Emma Rothschild Libri

Marie Aymard was an illiterate widow who lived in the provincial town of Angoulême in south-western France, a place where seemingly nothing ever happened. Yet, in 1764, she made her fleeting mark on the historical record through two documents: a power of attorney in connection with the property of her late husband, and a prenuptial contract for her daughter. Taking a panoramic look at Aymard and her family over five generations and three centuries, Emma Rothschild reveals how the life of one ordinary extended family offers a remarkable record of deep social and economic changes. The result is an innovative history of social and family networks, emigration, immobility, the French Revolution, and the transformation of nineteenth-century economic life. -- page 4 of cover

In a recreation of the epoch between the 1770s and the 1820s, Emma Rothschild reinterprets the ideas of the great revolutionary political economists to show us the true landscape of economic and political thought in their day, with important consequences for our own. Her work alters the readings of Adam Smith and Condorcet - and of ideas of enlightenment - that underlie much contemporary political thought. This text takes up late-18th-century disputes over the political economy of an enlightened, commercial society to show us how the political and the economic were intricately related to each other and to philosophical reflection. Rothschild examines theories of economic and political sentiments, and the reflection of these theories in the politics of enlightenment.

1764 wird in der Provinzstadt Angouleme im Sudwesten Frankreichs ein Ehevertrag geschlossen, auf dem 83 Personen unterzeichnen - eine scheinbar fluchtige Spur in der Geschichte. Emma Rothschild folgt diesen Unterzeichnern und ihren Nachkommen und entfaltet so eine faszinierend andere Geschichte Frankreichs.