Transfer of Ideas and Exile Sociability in Paris, 1830-1848: A Localized Intellectual History

In the 1830s and the 1840s, Paris was a gathering place for numerous political exiles from different nationalities, including Germans, Italians and Poles. The French capital offered them the opportunity to publish, debate and transnationally exchange ideas with one another in ways that were impossible in their home countries. This article develops a research perspective on these exiles that connects intellectual history with urban history and migration history. It proposes a localized intellectual history that studies how political thought emerges in interactions enabled by specific geographical contexts, in this case the Parisian urban landscape and metropolitan culture. The article first argues why the proposed connection between intellectual, urban and migration history needs to be made. Subsequently, three case studies are used to explore the methodological opportunities of this localized intellectual history: the salon of Marie d’Agoult, the Collège de France and the editorial offices of the German exile newspaper Vorwärts. While the three places largely differ in the kinds of sociability that they offered, the intended public and, by extension, the ways in which they stimulated the formation and exchange of ideas, they appear to be connected by the people who frequented them. It will be argued that focussing on these places enables us to study the process of intellectual transfer and how it is informed by the characteristics of very local geographies, which serve as junctions in the transnational contexts in which modern political ideas, such as nationalism itself, are produced.