Ebook: Imperial Paradoxes: Training the Senses and Tasting the Eighteenth Century

An encyclopedic literary history of Britain's and France's rival and complementary economies of eating, drinking, travelling, and fashion.

At war for sixty years, eighteenth-century Britain and France experienced demographic, social, and economic exchanges despite their imperial rivalry. Paradoxically, this rivalry spurred their participation in scientific and industrial developments. Their shared interest in standards of living and cultural practices was fuelled by migration and philosophical exchanges that reciprocally transmitted the values of urban geography, medicine, teaching, and the industrial and fine arts. In Imperial Paradoxes Robert Merrett compares British and French literature on those topics.