The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: Reassessments and New Approaches

Published by Penn State University Press 2006

The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century

Reassessments and New Approaches

Edited by: Jay M. Smith

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271035871

Overview
Contents

About this book

Historians have long been fascinated by the nobility in pre-Revolutionary France. What difference did nobles make in French society? What role did they play in the coming of the Revolution? In this book, a group of prominent French historians shows why the nobility remains a vital topic for understanding France’s past.

The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century appears some thirty years after the publication of the most sweeping and influential “revisionist” assessment of the French nobility, Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret’s La noblesse au dix-huitième siècle. The contributors to this volume incorporate the important lessons of Chaussinand-Nogaret’s revisionism but also reexamine the assumptions on which that revisionism was based. At the same time, they consider what has been gained or lost through the adoption of new methods of inquiry in the intervening years. Where, in other words, should the nobility fit into the twenty-first century’s narrative about eighteenth-century France?

The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century will interest not only specialists of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, and modern European history but also those concerned with the differences in, and the developing tensions between, the methods of social and cultural history.

In addition to the editor, the contributors are Rafe Blaufarb, Gail Bossenga, Mita Choudhury, Jonathan Dewald, Doina Pasca Harsanyi, Thomas E. Kaiser, Michael Kwass, Robert M. Schwartz, John Shovlin, and Johnson Kent Wright.

Author / Editor information

Smith Jay M. :

Jay M. Smith is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His most recent book is Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast (2011).

Reviews

“Smith, well known for his studies of the French nobility, presents a stimulating collection of essays originally presented at a 2002 North Carolina Humanities Center symposium.
Grouped under three themes—economy, political culture, and ‘aristocratic reaction’—the essays, an exceptional blend of broad overview and detailed specialization, highlight the interrelationship of political, social, and intellectual change.”
—D. C. Baxter, Choice

“It is a book of great value for our understanding not only of the nobility, but of the politics and culture of eighteenth-century France. To what extent one may draw general conclusions from the case studies that make up many of the essays is open to debate; it is certain that this book will stimulate further research.”
—Thomas Worcester, Canadian Journal of History

“This well-edited and well-written anthology combines the latest research with a range of subjects on a variety of levels and has something for the professional historian and for the general reader.”
—Frank Garosi, The Historian

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Nobility After Revisionism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I. Nobility and Economy
1. Economies of Consumption: Political Economy and Noble Display in Eighteenth-Century France Michael Kwass Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2. A Divided Nobility: Status, Markets, and the Patrimonial State in the Old Regime Gail Bossenga Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
3. The Noble Profession of Seigneur in Eighteenth-Century Burgundy Robert M. Schwartz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
4. Political Economy and the French Nobility, 1750 –1789 John Shovlin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
II. Nobility and Political Culture
5. Noble Tax Exemption and the Long-Term Origins of the French Revolution: The Example of Provence, 1530s to 1789 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
6. Women, Gender, and the Image of the Eighteenth-Century Aristocracy Mita Choudhury Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
7. Nobles into Aristocrats, or How an Order Became a Conspiracy Thomas E. Kaiser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
III. Nobility and "Aristocratic Reaction"
8. A Rhetoric of Aristocratic Reaction? Nobility in De l’Esprit des Lois Johnson Kent Wright Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
9. The Making of an Aristocratic Reactionary: The Comte d’Escherny, Noble Honor, and the Abolition of Nobility Jay M. Smith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
10. The Memoirs of Lameth and the Reconciliation of Nobility and Revolution Doina Pasca Harsanyi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
IV. Nobility and Modernity
11. French Nobles and the Historians, 1820 –1960 Jonathan Dewald Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
For Further Reading Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	333
List of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	335
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	339

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 328
Keywords: French Nobility; Smith; society; pre-Revolutionary France; Chaussinand-Nogaret; revisionism; La noblesse au dix-huitième siècle; French Revolution; social; culture; European history

eBook

Published: September 26, 2006
ISBN: 9780271035871