Du buveur a l'ivrogne

Over the last twenty years, understanding of the economy and culture of ancien régime Vaud has been transformed. Local history nurtured by archives and museums, and academic research emanating from the University of Lausanne, have illuminated this Protestant francophone region on the northern and eastern shores of Lake Geneva in a period once considered to have been moribund. Preparation for, and fall-out from, the bicentennial celebration of the 1798 revolution, which overturned more than 250 years of domination by German-speaking Bern, has revealed a subject people whose relationship with their overlord, the most powerful canton in the Helvetic Confederation, was more subtle and more robust than had long been thought. The results are of interest not just for comparative social and political history, or for a better appreciation of that mysterious but strategically-positioned group of states that was early modern Switzerland. They are noteworthy also because the Pays was the temporary home of Enlightenment figures such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Gibbon, and might be supposed to have influenced and been influenced by their ideas

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Early modern period · Economic history · Enlightenment · Face (sociological concept · French revolution · German · Humanities · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Theology · European Political History Analysis · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy