Coalitions and local politics in seventeenth-century France

French Historical Studies

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 29-48

  Potter, Mark ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249096217     PISSN: 00161071     EISSN: 15275493     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-2007-014     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. David Stasavage, Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic Stale: France and Great Britain, 1688-1789 (Cambridge, 2003), 14-18
2. Marjolein 't Hart, "Cities and Statemaking in the Dutch Republic, 1580-1680," Theory and Society 18 (1989): 663-87
3. William Beik's study of Languedoc, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France (New York, 1985), provides ample evidence of the tendencies among the elite to identify their interests with regard to their specific corporate or privileged standing
4. See esp. chaps. 7 and 9. Orest Ranum attributes to Jules Mazarin a (failed) divide-and-rule strategy toward the robe elite (The Fronde: A French Revolution, 1648-1652 [New York, 1993], 106-9)
5. For a recent review of the literature on patron-client relationships in Old Regime France, see Elie Haddad, "Noble Clienteles in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Historiographical Approach," French History 20 (2006): 75-109
6. Sharon Kettering, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France (New York, 1986)
7. On relations of friendship, which also involved lasting relations of reciprocal exchange, see Ariette Jouanna, Le devoir de révolte (Paris, 1989)
8. The term faction is usually employed to imply the divisive impact of personal relations. See, e.g., Sharon Kettering, Judicial Politics and Urban Revolt in Seventeenth-Century France: The Parlement of Aix, 1629-1659 (Princeton, NJ, 1978)
9. and William Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution (New York, 1997), 173-98
10. Robert Darnton, "A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order," in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984), 107-43
11. Beik, Urban Protest, 18-19
12. and James Collins, Classes, Estates, and Order in Early Modern Brittany (New York, 1994)
13. Beik, Absolutism and Society
14. James Collins has written of coalitions as ephemeral and as shaping the contours of conflict. Thus for him, they were not the basis of lasting political cohesion ("Les conflits des élites locales dans la France moderne: Le cas Breton," Cohiers d'histoire 45 [2000]: 645-74)
15. See, e.g., Jeremy Boissevain, Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators, and Coalitions (New York, 1974), 28-33
16. In his study of the sixteenth-century Guise affinity, Stuart Carroll borrows terminology from Boissevain and argues that "relationships among individuals in a following were multiplex" and that "bonds in political society were multifarious, non-exclusive, and fluctuated over time" (Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion: The Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy [New York, 1998], 7, 53)
17. In identifying "major provinces with estates," I am following the approach of J. Russell Major, who writes of the "great pays d'Etats" (From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles, and Estates [Baltimore, 1994])
18. Major, From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy, 253-60
19. Gaspard Honoré de Coriolis, Dissertation sur les états de Provence (Aix, 1867), 138
20. This work appeared long after Coriolis's death as a supplement to his Traité de l'administration du Comté de Provence, published in 1788
21. Bibliothèque Méjanes, Aix (hereafter B. Méjanes), MS 724 (611), "Administration du Pays de Provence," fol. 359v
22. Coriolis, Dissertation, 138
23. Specifically, custom prescribed that the office of the first consul be filled by a member of the fiefholding nobility, that the office of the second be filled by a local noble, and that the office of the third be filled by a member of the "bonne bourgeoisie," many of whose members were also noble. The assessor was chosen from among the attorneys of Aix. See Donna Bohanan, Old and New Nobility in Aix-en-Provence, 1600-1695 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1992), 82
24. B. Méjanes, MS 724 (611), "Administration du Pays de Provence," fol. 283v
25. Unless otherwise indicated, the following is from B. Méjanes, MS 736 (832), "Assemblées du corps de la noblesse de Provence," 730-77
26. M. Papon, Histoire générale de Provence, dédiée aux états, 4 vols. (Paris, 1777), 4:452
27. B. Méjanes, MS 736 (832), 738
28. Major argues that in contrast to earlier initiatives, when "the principal reason for creating élections was to raise money from the sale of offices," the monarchy had a fundamental interest in seeing through this initiative of 1629-30 to bring about institutional change, at least until the fall of Marillac following the Day of Dupes on Nov. 11, 1630, after which time Richelieu was left a free hand to deal with the provinces (From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy, 253-60)
29. B. Méjanes, F 1065, "Déliberations des états et assemblées des communautés," doc. 24
30. On the urban tradition of the Provençal nobility, see Bohanan, Old and New Nobility, 11-20, 79-82
31. Beik seconds this view of Aixois noble politics: "The same factionalism [as in Marseille] was even more pronounced in Aix, which was a hotbed of aristocratic honor and manipulative ostentation, due to the importance of the robe families attached to sovereign courts and the rivalries between their presidents and chambers" (Urban Protest, 189-90)
32. Papon, Histoire générale de Provence, 4:447-48
33. It was also Dreux d'Aubray who came before the parlement to register the edict, thereby setting off the revolt. See Kettering, Judicial Politics, 157
34. Major, From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy, 147-48, 153, 264-65
35. B. Méjanes, MS 736 (832), 840
36. Bohanan, Old and New Nobility, 100-101
37. Archives Départementales de la Côte d'Or (hereafter ADCO), C 5366, Arrêt du 13 septembre 1689
38. For a further discussion of tax policy in Burgundy during these years, see my Corps and Clienteles: Public Finance and Political Change in France, 1688-1715 (Burlington, VT, 2003), 54-61
39. Mark Potter, "Good Offices: Intermediation by Corporate Bodies in Early Modern French Public Finance," Journal of Economic History 60 (2000): 599-626
40. Mark Potter and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, "Politics and Public Finance in France: The Estates of Burgundy, 1660-1790," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27 (1997): 577-612
41. Liquidity proved another advantage of investing in the estates' bonds. See Mark Potter and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, "The Development of Intermediation in French Credit Markets: Evidence from the Estates of Burgundy," Journal of Economic History 62 (2002): 1024-49
42. Potter, Corps and Clienteles, 92-95
43. See Beth Nachison, "Absentee Government and Provincial Governors in Early Modern France: The Princes of Condé and Burgundy, 1660-1720," French Historical Studies 21 (1998): 265-97
44. and Pierre Lefebvre, "Aspects de la 'fidelité' en France au XVIIe siècle: Le cas des agents des princes de Condé," Revue historique, no. 507 (1973): 59-106
45. For more on this argument see Potter, "Good Offices."
46. Kettering, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients, 91-94
47. Potter and Rosenthal, "Politics and Public Finance," 594-611
48. ADCO, C 2982, fols. 202-6, 424-27
49. ADCO, C 3330, fols. 39-40
50. and François Dumont, Une session des états de Bourgogne, la tenue de 1718 (Dijon, 1935), 63-65
51. Collins, Classes, Estates, and Order
52. On the reproducing class structures of early modern Europe, see Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (New York, 1974)
53. The estates of Dauphiné, which could not withstand the attacks of 1630, are the notable exception. For reasons specific to the history of that province, the estates-centered coalition fell apart by the mid-sixteenth century, leaving the estates vulnerable to attack. See Daniel Hickey, The Coming of French Absolutism (Toronto, 1986), 14-32
54. and Julian Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates of Burgundy, 1661-1790 (New York, 2003), 57-75
55. It is because of this narrowness of deputations that Beik has expressed doubt that estates-centered coalitions were a significant category of political cohesion. See his book review essay, "The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration," Past and Present, no. 188 (2005): 195-224