Orientalism in early modern France

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

"Traités nouveaux & curieux du café du thé et du chocolate", by Philippe Sylvestre Dufour, 1685.

In

early modern France, Orientalism refers to the interaction of pre-modern France with the Orient, and especially the cultural, scientific, artistic and intellectual impact of these interactions, ranging from the academic field of Oriental studies to Orientalism in fashions in the decorative arts.[1]

Early study of Oriental languages

Main article: Studia Linguarum

The first attempts to study oriental languages were made by the Church in Rome, with the establishment of the Studia Linguarum in order to help the Dominicans liberate Christian captives in Islamic lands. The first school was established in Tunis by Raymond of Penyafort in the 12th and early 13th century.[2] In 1311, the Council of Vienne decided to create schools for the study of oriental languages in the universities of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca and Rome.[2]

The first Orientalist, Guillaume Postel (1536)

Further information: Turquerie
National Gallery, London
.
Arabic astronomical manuscript of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, annotated by Guillaume Postel.

From the 16th century, the study of oriental languages and cultures was progressively transferred from religious to royal patronage, as Francis I sought an alliance with the Ottoman Empire.[3] Ottoman embassies soon visited France, one in 1533, and another the following year.[3]

Henri II. Bibliothèque nationale de France
.

Arabic, either religious or scientific in content (mainly mathematics and medicine), to France.[4]

Scientific exchange is thought to have occurred, as numerous works in Arabic, especially pertaining to

Copernicus was establishing his own astronomical theories.[5]

Guillaume Postel envisioned a world where

Universalist Jean Bodin.[6] He claimed that Islam was only a branch of Christianity, a simple heresy that could be reintegrated into Christianity, in his book Alcorani seu legis Mahometi et evangelistarum concordiae liber (1543).[7]

Postel also studied languages and sought to identify the common origin of all languages, before Babel.[6] He became Professor of Mathematics and Oriental Languages, as well as the first professor of Arabic, at the Collège royal.

Second embassy to the Ottoman Empire (1547)

André Thévet
, Cosmographie du Levant, 1556, Lyon.

Scientific research

In 1547, a second embassy was sent by the French king to the Ottoman Empire, led by

André Thévet, philosopher Guillaume Postel, traveler Nicolas de Nicolay, or the cleric and diplomat Jean de Monluc, who would publish their findings upon their return to France and contribute greatly to the early development of science in France.[8]

Political studies

Knowledge of the Ottoman Empire allowed French philosophers to make comparative studies between the political systems of different nations.

Lettres persanes.[9]

The arts

French novels and tragedies were written with the Ottoman Empire as a theme or background.

Roxelane in the 1553 execution of Mustapha, the elder son of Suleiman.[10][11] This tragedy marks the first time the Ottomans were introduced on stage in France.[12] Turquerie and chinoiserie
were notable fashions that affected a wide range of the decorative arts.

Oriental studies

Latin-Syriac psalter by Gabriel Sionita, 1625, printed by Antoine Vitré with the fonts of François Savary de Brèves.

Oriental studies continued to take place towards the end of the 16th century, especially with the work of

Sultan Ahmed I on 20 May 1604, giving a marked advantage for French trade, against that of the English and the Venetians.[14] In these capitulations, the protection of the French king over Jerusalem and the Holy Land is also recognized. Brèves was interested in establishing an Arabic printing press under his own account in order to introduce Oriental studies in France. He had Arabic, Turk, Persian and Syriac types cast while in Istanbul.[15] He also brought to France a large collection of Oriental manuscripts.[15] These excellent types, followed those of Guillaume Le Bé
at the end of the 16th century.

Qur'an to be translated into a vernacular language: L'Alcoran de Mahomet, André du Ryer
, 1647.

While in Rome he set up a publishing house, the Typographia Savariana, through which he printed a Latin-Arab bilingual edition of a catechism of Cardinal

Maronite College, Gabriel Sionita (Jibrā'īl aṣ-Ṣahyūnī) and Victor Scialac (Naṣrallāh Shalaq al-'Āqūrī).[15]

In 1610–11,

Marrakech from 1598 to 1601.[17]

A protégé of Savary de Brèves,

Gulistan (1634).[18]

According to McCabe, Orientalism played a key role "in the birth of science and in the creation of the French Academy of Sciences".[19]

Development of trade

Muséum national d'histoire naturelle
, Paris.

France started to set up numerous

Abdallah bin Aisha was sent to Louis XIV
.

