What do you like about the 18th century, Veeky Forums?

What do you like about the 18th century, Veeky Forums?

Personally, I don't understand the 18th century. I have no idea what happened and what the main themes and processes of the century were, and what makes it stand out as a distinct period.

If we're talking about 1600s, we have the advent of modernity, adoption of empiricism and the scientific method, creation and solidification of nation states, baroque.
In the 1800s we have nationalism, the industrial revolution, empires, romanticism.

The only things I can think of within the 18th century are Kant, the elevation of masonic societies and enlightenment and of course, the revolutions in France and America. But I don't see how they fit into the natural historical dialectic of the previous centuries. Enlightened monarchies were failed experiments, which didn't really work in this century either.

If we're talking about European high culture, to me it seems like a century of bland formalism and soul-killing pretensions of class and refinement which seem simply crass and tacky to me (vis. the pretty, anodyne colors and airbrushed feel of Rococo.) Even music of the classical period sounds a little too constrained and formalised to me.

In the East, we have the decomposition and decline of all the great Asian powers and the beginning of their fall to European colonialism (Ottoman Empire, China, etc)
We have Russia losing its old cultural identity to the Eurocentric whims of Peter I.

it seems like it was only Japan where this century was more or less stable and interesting.

Also I don't get the whacky, colorful military uniforms all the European powers adopted. It just looks stupid and impractical to me.

I am hoping someone can prove my stupid, uneducated self wrong on this subject.

Rococo is generally considered one of the worst styles in art-history. But the 18th century north American colonial history is very interesting and the 17th and 18th centuries saw the beginnings of truly modern that culminated in the Napoleonic era.

Peter I seemed like a really interesting character that was necessary for the survival and expansion of the Russian Empire, that being said, I do wish he had not existed and Sweden remained dominant in the Baltic.

Peter's economic and military efforts were doubtless very expedient and efficient, and allowed Russia to overcome many obstacles and indeed prosper on the global arena, but his cultural eurocentric caprices led to the creation of a Europeanised upper class isolated and detached from their national roots, which led to a cultural schism between the upper and lower classes, which itself proved to be a major weakness in Russia's social order and a major target for the subversive efforts of socialist and communist parties.
Also it allowed the Russian ruling classes to get used to a quality of life enjoyed by the European elite, which forced them to spend more money than they could afford, because Russian agriculture could not provide the same yields as European agriculture.

The end result was a bloody revolution and and a bloody civil war 150 years later.
It could have been done better, and by far not all of Peter's policies were necessary.

You keep using words like "Europe", "Eurocentric", and "Europeanized", and in all cases the appropriate thing to refer to is "western". Europe and Russia are not separate concepts and you will never understand their history to any significant extent if you maintain this silly modern "Russia OR Europe" dichotomy in your head.

>much venom and no substance.

The European way of life is defined by its geography, i.e. the Gulfstream.

This means year-round access to warm waters and excellent conditions for intensive agriculture. These factors define culture and mentality.

The defining psychological difference between Russia and the rest of Europe is illustrated by a simple comparison of the climates and agricultural cycles/conditions in both places.

The Russian cycle is much shorter, the soil is poorer, the weather is colder, and cannot provide the same amount of surplus/income for the landowners as European soil. Which is why when the Russian upper class begins to think it's European and expects the same lifestyle as the European nobility, they end up taking more grain from the peasants than they can afford, which means the country falls into crisis.

This is the result of the ideas you just expressed.

Naturally the nature of the agricultural cycle affects the world-view and mentality of the peasants (i.e. most people), so the huge differences here define differences in mentality of the populations of both regions as well, but that is a different subject.

Ethnically, yes, Russians are more similar to most European peoples than Asian peoples.

There is of course also a historic cultural rift between West and East Europe, specifically the Rhine, as far as I know, was considered the border between "civilised" West and "barbaric" East, in the West of Europe, but I would argue it was not that severe.

I am not even going into the crucial differences in the understanding of the concepts of law, power, and landownership in Russia and the rest of Europe which already existed in the early Kievan days, or into the differences in the readings of Christianity.

