Courted and exploited, the foreigner, in the Ancien Régime, is at the heart of a web of contradictions. Its condition is that of uncertainty: that which attaches to beings without local ties. In this way, it is likely to be negotiated and circumvented. Thus calling into question the idea of a society uniformly controlled by statutes, the historian Simona Cerutti brilliantly demonstrates what radical empiricism can bring to the writing of history.
Turin, XVIIIe century: the city welcomes foreigners and the historian studies them. Fashionable subject, hot topic one might say ? Yes, and no, because Simona Cerutti does not work on foreigners, in the sense of individuals who would define a status, belonging to an origin, to a group ; she reflects on a “ foreign condition », which is a certain quality of possible action. At the heart of Simona Cerutti’s work is the notion of action in context, less by epistemological conviction a priori only because she notes that doing, acting, is valued in the medieval and modern civilizations on which she reflects. The action is first of all at the heart of the source, which is not read as a mirror, but as a production of reality: whether it is the theorization of the windfall by jurists keen to assert royal power, or a petition to the king aiming to have rights recognized, the text itself is understood as an attempt to act on reality. Action is defined in relation to particular social contexts or fields. The author studies four of them, family, property, profession, and justice, in Turin in XVIIIe century. They were chosen based on what the sources themselves indicate, in their intersection and because the legal category of “ miserable » included foreigners as well as widows, minors, orphans (context of family transmission and property), employees (context of the profession), poor people, soldiers, pilgrims or merchants. Certain sources give more access than others to this reality in the making: the procedure is thus privileged in relation to legal theorizing, the notarial act makes it possible to concretely perceive the relationship of a subject to real estate ownership – of a subject , and not of a group with supposed norms of cohesion.
The condition of foreignness
To do history, for Simona Cerutti, is also to dialogue generously with the avenues opened by the entire historiography of the subject, without rejecting or condemning, but by shifting the questions, by taking seriously the apparent contradictions between the various hypotheses suggested. At the heart of the work are several contradictions well known to historians. Apparent contradiction in the attitude of States supposed to do violence to foreigners (through a windfall law interpreted as pre-emption by the sovereign of the property of foreigners who died without descendants), while appealing to them as main- of work (chap. 1) ; and in a scarcity of naturalization letters, however, alongside the multiplicity of foreigners ending up being recognized as subjects in their own right. Contradiction then between the historical assertion that property (chap. 2) and the recognized practice of a profession (chap. 3) are paths to citizenship, and the observation in Turin and other Italian cities a ban on residents selling or renting goods to foreigners, or the historical assertion that corporations would be hostile to foreigners, if not as agents of innovation. It is by emphasizing the action of social subjects in context that the author manages to resolve these contradictions.
In the first chapter, the actions carried out during the procedures following the death are carefully analyzed. individuals born outside the States of His Majesty, or who died without descendants “. They are placed in the context of heritage relations from an era marked by “ uncertainty as to ownership of the property “. After a death, acting without contradiction on assets without clear ownership status may be sufficient to create a right to inherit: “ an individual does not inherit because he is the legitimate heir ; rather, it was the fact of having inherited that made him the legitimate heir » (p. 62). Placed in this context, the action of tax agents can then be understood, not as an appropriation to the detriment of foreigners, but as a way of removing property at random, while it takes time to verify the presence of legitimate heirs. Ultimately, the State only inherits in a small percentage of cases (variable depending on the period). At the end of the analysis, it is no longer a question of thinking about the foreigner, the status of the Other coming from elsewhere, but the condition of foreignness, that of who is not included in a chain of succession . It can be that of those who were born elsewhere and whose heirs may be absent, but also be other categories which, although native, pose a problem to the order of succession – such as natural children or individuals “ died without descendants “.
The second chapter, concerned with reflecting on individual actions rather than groups, follows the Turin journey of Gerolamo Motta, Turkish by birth. It shows the negligible nature of the statutory change (Motta is naturalized) compared to the various elements of successful social integration: personal tailor to Prince Eugene, Motta is married, rich, and at the heart of a dense social network. This integration, far from having as a condition access to real estate property, results in it: it is by mobilizing all the resources of his local roots that Motta achieves, through the intermediary of charitable institutions to which he offers goods of which he retains the usufruct, to protect himself against the always possible use of the right of windfall and to act as a citizen in the field of property. Foreignness can then be redefined as the condition of someone who lacks local roots, “ the skill to weave these local networks which, alone, gave access to property » (p. 10).
Root yourself
The third chapter thus addresses the condition of foreignness as an absence of local roots, in the environment of laboratories. The author shows that recognition of the right to practice a profession is not a condition but proof of citizenship: the hierarchy within the profession is linked to degrees on the scale of local know-how and local roots that the corporations monitor. There is no status there either a priori and definitive, but a reality constructed and negotiated by social actions. If the idea of such plasticity of the social convinces in the cases presented, such is the analysis of the sources, it must nevertheless be remembered that this drawing of subjects free to negotiate and construct their condition cannot be the portrait of all Ancien Régime society. This plasticity certainly concerns certain contexts, but the author, without denying its possibility, leaves in the shadows the force of certain assignments (that of religion is mentioned in passing) and the difficulty of this negotiation (even if it evokes a “ uncertainty “). As such, one would have been curious to know what the success rate was of the petitions addressed to the king to circumvent the absence of laborious anchorage in the city. The possibility of negotiation cannot in fact eliminate the effects of domination.
The last chapter reinscribes the foreigner in the broader category of “ miserable “, which includes all those characterized by poor social and civic integration and who should be offered a procedure adapted to their condition in justice (procedure known as “ summary », based on the nature of the actions), farthest from a positive right designed for those who are locally anchored. The success, then the defeat, of this procedure, once set up as a model against a justice based on the quality of persons, testifies to a brief moment when the idea of the interests of “ all humanity » prevailed against that of statutory prerogatives.
We will have sensed that Simona Cerutti has a very precise idea of what writing history is. ; nevertheless, we will find few major declarations from her, which would give her the prestigious status of “ theoretician » of the discipline: Simona Cerutti domodestly, history books. But make no mistake, these books are much more important than this apparent modesty suggests: they direct the discipline towards what the author calls, as in passing, “ a radical empiricism », farthest from a positivism which would only make the source a reservoir of facts, as from any formalism or idealism. The publisher, who delivers a work full of typos, may not have realized the importance of what he was publishing.