Coffee drinking

An Ottoman embassy was sent to

Müteferrika Süleyman Ağa, who created a sensation at the French court and triggered a fashion for things Turkish.[22] The Orient came to have a strong influence in French literature, as about 50% of French travel guides in the 16th century were dedicated to the Ottoman Empire.[23]
In Paris, Suleiman set up a beautiful house where he offered
caftans became fashionable, as well as lying on rugs and cushions.[27]

Manufacture of "Oriental" luxury goods in France

Further information: Turquerie and Chinoiserie
Left image: Ottoman court carpet, late 16th century, Egypt or Turkey.
Right image: French adaptation: Tapis de Savonnerie, under Louis XIV, after Charles Le Brun, made for the Grande Galerie in the Louvre Palace.

The establishment of strong diplomatic and commercial relations with the

carpets. Due to these concerns, and also because French luxury arts had collapsed in the disorders of civil violence in the Wars of Religion, Henri IV attempted to develop French luxury industries that could replace imports. The king provided craftsmen with studios and workshops. These efforts to develop an industry for luxury goods was continued by Louis XIII and Louis XIV
.

Silk manufacturing

Henry IV made the earliest attempt at producing substitutes for luxury goods from the Orient. He experimented with planting

Palais des Tuileries.[28] Ultimately, silk manufacturing would become one of the major industries of France into the 19th century, and one of the major reasons for the development of France-Japan relations in the 19th century
.

During the 17th century, from being an importer, France became a net exporter of silk, for example shipping 30,000 pounds sterling worth of silk to England in 1674 alone.[29]

Turkish carpet-making

The

Louis XIII in 1627 to Pierre Dupont and his former apprentice Simon Lourdet, makers of carpets façon de Turquie ("in the manner of Turkey
"). Until 1768, the products of the manufactory remained exclusively the property of the Crown, and "Savonnerie carpets" were among the grandest of French diplomatic gifts.

Chinese porcelain

Main article: French porcelain
18th century Chinese export porcelain, Guimet Museum, Paris.
Blue and white eathenware with Chinese scene, Nevers faience
, 1680–1700.
Chantilly soft-paste porcelain teapot, 1735–1740.
Woman in dress made of Siamoise ("Siamese") textile, 1687.
Confucius, Philosopher of the Chinese, or, Chinese Knowledge Explained in Latin, an introduction to Chinese history and philosophy published at Paris in 1687 by a team of Jesuits working under Philippe Couplet.
Charles André van Loo, an example of Turquerie
.

blue and white wares were produced for the first time in France, using the faience technique, with production running between 1650 and 1680.[32]

Chinese porcelain was collected at the French court from the time of Francis I.

Royal Factory of Saint-Cloud in 1664 in order to make copies (In the original "Contre-façons", i.e. "Fakes") of "Indian-style" porcelain.[33]

France was one of the first European countries to produce

Rouen manufactory in 1673, which was known for this reason as "Porcelaine française".[34] These were developed in an effort to imitate high-valued Chinese hard-paste porcelain.[34]

France however, only discovered the Chinese technique of

Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles between 1712 and 1722.[33] Louis XIV had received 1,500 pieces of porcelain from the Siamese Embassy to France in 1686, but the manufacturing secret had remained elusive.[33] The English porcelain-manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood may also have been influenced by the letter of Father d'Entrecolles and his description of Chinese mass-production methods.[31] After this initial period, until the end of the 18th century, French porcelain manufactories would progressively abandon their Chinese designs, to become more French in character.[33]

Textiles: Siamoises and Indiennes

Siamoise flammée textile, derived from Thai Ikat, French manufacture, 18th century.
An Indienne, a printed or painted textile in the manner of Indian productions.

The Siamese Embassy to France in 1686 had brought to the Court samples of multicolor Thai Ikat textiles. These were enthusiastically adopted by the French nobility to become Toiles flammées or Siamoises de Rouen, often with checkered blue-and-white designs.[35] After the French Revolution and its dislike for foreign luxury, the textiles were named "Toiles des Charentes" or cottons of Provence.[36]

Textiles imported from

Indiennes, were also widely adopted and manufactured, especially in Marseille, although there were difficulties in obtaining comparable dyes, especially the red dye madder.[36]

Literature

French literature also was greatly influenced. The first French version of

Lettres persanes, a satirical essay on the West, in 1721, and Voltaire used the Oriental appeal to write Zaïre (1732) and Candide (1759).[37] French travelers of the 17th century, such as Jean de Thévenot or Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
routinely visited the Ottoman Empire.

