Laughter is one of the most difficult and intriguing historical subjects, one that defies firm conclusion or systematization. Beginning with Dion Cassius’s first-person account of laughter in the Colosseum in 192 CE, this article explores some of the heuristic challenges of writing about the laughter of the past—particularly that of classical antiquity. It attempts to undermine some of the false certainties that surround the idea of a “ classical theory of laughter” (which originated during the Renaissance) and argues that ideas about laughter in ancient Greece and Rome were much more diverse than one usually imagines. Important patterns in the discursive use of laughter in ancient Rome can nonetheless be observed. This article also examines the way laughter was used to mediate political power and autocracy in addition to how laughter operated on the boundary between animals and humans. It concludes with a reflection on the extent to which we can still share in the laughter of the Romans and under what conditions.

The greatest period of Celtic expansion occurred between the fourth and third centuries BC, with the conquest of new territories on the margins of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Historians often underemphasize this period: while the barbarian raids and the rise of mercenary service in the fourth century BC are stressed, colonization is neglected. In addition, Celtic society at that time was radically different from those found in coeval Mediterranean cultures. Imports from the south were much less common than in previous centuries, and attempts at urbanization were abandoned. Celtic society became distinctly rural, with its craft industries, settlement, and sanctuaries dispersed throughout the countryside. Although there were local variations, art and religion assumed original and consistent characteristics. Celtic society was composed of peasants and warriors and dominated by large aristocratic families.

Forced baptism, as a long-lasting instance of the persecution of Jews in Western societies, has been a highly controversial historiographical issue. Taking into account the risks involved in such a stance—as being a “lachrymose conception of Jewish history” and advocating “teleological,” “anachronistic,” “judiciary” views—this article deals with the historiographical trends which, ruling out the “persecuting society” paradigm and systematically minimizing the part played by religious factors to explain the forms of persecution, have resulted in specific works on historical causality and temporality. Two situations (the first Crusade in 1096 and the Crusade of the Pastoureaux in 1320) enable us to observe the mechanisms of rationalization in this new history of persecution, and show the diversity of its objects and approaches.

In the 1780s, the dispute about the New World entered a new phase. Creole voices redesigned the spatial, political, and economic matrix of modern thought about race within an Atlantic framework. By focusing on the changing eighteenth-century entry on “America,” this article considers the successful commercial enterprise of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was conceived in Scotland. It examines the intellectual shift in reference from the Scottish Enlightenment of William Robertson to the antiquarian history advocated by Francisco Xavier Clavijero, a Mexican Jesuit, exiled in the Papal States. The new cartography of knowledge endorsed by the Encyclopaedia led to a racial classification associating Scriptures and providential history.

In the early 1320s, the Jewish populations of the Comtat Venaissin were expelled from this territory by its ruler, Pope John XXII. This episode has often been linked by historians to the French king’s policy on the Jews. However, no study has described in a satisfactory manner the way in which this expulsion was carried out, or the reasons why the Papacy broke with the longstanding doctrine of the necessary protection of Jews, which had prevailed since the bull Sicut judeis. Although the question was given some attention by Carlo Ginzburg in Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, the historiography has long been dominated by the idea that the Popes, unlike secular rulers, never failed to protect the Jews. This article revisits this story. Using unpublished accounting documents, it proposes a more precise chronology of events leading to the expulsion, and an explanation of the way the forced sale of Jewish belongings was carried out. This leads to a new interpretation of this reversal of Papal policy, diverging both from an idealized history of the relations between Jews and Christians and from that of the rise of persecution mentalities, and embedded in the context of the building of state structures and the development of the arts of government.

Over the past decade, the New Institutional Economics have become a popular model for analyzing ancient economic history. However, the notion of cultural beliefs, which plays a central role in Douglass North’s recent work and Avner Greif’s analysis of institutional change, has been largely ignored. This article argues that a neo-institutional approach taking this notion into account offers a better means of understanding how ideology and moral values influenced the ancient economy than the Finleyan model. Rather than acting as a deterministic constraint on human behavior, cultural beliefs help to orient decision making and allow one to anticipate the (re)actions of others.

This article explores two key sets of norms and values in Roman culture that profoundly marked the economy’s institutional framework. The first focused on reciprocity, which supported social networks beyond the confines of the familia-freedmen group and underlay the development of contract and agency law. The second was based on citizenship, which shaped political culture by creating individual rights and obligations that the political elite was given the authority to enforce in order to secure and stimulate both private and common interests. This resulted in Roman law and the distribution of justice. Ideologically, the Roman Empire presented itself as a meta-city that incorporated local communities, which were in turn gradually transformed to fit the civitas model.