>The European way of life is defined by its geography
no it is not.
>These factors define culture and mentality.
Russia is culturally very similar to a lot of European peoples both historically and recently, because it is a European people. I am not sure why you think geography is a factor in this, especially when historically Russia has controlled many very fertile areas of Europe such as the Ukraine.
>why when the Russian upper class begins to think it's European and expects the same lifestyle as the European nobility
replace every instance of "European" with "Western European" and you would be correct.
>There is of course also a historic cultural rift between West and East Europe, specifically the Rhine, as far as I know, was considered the border between "civilised" West and "barbaric" East
Yes, more than a millennium ago, and what constitutes "Europe" is not arbitrated exclusively by the French, British, and Germans, as you seem to believe. A Ukrainian's geographic and cultural distance from Portugal does not diminish Portugal's Europeanness, so I fail to see how that logic applies to Russia and countries like France and Britain the other way around.

>In the East, we have the decomposition and decline of all the great Asian powers and the beginning of their fall to European colonialism (Ottoman Empire, China, etc)
The 18th century was great in China though. It was the 19th that was shit.

The Islamic world did go to shit though.

> I am not sure why you think geography is a factor in this, especially when historically Russia has controlled many very fertile areas of Europe such as the Ukraine.

I think Ukraine is a bad example for this argument, because it's a very contested issue and it can be twisted to the benefit of both side. So are we saying Ukraine is a cultural part of Russia, or not? If yes, then you can argue that Ukraine is not really European either which explains its difference from Portugal. If you say no, then Ukraine's being controlled by Russia doesn't mean anything.

Otherwise, disregarding that, they are perceived to have a more individualistic mentality than Russians, partly due to the "hutor" (individual farmer) structure of their agriculture, which, again, is possible due to the soil and other geographic factors.

I mean, look at the Cossacks. They had many "sech"es in the Southern parts of Russia and Ukraine, they came from both regions, but ended up forming what is termed in literature a "sub-ethnos", despite ethnically being Russian/Ukrainian. Environment and isolation lead to the creation of new ethnoses.

I am not saying that their ancestors weren't originally the same ethnic group/trubes in the Kievan/Pre-Kievan days, I'm saying that differences between peoples emerge when they settle in different environments.

I mean, "controlled" doesn't really mean much in the context of this dialogue, the British controlled a lot of places too.

>Russia is culturally very similar to a lot of European peoples both historically and recently, because it is a European people.

I agree Russia is closer to Europe than Asia in a general sense.
Let's look at it another way: isn't Europe a geographic term itself?
Would you consider Turkey part of Europe too?

>and what makes it stand out as a distinct period.
>lists a bunch of things that make it stand out as a distinct period

oookay

>I am not sure why you think geography is a factor in this, especially when historically Russia has controlled many very fertile areas of Europe such as the Ukraine.

His point was that Western European farming habits different from Russia, and Ukraine didn't actually changed that. Until the colonization in the 15th and 16th centuries the Ukraine was mostly Tartar and Cossack steppe and farmland with its own culture and economy centered around the Black Sea, itself distinct from Western Europe as it followed the patterns of Anatolian and Eastern Mediterranean geography.

Ukraine made Russia wealthier and more powerful as a rising empire, but it did not make it more Western in the way German colonization and agricultural and trade influence Westernized Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland.

nothing

>Rococo is generally considered one of the worst styles in art-history
According to what standards? Modern ones that value simplicity and minimalism?

totally agree on the music thing. Apart from Bach and Handel for the first half and Mozart for the second half and compared to the previous and next centuries, no musician really managed to produce his own style. Pretty much everywhere in western Europe, 18th century music imitates italian "sinfonie", the melodies are super uncreative and constrained. The French, by having a very productive court, ( family Couperin, Marais, Charpentier, Rameau ), kinda had their own style, not so italianized, but still very constrained. Thats a very general opinion I have through listening obsessively to baroque music, nothing objective there. It feels like in the two previous centuries, musicians were actually trying something new, whereas in the 18th everything started tending towards cristallisation, standardization of composing habits.

The french were the most sophisticated in Europe who put out the most in science,art, and music of the day. The english were a close second but not like the french. France's art work could not be copied the same way were else

>What do you like about the 18th century, Veeky Forums?
Barry Lyndon.

>what is the beginning of the golden age of mathematics
>who is Lagrange
>who is Legendre
>who is Monge
>who is Euler
>who is d'Alembert
>who is Fourier
>who is Cauchy
>who is Poisson

>I have no idea what happened and what the main themes and processes of the century were

Enlightement you total retard

I recognise Lagrange, Euler and Fourier, but none of the others.
How'd I do?

>Also I don't get the whacky, colorful military uniforms all the European powers adopted. It just looks stupid and impractical to me.
Back then camouflage wasn't really a thing, the point of using weird uniforms was to make different units recognisable on the battlefield so you could command them effectively.
This is actually wrong.

