The Attack On Feudalism In Eighteenth Century France

First published in 2006. Feudalism is normally associated with eighteenth-century France only in its more bizarre survivals, as in The Marriage of Figaro, when his seigneur claims the rights to spend the first night with the bride. If feudalism menat no more in the eighteenth century than a few quaint customs that could tickle an audence at the Comedie Francaise, why did French writers attack it so furiously? The author suggests that contemporary writers saw remnants of the feudal regime as important less in themselves, than as symbols of an attitude of mind which the 'enlightened' among them would no longer tolerate. Instead of representing the ideas of the eighteenth century through the eyes of a few outstanding writers, Dr Mackrell has tried to reconstitute the intellectual climate of the ancien regime from the works of largely unknown historians, jurists, economists and others. In this way he illuminates the rich texture of eighteenth-century French thought, without which the ideas of Voltaire, Montesquieu and even Rousseau lose much of their meaning. This study breathes life into the fierce controversies that shook the Age of Reason long before the outbreak of Revolution.

Contrary to their traditional image as a caste of intransigent reactionaries and parasites, this analysis maintains that pre-revolutionary nobility actually were in the forefront of French economic and intellectual life, and until 1789, at the head of the movement for reform of the old regime.

First published in 2006. Feudalism is normally associated with eighteenth-century France only in its more bizarre survivals, as in The Marriage of Figaro, when his seigneur claims the rights to spend the first night with the bride. If feudalism menat no more in the eighteenth century than a few quaint customs that could tickle an audence at the Comedie Francaise, why did French writers attack it so furiously? The author suggests that contemporary writers saw remnants of the feudal regime as important less in themselves, than as symbols of an attitude of mind which the 'enlightened' among them would no longer tolerate. Instead of representing the ideas of the eighteenth century through the eyes of a few outstanding writers, Dr Mackrell has tried to reconstitute the intellectual climate of the ancien regime from the works of largely unknown historians, jurists, economists and others. In this way he illuminates the rich texture of eighteenth-century French thought, without which the ideas of Voltaire, Montesquieu and even Rousseau lose much of their meaning. This study breathes life into the fierce controversies that shook the Age of Reason long before the outbreak of Revolution.

This book, the final installment of a two-volume history of French lordship, examines the role of lordship in old regime society, the internal structures and administration of lordship - including the seigneurial dues, domain-farms, forests and common lands, and serfdom - and seigneurial justice. In addition, the book reviews the regional patterns of lordship, and concludes with an examination of lordship from 1770 to 1789, the years immediately preceding the French Revolution.

Continuing where William Beik's pathbreaking seventeenth-century study ends, this book sheds new light on the origins of the French Revolution and the social and political developments thereafter.

In this book, a group of prominent French historians shows why the nobility remains a vital topic for understanding France's past. 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.