Rahul Markovits
Rahul Markovits is Associate Professor (maître de conférences) in early modern history at the École normale supérieure.
His work focuses on the circulation of people, texts, objects and cultural products on a transnational scale during the long 18th century.
His PhD dissertation was awarded the 2012 Baluze prize in local European history. It was published under the title Civiliser l’Europe. Politiques du théâtre français au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, Fayard, 2014). The book won the 2016 Walker Cowen Memorial Prize and is being translated into English for University of Virginia Press. By examining the presence of French companies of actors in a wide set of courts and cities throughout Europe (Geneva, Brussels, Vienna, Turin, Parma, Stockholm, Mainz), this work uncovers the complex mechanisms underpinning the dissemination of French culture during the long 18th century (including the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods), thus challenging the traditional Europe française thesis. Among the topics discussed are transnational labour history, early-modern court culture and republicanism, soft power and cultural imperialism.
He has started research on two new projects. The first centers on the journey to London undertaken in the early 1790s by the sons of the deposed nawab of Broach (Bharuch, in Gujarat). The main focus is on one of the travelers, Ahmad Khan, who was stranded in France for two years, from 1793 to 1795. This project in connected micro-history uses the surprisingly rich paper trail he left behind him to understand the social practice of cross-cultural travel during the age of revolutions.
The second project examines the global ginseng trade in the 18th century. Exploring how Europeans tried to sell North American ginseng to China, this work endeavours to shed light on the dynamics, but also the dead ends, of 18th century globalization, and in particular on the part French networks (jesuits, botanists, the Compagnie des Indes) played in the process.
Thèmes de recherche :
Histoires connectées Europe - Asie (XVIIIe siècle)
Histoire des mobilités
Histoire de l’ âge des révolutions
Histoire des circulations culturelles en Europe au XVIIIe siècle
Histoire et littérature
Historiographie
Contact :
En délégation CNRS au Centre de recherches historiques, je n’assurerai pas ma permanence en 2024-2025. Vous pouvez néanmoins m’écrire pour prendre rendez-vous.
Bureau 6, escalier D, 3e étage
Téléphone : 01 44 32 38 13
rahul.markovits chez ens.fr
