Description
Book SynopsisIn 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.
Trade Review“Smith, well known for his studies of the French nobility, presents a stimulating collection of essays originally presented at a 2002 North Carolina Humanities Center symposium.
Grouped under three themes—economy, political culture, and ‘aristocratic reaction’—the essays, an exceptional blend of broad overview and detailed specialization, highlight the interrelationship of political, social, and intellectual change.”
—D. C. Baxter Choice
“It is a book of great value for our understanding not only of the nobility, but of the politics and culture of eighteenth-century France. To what extent one may draw general conclusions from the case studies that make up many of the essays is open to debate; it is certain that this book will stimulate further research.”
—Thomas Worcester Canadian Journal of History
“This well-edited and well-written anthology combines the latest research with a range of subjects on a variety of levels and has something for the professional historian and for the general reader.”
—Frank Garosi The Historian
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Nobility After Revisionism
Part I: Nobility and Economy
1. Economies of Consumption: Political Economy and Noble Display in Eighteenth-Century France
Michael Kwass
2. A Divided Nobility: Status, Markets, and the Patrimonial State in the Old Regime
Gail Bossenga
3. The Noble Profession of Seigneur in Eighteenth-Century Burgundy
Robert M. Schwartz
4. Political Economy and the French Nobility, 1750–1789
John Shovlin
Part II: Nobility and Political Culture
5. Noble Tax Exemption and the Long-Term Origins of the French Revolution: The Example of Provence, 1530s to 1789
Rafe Blaufarb
6. Women, Gender, and the Image of the Eighteenth-Century Aristocracy
Mita Choudhury
7. Nobles into Aristocrats, or How an Order Became a Conspiracy
Thomas E. Kaiser
Part III: Nobility and “Aristocratic Reaction”
8. A Rhetoric of Aristocratic Reaction? Nobility in De l’Esprit des Lois
Johnson Kent Wright
9. The Making of an Aristocratic “Reactionary”: The Comte d’Escherny, Noble Honor, and the Abolition of Nobility
Jay M. Smith
10. The Memoirs of Lameth and the Reconciliation of Nobility and Revolution
Doina Pasca Harsanyi
Part IV: Nobility and Modernity
11. Nobles as Signifiers: French Nobles and the Historians, 1820–1960
Jonathan Dewald
For Further Reading
List of Contributors
Index
