Description
Book SynopsisIn this book Tabetha Ewing analyses different forms of everyday talk over the course of the War of Austrian Succession to explore how they led to new understandings of political identity.
Royal policing and clandestine media shaped what Parisians knew and how they conceptualized events in a period of war.
Trade ReviewReviews‘Ewing effectively communicates how public talk about the war ebbed and flowed […] she manages to navigate the complex terrain between police and public without confusing the reader.’
French History‘Tabetha Leigh Ewing […] analyse avec une érudition exemplaire une série de sources qui échappent souvent aux chercheurs [pour en tirer] un vaste tableau de l’évolution de l’opinion publique parisienne à cette époque charnière. [L’ouvrage], par sa riche documentation, nous permet de voir les racines historiques d’une opinion publique qui fera une irruption spectaculaire à la fin du XVIIIè siècle lors de la Révolution française.'
Studi Francesi‘An informative study that examines a period slightly earlier than most works on public opinion’ […] Sketches of colorful individuals, such as a shopkeeper’s wife who amused French officials by sending them detailed, unsolicited advice on foreign policy, make for compelling reading [...] A model of how to integrate popular opinion into works on foreign policy.’
American History ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction
1. Transcriptions: royal secrecy in the channels of ‘on-dits’
2. Electing the emperor: problems of voice
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
3. Purloined letters and the 1742 crisis of information
4. Protesting the draft: popular opinion, chance, and royal justice
5. Declaring love, declaring war
6. A royal public: trumpeting the king’s triumph after Fontenoy
7. Disloyal speech and war on other fronts
8. Uncovering political public opinion and an abstract public
9. Gender as a poetics of indirection: a shopkeeper’s wife negotiates for peace
10. Inchoate citizenship
Bibliography
Index
