Essai sur les moeurs
Title page of an 1835 edition with a portrait of the author
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| Author | Voltaire |
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| Original title | Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l'histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu'à Louis XIII |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Subject | History of Europe |
| Genre | Philosophy, History |
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Publication date
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1756 |
Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations ("Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations") is a work by the French writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire, published for the first time in 1756. It discusses the history of Europe before Charlemagne until the dawn of the age of Louis XIV, also addressing the colonies and the East.
The 174-chapter work resulted from fifteen years of research by Voltaire at Cirey-sur-Blaise, Brussels, Paris, Lunéville, Prussia, Alsace and Geneva.
Voltaire revised the text until his death in 1778, expanding an Appendix with defences of the work and responses to criticism.
The Essai is a work of Enlightenment philosophy as much as of history. It urges the active rejection of superstition and fable and their replacement by knowledge based on reason. Voltaire traced common themes across various human cultures and languages, explained by a shared reality but also shared human failings, such as superstitions and dreams, that kept humans from appreciating this reality.
Voltaire was reacting against Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's Speech of Universal History, which had presented Judeo-Christian nations as the most advanced. In contrast, the Essai praised ancient China and India. Voltaire also attempted to refute prejudices about the Muslim world, according to which the Ottoman Empire and all other Muslim states were despotisms in which individuals had no rights and no property of their own. He countered that these states differed among each other just as Christian states did, none of them treating subjects as slaves. He also pointed out that European feudalism gave individuals no more rights than a typical person in Turkey or Prussia.
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