Both sets of beliefs lowered transaction costs without threatening the preeminent position of local and imperial aristocracies. Toward the end of the second century CE, local communities weakened as the imperial administration grew stronger, causing local and regional aristocracies to turn to the imperial court and army for status, influence, and power. The ideology of citizenship as the guiding principle of political culture gave way to that of the sacred emperor, who guaranteed divine justice and order.

The concept of gender has become such an important subject in international historiography over the last two decades that it might appear odd to devote an entire dossier of the Annales to the topic. However, the relative success of this field of research may also conceal ambiguities in both the intellectual project underlying the term as well as its reception in the social sciences. For certain authors, undertaking a history of gender has meant writing a history of women. Though this form of history now enjoys proper recognition, it is still depreciated in two ways: on the one hand, it is qualified as a militant—and therefore unscholarly—history; and, on the other, it is criticized according to some vague argument claiming that no matter how it is labeled—“gender” or “women”—the inquiry is already dated. Without a doubt, the now canonical expression “history of women and gender” has generated real confusion among those scholars who are not particularly engaged with the field.1

The newspapers of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world copied, translated, and corrected each other. Part of the technology facilitating the transmission of international news was the paragraph, a textual unit that was easily removed from one source and inserted into another. In eighteenth-century London the paragraph became the basic unit of printed news, relaying political messages and also providing the means by which these messages could be analyzed. Subject to a whole range of editorial interventions, the form and content of news reports evolved as they circulated from one place to the other. Integrating scholarship on journalism in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, this article compares reports in French, English, and Spanish-language newspapers in order to understand the process of newsmaking. Two detailed examples from the American Revolutionary war demonstrate how political news in the Revolutionary age was a collaborative process linking printers, translators, readers, and ship captains on both sides of the Atlantic. In doing so it highlights the importance of the paragraph as an object of historical study.

In Classical Greece, the first forms of historiography sprung from a preoccupation with memory: to memorialize and publicize the actions of men in the recent past. They also aimed to make sense of those actions: the order of human and territorial justice for Herodotus, and the anthropology of domination for Thucydides. In this discursive “shaping” of History, rhetoric played an essential role. It provided an opportunity to muse about modalities of “fiction,” which, etymologically, “makes” hence “fictionalizes” facts, and an opportunity also to think about the importance of verisimilitude in the narrative constructions torn between internal coherence and external references. Hence the oxymoron of “referential fiction.”

This article examines the history of the private credit market in Roman Egypt between 30 BCE and approximately 170 CE. After examining how the notion of the market and the New Institutional Economics are employed with regard to ancient economic history, it explains the positive effect that systems of drafting and registering contracts had on the private credit market and, in particular, the role of the bibliotheke enkteseon, created by the Roman administration between 68 and 72. The article concludes with an explanation of how this institution was created by analyzing the interaction between the private credit market and the way public services were financed in the Roman world.

Gender studies use gender to characterize behavioral norms, personality traits, and the relative importance given to differences between the sexes in individual relationships. In the field of Classical studies, these three definitions usually converge to isolate a single gender system: the polarity between anēr (male citizen) and gunē (wife and mother), which is strictly articulated as a division between male/female. Nonetheless, a number of studies, particularly those dealing with sexuality, have demonstrated that ancient Greek societies were not systematically organized according to gender differences. These conclusions encourage researchers to examine the various points of view expressed in documents elaborated by the Greeks living on the shores of the ancient Mediterranean. Contrary to what is commonly believed, the male/female division often seems secondary to that opposing members of the community to foreigners, Greeks to Barbarians or mortals to immortals.

Credit relations have not been thoroughly examined by modern historians and are usually viewed through the lens of evolutionist narratives recounting the victory of “ economic rationality” by means of the institutionalization, formalization, and modernization of these relations, although the veritable meaning of these terms are never precisely defined. This article examines the notion of credit relations by exploring their formalization and personalization, which are viewed as two relatively compatible elements. Drawing on a survey of recent publications on the subject, this article analyzes the complementarity of the various types of people involved in credit relations, the transformation of the tools for undertaking such a transaction, and the difficulties surrounding credit in addition to the (non-)existence of sanctions.

This article examines the historical value of poetical texts, such as the Roman poet Martial’s Epigrams, with regard to the relationship between captatores (legacy hunters) and wealthy, often elderly single women. By comparing the provisions and limits of private law, common practices of acquisition, and wealth management in Roman society during the first and second centuries AD with the behavioral patterns elaborated in poetic texts, this article demonstrates that the theme of legacy hunting was not a mere literary topos, but a scenario based on models of gender and age in addition to the values associated with them. Unmarried and childless women of the elite could be depicted as very wealthy and powerful due to their ability to establish personal relationships through the transmission of their wealth. Martial’s perception of the modes of communication and interaction between female testari-ces and male legacy hunters are interpreted as reflections of male experiences of belittlement.

