A Picaresque Project of the 18th century: The Savoyard King of Madagascar
Herman Moll, the south part of africa and the island madagascar, london 1728.
Oxford, St Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall
Le 13/02/2024
Séminaire dans le cadre de « Early Modern Italian Seminar 2024 », organisé par la Faculté d'histoire et St Edmund Hall (Oxford), en collaboration avec la Maison française d’Oxford et l’École française de Rome.
Responsables : Filippo de Vivo (St Edmund Hall), Federica Gigante (History of Science Museum) ; Giuseppe Marcocci (Exeter) : Gervase Rosser (St Catz) ; Jane Stevens (Brookes) ; Emanuela Vai (Worcester).
Séance du 13 février 2024, 16 h 30
A Picaresque Project of the 18th century: The Savoyard King of Madagascar
Guillaume Calafat (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, ancien membre de l'EFR)
The State Archives in Turin hold a curious 65-page manuscript, written in French for the King of Sardinia and Duke of Savoy Vittorio-Amedeo II, probably at the very end of the 1720s. Entitled “Origin of the Filibusters established on the Island of Madagascar (...) with a plan to King Victor to receive them under his Protection”, it aimed to rally the pirates of Madagascar to the sovereign of the Kingdom of Piedmont. During the reign of Vittorio-Amedeo II (r. 1675-1730), numerous projects for overseas commercial expansion arrived on the tables of the king’s secretaries. Although they were hardly ever implemented, they do testify to the growing maritime ambitions of the Duchy of Savoy in the early 18th century. More broadly, they invite us to consider the role of the Italian states in 18th-century plans to explore the world and, on a methodological level, they raise the question of how to read and study projects that were never implemented.
Information : earlymodernitaly(at)history.ox.ac.uk
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