Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewReviews ‘Most brilliantly on display in Bien’s essays is the quality of his peculiar forte: namely that of seeing the problematical behind the apparently obvious and espying questions where people had earlier seen only answers’.
Journal of modern history‘David Bien was without doubt one of the greatest historians of eighteenth-century France, and we are indebted to the editors for bringing some of his best work together in a single volume’.
H-France ReviewTable of ContentsPreface, Keith Michael Baker
Introduction: David D. Bien and the paradoxical history of Old Regime France, Michael Christofferson
1. The background of the Calas affair
2. Catholic magistrates and protestant marriage in the French Enlightenment
3. Aristocracy
4. Manufacturing nobles: the chancelleries in France to 1789
5. Property in office under the
ancien régime: the case of the stockbrokers
6. Every shoemaker an
officier: Terray as reformer
7. Old Regime origins of democratic liberty
8. The army in the French Enlightenment: reform, reaction and Revolution
9. Military education in eighteenth-century France: technical and non-technical determinants
10. The nobilities of Toulouse
11. Interview with Norman Cantor
Bibliography
Index