If he caused problems that for some reason led to revolution 150 years later, then Roman Patricians who started forming pre-feudal relations(which later evolved into feudal ones) led to French Revolution.

Except you have so much time in between those events that it doesn't really matter.

The "high culture" was by definition very international - British aristocracy lived very similar life to French or Italian aristocracy which was almost as distinct from the life of their lower classes as it was in case of Russia.
In case of Britain you have a situation where you could tell people's material status from their clothes easily way until the late 1940's, which wasn't a case in Germany, France or the USA(at least not to this point). They talked different languages, they ate different things, followed different traditions and danced to different music. And how many revolutions that could be attributed to the divide there were? French and Russian. That's all.

However when you look at the countries that didn't go down in revolution(for example in the Netherlands there was a MP who proclaimed the start of the revolution once, everybody laughed at him) you see very, very distinct difference between them and Absolute Monarchy in France or Tzarist Russia.

It's adaptability. The UK, Germany or Sweden were able to address the new realities they've found themselves in. Socialism/communism is spreading? "Bismarckcare" and "Liberal Party's socialism" incoming. Need more free trade? Have more free trade. Need more protectionism? You get the point.

Russia wasn't able to be as adaptable as they were.

>Otherwise, disregarding that, they are perceived to have a more individualistic mentality than Russians, partly due to the "hutor" (individual farmer) structure of their agriculture, which, again, is possible due to the soil and other geographic factors.
It was a thing in Russia as well, in fact it was typical for all slavs but then the neo-feudalism(as in early modern feudalism) came and serfdom/harsher serfdom were enforced. Learn to history m8.

As such in Russia, various populists could do basically whatever they wanted because people felt like the state doesn't care about them and the issues they have.

No wonder starting revolution in such country was piss-easy.

the modern standards of simplicity and minimalism aren't really a thing. as of the past couple of decades art historical scholarship has started re-evaluating past styles and undoing art 'ideology'. no serious academic could say that rococo is a bad style. there isn't a rococo style of painting anyway

the effect of the enlightenment can't be understated. it's a crucial step between what you think the 1600s and 1800s were about

According to any standards.

Rococo is simply fucking shit aesthetically, the kind of style Asians would love - its only purpose is to show that you're rich, composition and sense be damned.

>composition and sense

it's like you were so close to understanding it but you just didn't take that extra step

>As such in Russia, various populists could do basically whatever they wanted because people felt like the state doesn't care about them and the issues they have.

Actually, when the first Russian students of European enlightenment tried to "enlighten" peasants in villages and spread their populist propaganda among the common people they were most often arrested and handed over to the authorities by those very peasants.
You're obviously underestimating conservative/collectivist mentality in rural communes and a religious devotion to the "good Tsar".

>It was a thing in Russia as well, in fact it was typical for all slavs

Yeah, I'm sure it was typical back in Kievan and Pre-Kievan times too, when the population was tiny and land was plentiful and everyone could live far away from anyone else.

The fact that it was a "thing" and was present to some extent in the region doesn't prove anything. Exceptions do not disprove systemic elements.
The point is that Ukraine had many more of these than Russia did and had less "neo-feudalistic" elements. It is a matter of quantity.

>Learn to history m8.

That's a great argument and lends you much credibility. Right back at'ya buddy.

>Except you have so much time in between those events that it doesn't really matter.

Well, crisis elements were already visible after the Crimean War and that was a hundred years after that.

It was a systemic problem that developed over around 100 years. More of the aristocracy was progressively getting poorer and bankrupt due to overspending, and taxes on peasants increased over 100 years too. That was in fact one of the factors why the people started to think the state doesn't care about them and started listening to the populists.

>apart from 3 of the most widely recognized and influential composers of the western world (probably the entire world)

>The only things I can think of within the 18th century are Kant, the elevation of masonic societies and enlightenment and of course, the revolutions in France and America.

How are all these things not hugely important?

Reading Foucault gave me the impression that 18th century is when everything went horribly wrong, that it gave birth to some sort of inhuman rationalism that aimed to domesticate the human spirit and render humanity a species of biological automatons.

Badly.

With rising literacy and a burgeoning public school system, the aristocracy and nobility -which was squarely at the center of intellectual circles- would have both the means and need for that.

