On the End of the Old Regime in Europe

Franco Venturi’s The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1768-1776: The First Crisis is a fascinating work. In it, he argues that examining Enlightenment-era Europe through the lens of British or French readers offers a perspective weighed down too heavily by domestic politics. As an alternative, Venturi looks to Italian publications and periodicals to see how Europe appeared outside of its “heart.” The results are surprising.

While reading Venturi’s work, the reader gets the sense that the “real deal” of European political reform was not occurring in France or Britain, as is commonly argued, but in eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Italian readers were likely to be well-aware of goings-on during the Russo-Turkish War and Russian interventions in Greece. This is unsurprising, as Italy existed in the same geographical milieu as the Ottoman Empire: the Meditteranean. What is more surprising is the abundance of material on Russian responses to peasant protest (in particular, the Pugachev Rebellion) and its relationship with Poland, Austrian responses to Bohemian peasant protests, and large-scale reform occurring in Scandinavia. In this context, the French Enlightenment and the American War of Independence seem small.

The downsides of Venturi’s work is that it is difficult to interpret his own argument. I believe that his argument is that real political reform during the Enlightenment was generally stronger in the “periphery,” but I am uncertain. Venturi’s main strength is mining sources that other historians use less often and offering a new look at the history without imposing his own views forcefully. This is respectable, but not quite ideal. Instead, Venturi should have been forceful with his argumentation in the hopes of bringing a new perspective on the Enlightenment, even if it is not entirely correct.

Moreover, I question Venturi’s highlighting of Scandinavian and Eastern European aspects of the eighteenth century over Western European aspects. Did Italian publications truly favor Eastern European and Scandinavian affairs, or is this something that Venturi imposes upon them? These sources are unavailable to me, so it is hard to tell.

Nonetheless, I highly recommend this work for those who are interested in the Enlightenment in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.