By that time, the

Deists and other philosophical groups of the Enlightenment.[38][39]

Japanese alphabets, including Hiragana, Katakana and "Imatto-canna". Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie, 18th century.

In particular, cultural diversity with respect to religious beliefs could no longer be ignored. As Herbert wrote in On Lay Religion (De Religione Laici, 1645):

Many faiths or religions, clearly, exist or once existed in various countries and ages, and certainly there is not one of them that the lawgivers have not pronounced to be as it were divinely ordained, so that the Wayfarer finds one in Europe, another in Africa, and in Asia, still another in the very Indies.

Starting with Grosrichard, analogies were also made between the harem, the Sultan's court, oriental

despotism, luxury, gems and spices, carpets, and silk cushions with the luxury and vices of France's own monarchy.[40]

Visual arts

By the end of the 17th century, the first major defeats of the Ottoman Empire reduced the perceived threat in European minds, which led to an artistic craze for things Turkish,

Jean-Baptiste van Mour, who had accompanied the embassy of Charles de Ferriol to Istanbul 1699 and stayed there until the end of his life in 1737, and later with the works of Boucher and Fragonard.[37]

Cultural impact

According to historian McCabe, early orientalism profoundly shaped French culture and gave it many of its modern characteristics. In the area of science, she stressed "the role of Orientalism in the birth of science and in the creation of the

French Academy of Science".[19] In the artistic area, referring to Louis XIV's fashion efforts that contrasted with the contemporary fashion for austere Spanish dress: "ironically, endorsing oriental sartorial splendor at court gave rise to the creation of 'Frenchness' through fashion, which became an umbrella definition that broke through the class barrier".[41]

See also

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-1-84520-374-0
    , Berg Publishing, Oxford
  2. ^ a b McCabe, p.29
  3. ^ a b c McCabe, p.37
  4. ^ McCabe, p.44
  5. ^ Whose Science is Arabic Science in Renaissance Europe? by George Saliba Columbia University
  6. ^ a b McCabe, p.15
  7. ^ McCabe, p.40-41
  8. ^ McCabe, p.48
  9. ^ a b c McCabe, p.61
  10. ^ a b Ecouen Museum exhibit
  11. ^ The Literature of the French Renaissance by Arthur Augustus Tilley, p.87 [1]
  12. ^ The Penny cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge p.418 [2]
  13. ^ Marbled paper: its history, techniques, and patterns by Richard J. Wolfe p.35
  14. ^ a b The Encyclopaedia of Islam: Fascicules 111–112 : Masrah Mawlid by Clifford Edmund Bosworth p.799
  15. ^ a b c d Eastern wisedome and learning: the study of Arabic in seventeenth-century... G. J. Toomer p.30ff
  16. ^ Eastern wisedome and learning: the study of Arabic in seventeenth-century Europe by G. J. Toomer p.43ff
  17. ^ Romania Arabica by Gerard Wiegers p.410
  18. ^ a b McCabe, p.97
  19. ^ a b McCabe, p.3
  20. ^ McCabe, p.98
  21. ^ Bluche, François. "Louis XIV", p. 439, Hachette Litteratures, Paris (1986).
  22. ^ Göçek, p.8
  23. ^ Goody, p.73
  24. ^ Bernstein, p.247
  25. ^ New York Times Starbucked, 16 December 2007
  26. ^ Bound together by Nayan Chanda p.88
  27. ^ Bound together by Nayan Chanda p.87
  28. ^ McCabe, p.8
  29. ^ McCabe, p.6
  30. ^ Paris as it was and as it is, or, A sketch of the French capital by Francis William Blagdon p.512 [3]
  31. ^ a b Chinese glazes: their origins, chemistry, and recreation Nigel Wood p.240
  32. ^ The Grove encyclopedia of materials and techniques in art Gerald W. R. Ward p.38
  33. ^ a b c d McCabe, p.220ff
  34. ^ a b Artificial Soft Paste Porcelain – France, Italy, Spain and England Edwin Atlee Barber p.5–6
  35. ^ McCabe, p.222
  36. ^ a b McCabe, p.223
  37. ^ a b c d Goody, p.75
  38. ISBN 0-89073-050-4
  39. ISBN 0-521-54724-5
  40. ISBN 978-1-84520-374-0
    . Retrieved 31 August 2013.
  41. ^ McCabe, p.5

References

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