof cultural gaps between Europeans and Ottoman subjects, into forms ofcommunicating unknowns. Making those multiple unknowns explicit in a newreflective way was the core of ‘enlightenment empires’.Discutant: Daniel Foliard, Université Paris Nanterre