Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Republic of Letters: The State and the Public Sphere Reconsidered

Activity: Participating in or organising an event Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Description

Centre for Privacy Studies is proud to present the acclaimed professor of philosophy, history and accounting, Jacob Soll.

At his lecture with Centre for Privacy Studies, Soll will explain how the vivid collecting of information during the reign of Louis XIV and his famous finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert drew new lines of privacy and the private.

In his second book, The Information Master (2009), Soll investigated how the famous finance minister fused financial management and library sciences to create an information network to build one of the first modern information states.

In this talk "Beyond the Public Sphere: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Republic of Letters", Soll will revisit his book in the light of new findings in his Colbert-research by showing how the finance minister was envisioning ways to plant the seeds of commercial culture.
A versatile academic
Soll’s research interests straddle the history of information and knowledge; political history; economic history; history of books and libraries; accounting; the history of political and financial transparency as well as Renaissance and Enlightenment cultures.

He has received numerous awards for his research, and he has been a correspondent for the Boston Globe, and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, Politico, the New Republic, PBS, Salon.com and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Soll is currently meeting with political and financial leaders across the globe to promote accounting standards and financial transparency.
Period29 May 2019
Event typeSeminar
LocationCopenhagen, DenmarkShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Privacy
  • Colbert
  • Economics
  • Politics
  • Early Modern
  • France