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Grâce aux concepts développés par l’histoire du genre et des femmes, ce mémoire cherche à jeter un regard nouveau sur le parcours de la courtisane libertine du XVIIe siècle Anne de Lenclos, surnommée Ninon. C’est que l’image qui a été véhiculée de Ninon depuis le XVIIIe siècle ne rend pas compte de la complexité du personnage : elle ne met l’accent que sur sa liberté sexuelle, ou au contraire, sur son intelligence et son rôle dans la vie littéraire du Grand Siècle. Une relecture de la correspondance de la courtisane et des documents notariés (actes économiques, testament et inventaire après-décès) la concernant permet cependant de mettre au jour le portrait d’une femme de tête bien différente de celle qui avait jusqu’alors été décrite, réussissant à concilier les transgressions qu’elle n’a cessé de commettre contre l’ordre établi jusqu’à la fin de sa vie à la réputation d’une salonnière admirée et respectée.

By studying practices related to slave food in French Louisiana, we learn more about solidarities and conflicts between social groups and within these groups in a slave frontier society. The first chapter is about two main strategies of whites related to slave food: to preserve the slave population and to control their participation in the economy. The second chapter is about the roles of slaves in the food economy, as specialized workers and as producers and distributors of food; these roles enable them to gain more autonomy within the colonial society. The different strategies of slaves in the area of food are at the heart of conflicts and of solidarity between them.

Ce mémoire porte sur le traité de Venise de 1201, passé entre les barons de la Quatrième Croisade et la république de Venise, pour l’affrètement d’une flotte incluant transport et vivres. L’étude du Traité est d’autant plus importante que, les croisés manquant à leurs obligations, cet accord eut un impact déterminant sur la suite de la Croisade, se plaçant ainsi au cœur de sa déviation vers Constantinople. Le mémoire analyse d’abord la nature et l’ampleur des engagements pris par Venise, en essayant de quantifier et de mesurer en termes économiques le nombre de bateaux et de croisés transportés, ainsi que le poids et le coût des provisions pour hommes et chevaux. Cette analyse, basée sur la comparaison avec des contrats analogues, prouve que la somme de 85 000 marcs d’argent convenue avec les barons n’était en rien exagérée. Parallèlement, le mémoire évalue ce que pouvait signifier, dans le contexte économique de l’époque, une telle somme, et tente d’identifier les raisons pour lesquelles les croisés furent dans l’impossibilité d’honorer leur part du contrat. Cette analyse montre que, contrairement à une certaine historiographie traditionnelle, il serait faux d’imputer aux Vénitiens la responsabilité du détournement de la Croisade ou de les taxer d’intransigeance, de cupidité, voire de duplicité. L’effort fourni par la République indique qu’elle mit tout en œuvre pour que l’entreprise fût une réussite. L’interruption du commerce, la construction de nombreux navires, la réquisition de milliers de marins pour manœuvrer la flotte et la logistique pour approvisionner des dizaines de milliers d’hommes témoignent toutes de l’ampleur de l’implication vénitienne. C’est le défaut de paiement des croisés, qui força le doge Henri Dandolo à se commettre plus avant encore, joignant irrémédiablement la fortune de la ville marchande à celle de l’expédition.

Over the past decades, the zooarchaeological research in the Macedonian region of Northern Greece, has mostly focused on materials from Neolithic and Bronze Age sites. Thus, the available data render our understanding of animal husbandry in the Early Iron Age, Archaic and Classical periods in this area rather fragmentary. This doctoral research aims to address these gaps, investigating – for the first time as a whole – the issue of animal husbandry, a crucial domain of the primary economy, in the region of Macedonia from the Early Iron Age to the Classical era. The study is based on primary datasets of animal bones remains recovered from three well- excavated settlements, two in the mainland (Argilos, Karabournaki) and one in the island of Thassos (Kastri). The analysed data provide an opportunity to explore the animal exploitation in these three settlements, investigating animal management; cooking techniques; consumption and discard strategies, having first disentangled all potential depositional pathways to the formation of the sample assemblage. Additionally, the data are compared to the available published data from the Macedonian region in order to enlighten the peculiarities of each assemblage in relation to the management of domestic and wild fauna. Moreover, relevant paleoenvironmental and isotopic analyses have triggered a vivid discussion regarding the extent to which the environment affected the animal herding and feeding strategies in this area. The management strategies of the main domestics in the area under study, suggest a rather heterogenous profile between the settlements, most probably due to the economic priorities, the regional environmental conditions, and the geomorphological restrictions. The nutritional and the raw material needs were complemented by the exploitation of the wild fauna, including a variety of both terrestrial and marine species. Similar carcass and discarding practices were observed within all settlements, revealing aspects of intra-communal organization. Moreover, during the Archaic and Classical era, common practices in animal burials suggest the existence of somehow common perceptions among the local societies, however, in terms of ritual sacrifices, seemed to be a distinct differentiation between the population groups. The results are discussed in the frame of the Aegean basin, contributing to the ongoing discussion regarding animal management, the mobility of livestock husbandry, the degree of integration between herding and arable farming, the Olympic sacrifice, and the exploitation of natural resources during the first seven centuries of the first millennium BC.

