Abstract EN:

From the end of the XVIIIth century to the middle of the XIXth century, from Honoré III (1720-1795) to Florestan Ist (1785-1856), taking in Honoré IV (1758-1819) and Honoré V (1778-1841), the cultural and political lives of the princes of Monaco contained some enduring features, certain brilliant aspects of the Enlightenment that were to last. The royal family of Monaco, elevated for a short while as foreign princes to the court in 1688, while hardly acknowledged at the end XVIIIth century, were not perhaps some of the first to advocate the new spirit, although there was no doubt they helped to introduce the new ideas circulating during that period to the upper echelons of the aristocracy. With their newly acquired French cultural background and with a keenness to make up for their lack of reputation as new men (novi homines) by dedicating themselves to the symbols of refinement and to the sociability of their rank, the Grimaldis were distinguished for the fact that they had a twofold status and three residences: they were members of the aristocracy in France, in Paris, at the court, and lords of land in Normandy; they were also masters of a small principality between France and Italy. As rulers practising enlightened despotism in Monaco right up to the time of the secession of Menton and Roquebrune in 1848, the princes continued to apply within their States and properties certain ideas and practices that had been exercised at the end of the XVIIIth century, adapting them to suit their own ideals of aristocratic patronage and their own interests. These practices included in particular the mania for collecting things, the mania for English things, agronomy and philanthropy. How to deal with the poverty and land use seemed to them to have become the essential requirements to cope with the growing industrialisation.