Savages, Romans, and Despots: Thinking about Others from Montaigne to Herder

by Robert Launay

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Europeans struggled to understand their identity in the same way we do as by comparing themselves to others. In Savages, Romans, and Despots , Robert Launay takes us on a fascinating tour of early modern and modern history in an attempt to untangle how various depictions of “foreign” cultures and civilizations saturated debates about religion, morality, politics, and art.
 
Beginning with Mandeville and Montaigne, and working through Montesquieu, Diderot, Gibbon, Herder, and others, Launay traces how Europeans both admired and disdained unfamiliar societies in their attempts to work through the inner conflicts of their own social worlds. Some of these writers drew caricatures of “savages,” “Oriental despots,” and “ancient” Greeks and Romans. Others earnestly attempted to understand them. But, throughout this history, comparative thinking opened a space for critical reflection. At its worst, such space could give rise to a sense of European superiority. At its best, however, it could prompt awareness of the value of other ways of being in the world. Launay’s masterful survey of some of the Western tradition’s finest minds offers a keen exploration of the genesis of the notion of “civilization,” as well as an engaging portrait of the promises and perils of cross-cultural comparison.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

272 pages, Paperback

Published October 12, 2018

Reviews

[Lakmus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note: Not my area.

Picked it up because I think Ada Palmer mentioned it somewhere.

Finally got around to reading this - a nicely laid out overview of the different ways some Europeans* talked about foreign cultures* in the 15-18th centuries (* - neither really existing at the time). Last chapter reviews the conclusions.

What struck me, a history noob, is that at no point any of the reviewed writers can be said to have a very set and consistent worldview, in the sense that they were mostly making semi-contradictory arguments about issues that were relevant at the time, and mostly using the foreigners under discussion as props in arguments about how their own lives/societies should be viewed and organised. That seems rather familiar, so while the debates change, the methods remain similar.

[Thomas Noriega · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting work on the polemical and anthropological use of "savages" in Western European thought, ranging from sincere interest in understanding non-European cultures to decrying inequality in European states with reference to a theoretical construction of "natural" human societies. Wide ranging in time and space, Launay draws on firsthand accounts of travel, philosophy, fiction, and a range of political diatribes to construct his argument. The first half is interested in the way travel literature informs theoretical works, and I was disappointed to see that intersection of firsthand accounts and philosophical constructions disappear halfway through the book, even though it allows Launay to draw a clear line from 16th century French philosophy through to German thought in the late 18th, showing the evolution of using non-European culture as a means of critiquing and relativizing early modern European society.