This dissertation is structured in three distinct sections: in the first one, we examine the divine figure of Liber Pater and the perception of this divinity in Roman Italy. Liber never ceases to surprise scholars, mostly because of his association with Dionysus, so it is necessary to address a simple but crucial question: who is Liber Pater? We emphasize in this section that Liber is an agrarian deity recognized within the pantheon of Rome and thus receives a public cult through the Liberalia and the triad that he forms with Ceres and Libera. The tutelage of Liber on libertas is also questioned: rather than understanding it in terms of political freedom, we must rather focus on a physical and mental freedom. In the second section, we establish a connection on the Italian territory between Liber and Dionysus-Bacchus thanks to the process of acculturation that took place with the arrival of Dionysus in Magna Graecia in the 8th and 7th century BC. We then explore, through the tutelage of Liber and Bacchus over wine as well as the repression of the Bacchanalia, the heterogeneous forms that the rituals and cults dedicated to these deities may have taken. Finally, our last section dives into the cult of Liber in Italy in the Early Empire. To do so, we use the methodological framework of lived ancient religion, which focuses on the spectrum of religious strategies that can be put in place to communicate with Liber, be it through donation, prayer, gesture, sacrifice, etc. This model of analysis gives us the opportunity to focus on the lived worship of Liber, therefore bringing us closer to the religious experience of individuals. We demonstrate, through an epigraphic corpus comprising several types of inscriptions, that numerous communication strategies were used, notably the rituals of votum, dedicatio, and consecratio through the donation of objects such as altars and statues. In groups, these strategies become more complex since the associative phenomenon produces a significant cult diversification: several Roman associations, all different from one other in their practices and composition, honored Liber and his benefits.

This study compares methods of information gathering in two territories that became part of the British Empire after the Seven Years’ War. We bring these two extremely different regions into the same frame by asking: how did the British gather information about the populations of Canada and Bengal? Our study is part of several historiographical currents that offer a rereading of the history of Great Britain and its colonies, which is the subject of our first chapter. In the next chapter, we explore the post-conquest era in Canada. After the conquest of this territory (1759-1760), British authorities faced the task of administering the Canadian population. At first, they tried to implement a new governmental regime deemed suitable for the Canadian context. However, since the majority of the population they governed was of different religious denomination (Catholics) and of French origin, they had to modify the regime ten years later. In the third chapter, we look at the British presence in Bengal after the battle of Plassey in 1757. The British, through the East India Company, acquired a certain influence over local authorities, which allowed them to govern indirectly via the Mogul Empire’s governors, the nabobs. Nevertheless, cultural differences were much more significant than with the Canadian population of European origin: the Mogul Empire was a Muslim polity, with a Persian administration, and much of the population was Hindu. From our reading of the official correspondence, between the colonial administrators and the metropolitan government in the first case, and between the agents of the company and its directors in the second, we affirm that in both situations the British tried to gather more information. However, important institutional and cultural differences distinguish the types of information sought as well as the approaches to collecting information. The results of our research ultimately converge on one point: the search for information passed through a whole range of local intermediaries. In the last chapter, after having explored the “information order” implemented or adapted by the British in each colonial context, the study considers how colonial information was received and shaped by the metropolitan authorities. To this end, the efforts of officials and parliamentarians to learn about colonial conditions during the drafting of two laws, the Quebec Act (1774) and the Regulating Act (1773) are highlighted through a reading of the Parliamentary debates. Here also, many differences are visible. To become informed about Canada, British authorities relied heavily on the help of the colonial administrators who stayed in Canada after the regime change. However, in the Indian case, they depended mostly on documentary sources, namely the books of the EIC.