Napoleon

The Industrial Revolution and British and European Society

Masaie Matsumura, "The History of the British Empire Expositions: A Tale of Two Cities, London and Manchester" - A book to learn about the connection between the Expo and Manchester!

The book will be a work that looks at the connections between the London Expo and the Manchester Meiho Expo from a larger perspective, and from there at the connections to Japan.

Manchester is often seen as a disastrous result of the Industrial Revolution, but in fact, the Manchester Expo was also related to the movement to improve the lives of the people.

Marx has been in England since 1849 and, as for Engels, much longer than that. The background to the emergence of their ideas is the social situation in England. I found this book very helpful in understanding such social conditions in England.
Marx Engels Writings and Related Works

Yojiro Ishii, "From Science to Imagination: Fourier Revisited" - Who is Fourier, the famous imaginary socialist who described utopia?

There are few reference books on Fourier, and the ones we can get our hands on are limited. But among them, this book is recommended to read as an introduction. Fourier himself is a very difficult person to understand, so even the contents of this book have some difficult parts, but it is still a good book to get a general idea of the subject.
Marx Engels Writings and Related Works

Shigeru Kashima, "Shibusawa Eiichi" - Strong connection to San Simonism! Familiar with the great drama "Ao Tian wo Sukeru"! Recommended biography of the great man who supported the Japanese economy!

What would have happened if there had been no Eiichi Shibusawa in Japan? This biography will give you a frightening glimpse of what would have happened if there had been no Eiichi Shibusawa. Eiichi Shibusawa was such a huge figure. I too was shocked from the bottom of my heart when I read this biography.

I believe that modern Japan is truly in a time of crisis. It is precisely because we live in such an era that I think it is very important to trace the path of Eiichi Shibusawa.

This biography is a great book that I would highly recommend. I even wish it would become a school textbook. Why not pick up a copy?
Marx Engels Writings and Related Works

Saint-Simon's "New Christianity" Summary and Impressions - Saint-Simon's exquisite writing that sharply criticizes the Church and teaches the construction of an ideal world.

神の教えを信じ、社会福祉の向上を目指す道徳的な産業者が世を導いていく。これがサン・シモンが目指す理想社会でした。

サン・シモンはこの作品で教会批判や持論を展開し続けます。驚くような発想も何度も出てきますし、現代を生きる私たちですら唸らせるような言葉が出てきます。

マルクス・エンゲルスによって空想的社会主義者のレッテルを張られたサン・シモンですが、非常に興味深い思想家でした。
Marx Engels Writings and Related Works

Saint-Simon's "Doctrinal Questions and Answers of the Industrialists" Summary and Comments - The main work of Saint-Simon, one of the visionary socialists.

The world is made up of producers, or industrialists. That is why the status of the industrialist must be recognized."

The idea that industrialists were the ones who would lead the world was carried on by his later disciples and flourished during the Second Empire of Napoleon III, which began in 1852.

In this sense, this work, which declares that "it is the industrialists who make the world," is of great significance.
French Literature, History and Culture

P. McPhee, "History of the French Revolution: Freedom or Death" - Recommended commentary on the background of the French Revolution from a larger perspective.

What I found particularly interesting about the book was the chaos of the revolution.

How to unite so many diverse people together? Every time you do one thing, there will always be people who are disadvantaged. And those people will become opponents of the government, making it difficult for the revolution to progress. So what do we do? The guillotine...

It made me think about whether it is the revolution that inevitably runs into these problems.

Also, when thinking about these things, I couldn't help but think of the Russian Revolution led by Lenin. I thought it would be important to think about the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution in comparison.
French Literature, History and Culture

P. McPhee, "Robespierre" - A recommended biography that traces what the dictator of the French Revolutionary terror politics was really like!

Because Robespierre's death was so dramatic, many stories have been told about him since his death from various perspectives. The intentions of the "teller" are inevitably reflected in these stories.

But McPhee, as a historian, tries to distance himself from that.

A power-hungry dictator, a ruthless butcher, a psychopath who ruthlessly decapitated his political enemies. It is not such a simple story that can be reduced to that.

That attitude was the most distinctive point of this book and what impressed me the most.

This book is a masterpiece that makes us think about the complexity of human beings and what we can become depending on the environment in which we are placed.
Learn about the life and thought background of Marx Engels

(20) Young Engels suffers from the contradiction that he has become the hated bourgeois.

The young Engels was forced to confront his own contradictions.

自身が激烈に攻撃していたブルジョワに自分自身がなっている。

マルクスにもその心情を吐露していますが、彼はこの後もずっとそうした矛盾を抱え続けることになります。

But later on, they would also reopen and act in an imposingly bourgeois manner. The same is true of Marx. Marx, too, had a contradictory life, yearning for a bourgeois life and suffering from lack of money when he actually spent money in this way.
Learn about the life and thought background of Marx Engels

(16) The Ideas of the Imaginary Socialist Saint-Simon - Economic thinker who had a huge influence on the later Second Empire of France.

Imaginary socialist is a famous term preached by Engels in From Imagination to Science, published in 1880.

Engels described three famous pre-Marxian exponents of socialist thought, Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen, as "fantastical socialists."

He then declares that Marx's theory is "scientific" as opposed to their "fanciful" theories.

In this article, we will first talk about the person, Saint-Simon.
Europe through Classical and Western Art

Hinomadoka Hino, "Bizet - The Man Who Dedicated His Life to the Theater" - Recommended biography to learn about the life of Bizet, the composer of Carmen!

この伝記を読んで、私がこれまで学んできた文学、芸術、歴史が繋がったのを感じました。繋がる瞬間ってやはりビビッと来ますよね。これがあるから読書はやめられません。私にとって、「あぁ！そうだったのか！」という発見は読書の最大の喜びのひとつです。この本も刺激に満ちた最高に面白い作品でした。

１９世紀中頃のフランス事情を知るのにもおすすめな作品です。