non-national relationships even at the highpoint of the nation-state. However, this volume as a whole does not persuade me that it is possible to dispense with national intellectual cultures and… Click to show full abstract
non-national relationships even at the highpoint of the nation-state. However, this volume as a whole does not persuade me that it is possible to dispense with national intellectual cultures and even nation-states in writing the intellectual history of the long nineteenth century. Scientific and scholarly academies, for example, were overwhelmingly national in conception. They acknowledged the importance of the wider republic of letters, notably by admitting corresponding members, but this very category implied a sharp distinction between full members – usually defined by residence or by nationality – and foreign associates. Why this should have been the case – and why it largely remains the case – are intriguing questions for discussion on another occasion, but that it was the case is undeniable. The story of the founding of the British Academy is illuminating here. It owed its establishment in the first place to transnational academic politics: when a congress of European and American academies was convened at Wiesbaden in 1899, it was noticed that Britain, alone among the nations represented there, had no academy to represent the interests of what are now called the humanities. The Royal Society, founded in the seventeenth century with a remit to improve ‘natural knowledge’, was asked to investigate whether it should broaden its remit or whether it could initiate the establishment of a sister academy. Thus international relationships were a key driver: the Wiesbaden meeting stemmed, after all, from a growing recognition that intellectual progress demanded effective international cooperation but the form of cooperation it institutionalised was cooperation between representative national bodies and the outcome in the British case was the creation of an academy which, like its foreign counterparts, was explicitly national in its mission.
               
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