Social Relations Politics And Power In Early Modern France

The study of history is a fundamentally sociable practice, with the exchange of ideas taking place in writing, over the seminar table, and often in informal discussions over food. These essays grew out of a web of sociability centered around French historian Robert Descimon, and focus on the nexus of social relations, politics, and power in France as it moved from the age of religious wars into the age of absolutism. Using a wide variety of historical approaches and methods, these essays offer new insights into the evolving role of early modern elites and the social, familial, and cultural influences that shaped their values and priorities.

A magisterial history of French society between the end of the middle ages and the Revolution by one of the world's leading authorities on early modern France. Using colorful examples and incorporating the latest scholarship, William Beik conveys the distinctiveness of early modern society and identifies the cultural practices that defined the lives of people at all levels of society. Painting a vivid picture of the realities of everyday life, he reveals how society functioned and how the different classes interacted. In addition to chapters on nobles, peasants, city people, and the court, the book sheds new light on the Catholic church, the army, popular protest, the culture of violence, gendered relations, and sociability. This is a major new work that restores the ancien régime as a key epoch in its own right and not simply as the prelude to the coming Revolution.

Urban Politics in Early Modern Europe is an important survey of the complex relationships between urban politics and regional and national politics in Europe from 1500 to 1789. In an era when the national state was far less developed than today, crucial decisions about economic, religious and social policy were often settled at the municipal level. Cities were frequently the scenes of sudden tensions or bitter conflicts between ordinary citizens and the urban elite, and the threat of civic unrest often underlay the political dynamics of early modern cities. With vivid descriptions of events in cities in central Europe, England, France, Italy and Spain, this book outlines the forms of political interaction in the early modern city. Urban Politics in Early Modern Europe takes a fascinating comparative approach to the nature of conflict and conflict resolution in early modern communities throughout Europe.

Tracing the historical evolution of legal debates over the rights and disabilities of children born out of wedlock in early modern France, Bastards offers a political history of the family from the oblique perspective of those who were theoretically excluded from it.

These essays, three of them previously unpublished, explore the competing claims of innovation and tradition among the lower orders in sixteenth-century France. The result is a wide-ranging view of the lives and values of men and women (artisans, tradesmen, the poor) who, because they left little or nothing in writing, have hitherto had little attention from scholars. The first three essays consider the social, vocational, and sexual context of the Protestant Reformation, its consequences for urban women, and the new attitudes toward poverty shared by Catholic humanists and Protestants alike in sixteenth-century Lyon. The next three essays describe the links between festive play and youth groups, domestic dissent, and political criticism in town and country, the festive reversal of sex roles and political order, and the ritualistic and dramatic structure of religious riots. The final two essays discuss the impact of printing on the quasi-literate, and the collecting of common proverbs and medical folklore by learned students of the "people" during the Ancien Régime. The book includes eight pages of illustrations.

In Status, Power, and Identity in Early Modern France, Jonathan Dewald explores European aristocratic society by looking closely at one of its most prominent families. The Rohan were rich, powerful, and respected, but Dewald shows that there were also weaknesses in their apparently secure position near the top of French society. Family finances were unstable, and competing interests among family members generated conflicts and scandals; political ambitions led to other troubles, partly because aristocrats like the Rohan intensely valued individual achievement, even if it came at the expense of the family’s needs. Dewald argues that aristocratic power in the Old Regime reflected ongoing processes of negotiation and refashioning, in which both men and women played important roles. So did figures from outside the family—government officials, middle-class intellectuals and businesspeople, and many others. Dewald describes how the Old Regime’s ruling class maintained its power and the obstacles it encountered in doing so.

The major changes experienced by France's cities over the period from the end of the middle ages to the eve of the Revolution are explored by six French and North American historians.

Rich in detail and broad in scope, this majestic book is the first to reveal the interaction of politics and religion in France during the crucial years of the long seventeenth century. Joseph Bergin begins with the Wars of Religion, which proved to be longer and more violent in France than elsewhere in Europe and left a legacy of unresolved tensions between church and state with serious repercussions for each. He then draws together a series of unresolved problems—both practical and ideological—that challenged French leaders thereafter, arriving at an original and comprehensive view of the close interrelations between the political and spiritual spheres of the time. The author considers the powerful religious dimension of French royal power even in the seventeenth century, the shift from reluctant toleration of a Protestant minority to increasing aversion, conflicts over the independence of the Catholic church and the power of the pope over secular rulers, and a wealth of other interconnected topics.