This article deals with the field of Atlantic history, which first rose to prominence in North America in the early 1990s. Based on a critical review of two recently published books that reflect this “new” historiographical current, it presents the various debates dividing the Atlanticist community, including the different ways of conceptualizing the Atlantic world, practicing Atlantic history, and envisioning the future of Atlantic studies. It argues that the Atlantic world should remain a simple historical framework instead of becoming the main object of investigation. The goal is thus to write a situated history that, while taking into account all historical actors, focuses on the redefinition and renegotiation of power relationships among individuals, groups, and socio-political formations in this interconnected world born out of European colonialism and imperialism.

Yan Thomas’ work has had a profound impact on recent research in the field of legal history. Two core beliefs drove his work: first, a deep aversion to doctrinal readings and an equally deep commitment to casuistry; second, his belief that fiction, a technique characteristic of Roman law, is the key to understanding the Western legal tradition. This article traces a path through Thomas’ work, addressing his major lines of thought that highlight both the specificity of law, and the possibility of a renewed dialogue with the social sciences.

Merchant credit was the main source of profit for economic agents in the eighteenth-century. Managing cash, commercial instruments, and account books, Atlantic traders such as Gradis of Bordeaux—who dealt in colonial products (including indigo, sugar, and coffee) and exported staples (flour and wine) to Quebec—or Hollingsworth of Philadelphia (an important dealer in flour and colonial produce) achieved market domination through specialized credit networks integrating market exchange and both moral and social interactions. Since a Weberian or a Homo Oeconomicus view of these complex credit activities leads to anachronisms, this article eschews standard economic approaches in favor of more historicized views of early modern economic activity, credit networks, and profit-making techniques.

Between 1190 and 1234, from the first compilations of pontifical decretal letters up to the Liber Extra, the pontificate acquired power over the management of debts. This article provides a detailed analysis of the Liber Extra section on vows, which offered a means of exchanging spiritual and temporal matters: vows, especially those concerning crusades, were offered, bartered, and redeemed. Innocent III played a significant role: for him, pontifical power was neither directly absolute nor contractual, but arbitrational. However, he had to compromise with more strictly centralizing forces in the Curia, which triumphed in the Liber Extra. This work, ordered by Gregory IX, served as the unstable but long-lasting basis for monarchical laws.

To what extent did scholars use science to pursue the good life in the seventeenth century? How to articulate the Scientific Revolution with ethical questions? These are the questions at the core of the investigation led by the historian of science Matthew Jones in his book The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution. At first glance, his project is simply an extension of research on the social history of truth that has encouraged historians for two decades to decipher the moral norms that gave credit to the use and production of scientific knowledge. Civility, politeness, honor led to specific research that highlighted the cultural and social context surrounding the practices of scientific innovation in the Classical Age. This book deepens these questions by asking how mathematical practices were considered moral reflections. This article will discuss the contribution of this book by first examining the three attempts at experimenting mathematical morals led by Descartes, Pascal and Leibniz. The article then shows how Matthew Jones successfully draws on the work of Pierre Hadot by considering mathematical exercises as spiritual exercises. In a third broader step, the article examines how the book exemplifies a return of the moral issue in Anglophone history of science in the last twenty years while the French classical epistemology has avoided this kind of questioning. The article argues that these approaches open up avenues of research for historians to better understand the relationship between science and passion, science and spirituality, and more largely science and religion in the early modern period.

On February 18, 1306, the city of Camerino signed a peace treaty with three neighboring communes (Matelica, San Severino, and Fabriano). Among its provisions was a plan for a series of marriages between the inhabitants of the four communes, which would have made a group of 140 men brothers-in-law through the exchange of 140 women. Analyzing this document and its extraordinary clause—which was never enforced and did not bring hostilities to an end—, this article examines the genesis of a gender regime in a specific historical, documentary, and relational context. Adopting a pragmatic approach to gender as a means for understanding social interactions, the article analyzes the roles elite men assigned to women of their communities in reconciliation rituals, matrimonial alliances as miniature figures of peace, and the systems established to ensure the transfer of dowries and the granting of citizenship. Under such gender regimes, women served as mediators, promoting peace in their households so that it would spread throughout the entire community. They also provided dowries and citizenship to men, allowing them to maintain their dominant role in society.