Empires on the Board: 19th-Century French and American Board Games
- Region: Online
- Type: Talk
- Cost: Free
Tuesday, September 17 · 14:30 – 15:30pm GMT+1
This talk considers the games and toys marketed in Europe and in the United States over the long 19th century, from the French Revolution to the First World War. It will examine the way in which games, aimed at both children and adults, contributed to the creation of an image of the world and its history.
We will look at widely distributed paper and cardboard games and toys, such as card games, goose games, lotto and jigsaw puzzles. From the memorialization of Napoleon’s career to later colonial conquests and from geographical exploration to touristic enjoyment, these games brought history down to a miniature scale and imported distant landscapes and peoples into the domestic sphere.
While the transmission of historical and geographical knowledge was most often the ostensible objective of these games, what did it actually mean to play with it?
Speaker biography
Hélène Valance is a lecturer in American history at Université de Franche Comté and scientific advisor at Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, where she is leading a project on French 19th century games. She is the author of Nocturne. Night in American Art (Yale University Press, 2018).
This event is part of Art History Festival 2024 organised by the Association for Art History.
Image credit: Game of Napoleon. The Little Corporal. Salem: Parker Brothers, 1895. Wood, cardboard, paper, metal, 3.2 x 44.4 x 44.4 cm New York Historical Society, the Liman collection 2000.349.