The Confiscation of Émigré Wealth in Paris and the Problem of Property in the French Revolution
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Revolutionizing Property: The Confiscation of Émigré Wealth in Paris and the Problem of Property in the French Revolution The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Callaway, Hannah. 2015. Revolutionizing Property: The Confiscation of Émigré Wealth in Paris and the Problem of Property in the French Revolution. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845399 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Revolutionizing Property: The Confiscation of Émigré Wealth in Paris and the Problem of Property in the French Revolution A dissertation presented by Hannah Callaway to The Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts June 2015 © Hannah Boone Callaway All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisors: Professors Patrice Higonnet Hannah Callaway and Pierre Serna Revolutionizing Property: The Confiscation of Émigré Wealth in Paris and the Problem of Property in the French Revolution Abstract The confiscation of émigré property reveals the many different, conflicting ways that property was used in Revolutionary France. Studying the question of property and the process of émigré confiscation from the perspectives of law, politics, administration, social relations, and economic activity, the dissertation shows that as the Revolutionary leadership reduced the legal limits of property to a right held by individuals, they continued to rely on other relationships secured by property in their vision of the revolutionized polity. Still, this vision conflicted with the ways that citizens used property to secure relationships and create wealth. The project contextualizes a core piece of global political and economic systems in the historical contingency from which it emerged, offering a new way to think about the French Revolution. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... v Introduction. What Is Property? ...................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. “The Fruit of Infinite Reflections”: Property and the Law in Revolutionary France . 18 Chapter 2. The Émigrés and the Politics of Property .................................................................... 57 Chapter 3. The Revolution at Work: Administering Confiscation ............................................... 95 Chapter 4. Property in Motion .................................................................................................... 135 Chapter 5. By Iron or Nail: Pulling Apart Property in Revolutionary Paris ............................... 172 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 211 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 217 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................... 239 iv Acknowledgements I first encountered émigré property as an undergraduate at Carleton College, in the collection of letters owned by Carl D. Weiner that are now preserved in the Esternay Project. The collection includes correspondence exchanged between Marie Marguerite Dreux, Baronne d’Aurillac, and her notary from 1805 to 1843. The letters served as the basis for my Junior paper and contributed to my Senior thesis, written under the guidance of Susannah Ottaway. The Baroness divorced her émigré husband in March 1793 to save her estate in Champagne, and continued to administer the property until her death. My interest in property deepened at Université Paris-Sorbonne, where I wrote two Master’s theses on property owners in the region of Vernon, in Haute Normandie, supervised by Jean-Pierre Bardet. I used records of the Centième denier inheritance tax (collected by the Régie de l’Enregistrement et des Domaines, the same authority that oversaw revolutionary property confiscations) after learning the ropes at the Departmental Archives of the Eure from Fabrice Boudjaaba. I am indebted to the mentors who shaped me as a scholar before I ever began this PhD. Many people at Harvard, Paris 1, and beyond have supported me during this project. At Harvard, I am deeply grateful to my advisor, Patrice Higonnet, whose humor and wisdom never ceased to keep things interesting. Funding for my research came from the Fulbright program, the Social Science Research Council, the Krupp Foundation, the Harvard University History Department, and the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. At Harvard, I’ve thrived in a community of French historians, including Ann Blair, Mary Lewis, and Emma Rothschild. The year that Jim Livesey spent at Harvard in 2007-2008 was short but, for me, transformative. My colleagues at the Harvard Center for European Studies Graduate Dissertation Workshop, Harvard Center for History and Economics Workshop, and Harvard-Princeton Early Modern Graduate v Conference provided valuable feedback on chapters. I’m particularly grateful to Mary Lewis, Mira Siegelberg, Anne O’Donnell, Jeff Ravel, and Anoush Terjanian. My time at Harvard was brightened by Mira Siegelberg, Emma Gallwey, Erik and Sheela Linstrum, Michael and Heidi Tworek, Stephen Walsh and Sofia Grachova, Caroline Spence, Greg Clines, Elizabeth Cross, Brendan Karch, Lydia Walker, and Audrey Patten. At Paris 1, I am deeply grateful to my advisor, Pierre Serna, who pushed me to see things differently. I benefitted from the doctoral seminar at the Institut d’Histoire de la Révolution Française, which I attended in 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2013-14. Jean-Luc Chappey, Virginie Martin, and Clyde Plumauzille welcomed me into the Institut with warmth and generosity. I’m particularly appreciative for Clyde’s incisive feedback and solidarité. At the Archives Nationales, Denise Ogilvie, Martine Sin Blima-Barru, and the team working on the Émigrés drew me into their erudite confederacy, teaching me a great deal about the archives and the Domain administration. Yann-Arzel Durelle-Marc generously engaged with my project, offering the point of view of a legal historian and many very useful tomes. Miranda Spieler and Allan Potofsky were both generous interlocutors. My years and summers in Paris were made especially rich by Eddie Kolla, Nimisha Barton, Molly Gower, Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu, and Katie McDonough; the 2010-2011 Fulbrighters, especially Katie Jarvis, Elizabeth Churchich, Andrew Bellisari and our beloved grant coordinator, Patricia Janin; Jean-Pierre and Brigitte Bardet; the Grange family: Cyril, Isabelle, Caroline, Elisabeth, Louise, and François; by Annika, Mikael, Calle and Franz Cederfeldt; Coraline Lambert; and my cousin, Christopher Manning. None of this would have been possible without the unceasing, unstinting love and support of my parents, Jamie and Mary Chilton Callaway. vi Callaway/ Introduction Introduction. What Is Property? I came to the question of property one August afternoon, when I opened a dossier filed under “Émigrés” in the Archives de Paris. Amidst the turmoil of the French Revolution, a woman had fled France with her 10-year-old son and, accordingly, been enrolled on the émigré list by the Revolutionary government. Inscription on the émigré list meant that the state could confiscate her property, and appropriate measures were being taken against the woman, Louise- Perrine Chabannois. She owned a mansion in Paris, but some confusion had arisen among the officials overseeing the confiscation, because the house did not appear on the list of émigré property that they used to verify their work. Did the house belong to the state? The local administrator, writing to his superior, explained that the situation was “délicate” because Chabannois’ son was a minor, meaning he did not count as an émigré. In theory the state considered his mother, who had deserted the nation by emigrating, to be legally dead. So the boy, her heir, was effectively an orphan and ward of the state. As the official succinctly put it, he “n’a plus d’autre défenseur que la Nation.”1 His only protector was the Nation, which had already rented out his inheritance to a man named Chartier, whose tardiness in paying his rent had triggered the chain of events that brought the issue to light. This small boy presented the state with a Shakespearean dilemma. As a minor abandoned by his parents, he merited the special care of a guardian for a distressed child; but as the heir to a traitor who had deserted her country, the harsh blow of justice was his due.2 As I would discover in the course of research, this small boy embodied a larger dilemma faced by lawmakers as they 1 “has no other defender than the Nation.” 2 During the Terror lawmakers used the even more unsettling image of “la glaive de la loi,” the sword of the law, to discuss the punishment due to offenders. The term was used in discussions of how the émigrés should be punished. 1 Callaway/ Introduction sought