Abstract
The New World Debate offers a privileged site to reconstruct and study Europe’s self-image in the 18th century. Taking on Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle, Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, Voltaire’s Alzire et les Americains, and De Pauw’s Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains, this paper traces the process through which Europe elaborated a Eurocentric view of the world organization through a paternalistic, usually benevolent but always contemptuous, relation to America that would come to define Europe’s colonial expansion of the 19th century and make colonialism an essential, yet uncomfortable, dimension of Europe’s modern identity.
Recommended Citation
Dossin, Catherine. "The New World Debate and the 18th-Century Images of America that Brought Europe Together." Artl@s Bulletin 12, no. 1 (2023): Article 4.
