Preliminary Programme

The career of the abbé Leclerc de Montlinot (1732-1801) provides a remarkable case study of the progression of social policy from the end of the old regime through each stage of the Revolution. His career exhibits a striking continuity from the reform movements framed by enlightenment debates and the construction of social citizenship from 1789 through 1794, particularly as stated in the formula that policy on assistance is a “political science,” and that welfare provision is an integral function of the nation on behalf of its citizens. As a young journalist in league with Voltaire and the publisher Panckoucke, Montlinot tangled with authorities. As a prize-winning essayist in the 1770s, he called for the reform of Old Regime approaches to begging and poverty. Jacques Necker named him to a post where he could model his ideas for rehabilitating arrested beggars. Montlinot’s published reports contained extensive observations and commentary, launching him on a career as an institutional reformer and administrator utilizing empirical methods of social inquiry. He was asked to join the Committee of Mendicity established by the Constituent Assembly six months after the fall of the Bastille. Just before introducing the legislation of 22 floréal of the year II, Bertrand Barère enlisted him to help conduct the welfare policy of the Jacobin Convention. In spite of his association with this leading figure in the Committee of Public Safety, Montlinot retained a key role in the Ministry of the Interior after the fall of Robespierre. He rose in the bureaucracy under the Directory and the Consulate until he was eased out by Napoleon in 1800.
Did bureaucratic survival entail a renunciation of Montlinot’s long-held principles? Was he weathervane or chameleon? An examination of his writings reveals a recurring ambivalence in his vision of social relations and the potential for their reform. He would be at once rebel and administrator, joining civic passion to the empirical study of society and governance. The tensions in his rhetoric and action reflect concerns shared with other eighteenth-century reformers and revolutionaries. How free were citizens to shape their nation’s future with the benefit of empirical social inquiry? (Show less)

The kind of household, the strength of family ties and the efficiency of poor relief in Southern Europe are a neglected topic in historical research, compared to studies of northern Europe. It is often still assumed that in Southern Europe predominates joint families, solid family ties and poor relief institutions underdeveloped. It is often still assumed as well that kin bore the brunt of caring for the poor and thus that poor relief institutions catered predominantly for those without kin. The paper aims to provide a case study of households and the social sustenability in a southern European urban context and to challenge some of these assumptions. It is based on: a) a study of 800 households of the Sant Pere neighbourhood in 1770 in the city of Barcelona; b) a study of letters to the admission of women to asylum o Casa de Misericordia de Barcelona in 1770 and 1777.
The paper will thus also examine the size and composition of household, the role of kin and non-kin as part of dynamics in household, the intergenerational support and the poor relief. It will show that, even in this southern European context, the diversity of households –including nuclear families- often made strategic use of the poor relief options available to them as part of their ‘economies of makeshift’, in a context of ‘grass roots economies´, combining a ‘mixed economy of welfare’ with the support of family, kin and not-kin in ways that were mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive. (Show less)

During the eighteenth century well educated Europeans developed an ever greater interest in the Muslim Near East. Growing numbers of Europeans travelled Eastwards. But traffic also went the other way. A particular kind of reverse travellers were the so-called ‘Princes of Mount Lebanon’ who traversed the Western world claiming to collect funds for the aid of Christian Maronites in Lebanon. During more than eighty years, from the 1720s to early 1800s, generations of Maronites travelled all over Europe, with spectacular success at first, but eventually often listed as begging vagrants.

This paper seeks to chart this pan-European phenomenon and to explore why Maronite` collectors’ were initially so successful, playing with Western concepts of Christian solidarity, charity and prevalent notions of the Orient, but eventually were found out. (Show less)

Nowadays the ‘linear model’ of transitions from the medieval private and voluntary forms of the poor relief to the early modern ones tending to the public measures and compulsory taxation is increasingly reviewed. It was also proposed to shift the key moment of its formulation to the middle of the 16th century .
The fact of long coexistence of the old and new forms of the charitable activities in Tudor and Early Stuart England suggests that there were a manifold of philanthropic motivations as responses of individuals to the segregation between Catholic and Protestant philanthropy, the progress of humanistic education, the rise of local organized relief, the legislation activities of the state, etc. Intersection of donors’ individual choice and the social agencies mapped boundaries of personal and group philanthropy.
This paper investigates the role of the Church of England as one of the key agents in mapping boundaries of philanthropy during the period of working out and implementation poor laws in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England. The paper focuses particularly on Anglican perceptions of charity, methods of persuasion and feedback. Adapting the field theory concepts to interpretation of the Church and parochial documents, sermons, wills and other relating sources I hope to show that the Church of England sought to find a balance in the different motivation schemes to rearrange the boundaries of the private charity according to the new trends of the poor relief. (Show less)

What if Bill Gates and Warren Buffet lived 400 years ago, would they also be as philanthropic as they are now? This paper examines philanthropic behavior (both inter-vivos and legacy giving) of the 263 wealthiest individuals in the Netherlands during the Dutch Golden Age (16-17th century). Using unique data from printed sources and wills located in municipal archives as well as the Royal Archive, our results show that the elite of the Dutch Golden Age were rather uncharitable, especially compared to common Dutch people who were literally harassed to make donations in church or in the street. (Show less)