Rococo is incredibly beautiful though, especially fashion wise

>USA
>USA
>USA

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harold_simmons_-_an_introduction_to_category_theory_[cambridge_university_press_2011_9781107010871]


jean-pierre_marquis_-_from_a_geometrical_point_of_view_a_study_of_the_history_and_philosophy_of_category_theory_[springer_2009_9781402093838]


lawvere_&_stephen_hoel_schanuel_-_conceptual_mathematics_a_first_introduction_to_categories_[cambridge_university_press_1997_9780521472494]

this one is very geometric:
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>muh symmetry

Autism.

>But the 18th century north American colonial history is very interesting

sure...

Not sure what you're trying to say.

Most of the 18th century belongs to Enlightenment (rapid progression in science and other intellectual fields thanks to the application of reason and the scientific method), in particular in the field of politics, leading to the French Revolution which ushered in Modernity.

It really seems that the 18th century and especially 17th centuries didn't pack in as many interesting events as the 16th or 19th centuries.

I mean, yeah the 18th had the French and American revolutions.

But the 19th was the real age of crazy scientific advances in Europe. It was the age of a flowering of British, French, German and Russian literature and nonfiction writing like no other. It was the time of Napoleon, of the British Empire in Asia and Africa, of the flowering of what we know as stereotypical British and Russian aristocratic culture, top hats and carriages for the British, and golden palaces and waltzes for the Russians.

It's the age of Bismark and Garibaldi, basically no great civilization didn't have a shitton of important things going on in the 19th century.

And in painting, while Delacroix and Jacques Louis-David are good, they can't really compare to Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, the Pre-Raphaelites, Art Nouveau, etc.

The 17th just had the revolutions, and classical music.

As an American, 18th century American history is very interesting because it's the clash of the titan Britain against the scrappy, lower-class Americans. It's a very intellectual, revolutionary, ideological time, similar to the French Revolution with it's constitutions and pamphlets and ideological speeches and songs, or to something out of the 1960s.

And the fact that the culture was so archaic compared to 19th century and 20th century history is also a bonus. Everyone still had fancy ornate uniforms and wigs.

19th century America is just boring as fuck. There's no explosion of art or gorgeous architecture and fancy clothes like in Europe or China. Just farms, wagons, killing Indians, and a lot of internal political squabbles.

The Civil War was cool though, but tiny Britain and even the German territories and Russia had countless interesting wars during the 19th century to the US's only two significant wars, the Mexican-American War and the Civil War.

A large amount of interesting stuff in the 17th and 18th century happened outside of Europe (but also often because of Europe), and the interesting stuff that happened in Europe took place in the realm of thought rather than material conflict.

>19th century in America is boring as fuck
Manifest Destiny alone makes it interesting as fuck. What's not interesting about claiming a portion of a giant continent from its indigenous population for western civilization?

There was so little left to be explored in the world at the time. Very little temperate, good land at the very least. I imagine it was an amazing time to be alive and had I lived anywhere in that time, I would've wanted to be in America. Your future was entirely in your own hands out there. You could become filthy rich from literally nothing.

The first third of the 17th century was literally a war that killed off a third of the German population.

And going on after that you had the English Civil War raging on and then all of the intrigue of the court of Louis XIV

High water mark of "civilized" European warfare i.e. Kabinetkrieg (small scale with highly trained soldiers)
Near perfection of the wooden sailing ship as warship
Last century where fashion was predominately a male thing with flashy colors and high quality cloth
Motherfucking Adam Smith

I'd rate it 8/10

>especially 17th centuries
thirty
years
war
jesus fuck

>Near perfection of the wooden sailing ship as warship

I'd argue the "perfection" really carried through well into the 19th century, with the Napoleonic wars and beyond right up to the advent of the ironclad.

Nothing.
The 17th and 18th centuries have terrible aesthetic.

Well many Napoleonic warships were built in the 18th century and their design remained relatively unchanged until the first Opium war in China and steamships.

The music, obviously.

But also Europeans tended to act like Gentleman in war. None of this barbarism we see today associated with degenerates.

Colourful Uniforms, art, music, and bayonets.

exactly what i'm saying. they are big, but still the others dont have a distinct style, doesnt matter how big or recognized. In the 17th, Purcell has a very distinct and free style in comparison to Frescobaldi, L.Couperin is also extremely different, Schütz, Kerll, Kapsberger, etc... In the 18th, you kinda have the same feeling passing through all the italians like porpora, broschi, brioschi, caldara, gregori, the french sound more alike, rameau, couperinF; campra, and most of early haendels work doesnt sound particularly distinct either. Its not about beeing big, its a bout how distinct from one another each composers style is, the creative explosion in each individual so to say.