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Feudalism, Venality, and Revolution: Provincial Assemblies in Late-Old Regime France, by Stephen Miller

2021; Oxford University Press; Volume: 137; Issue: 584 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ehr/ceab292

1477-4534

Julian Swann,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

Throughout much of the eighteenth century, French ministers and political thinkers grappled with the thorny question of how to decentralise and broaden participation in the royal administration. The kingdom was divided, with approximately one third of the national territory classed as pays d’états with functioning provincial estates, and the remainder, known as pays d’élections, largely under the tutelage of the intendants. Critics of Louis XIV and of his supposedly centralised administration, including Fénelon and Montesquieu, had called for the revival of the provincial estates in the pays d’élections. If nostalgia for a lost golden age of aristocratic representation accounted, in part, for these ideas, there was also a more grounded recognition of the undoubted efficacy of their administrations, notably in Languedoc. In the decades preceding the Revolution, the provincial estates acquired new powers and calls for them to be established elsewhere were regularly heard. The Crown proved wary, fearing that these bodies would prove difficult to control and liable to defend privileged interests. As a result, alternative plans were mooted, and by the reign of Louis XVI they began to take physical shape in the form of the provincial administrations established by Necker in, for example, Berry, the Lyonnais and Haute-Guyenne, and later the provincial assemblies introduced throughout the pays d’élections by Calonne and the subsequent ministry of Loménie de Brienne. These institutions provide the focus of Stephen Miller’s important new study, which is based upon impressive research and a detailed knowledge of the intricacies of local assemblies and administrations. The book consists of three well-chosen case-studies, examining the impact of institutional innovation in Berry, the Lyonnais and Poitou, which between them provide a good balance of traditional rural regions and the economically more dynamic city of Lyon. These examples are accompanied by a further three chapters examining the intellectual debates preceding their establishment and the broader implications of the local assemblies for society and politics before and after 1789.