Institutions as a Mode of Historical Analysis

Gail Bossenga, Elizabethtown College

The debate on the origins of the French Revolution left historians in a bit of a quandary. The Marxist interpretation of the Revolution attributed the causes of the Revolution to “social” forces–class conflict--arising from contradictions generated in the means of production. The demise of this interpretation, however, left historians without a clear sense of how to define and study other forms of social power. The turn toward political culture provided a necessary corrective to Marxist economic reductionism, but it left the field without a clear way to connect cultural frameworks to social organization and practice. One way to address these problems is through the study of institutions. As scholars associated with the “new institutionalism” in the social sciences have contended, institutions are rooted in cognitive and normative frameworks by which individuals make sense of the world, and, at the same time, they are sources of resources that both constrain and empower people to act in order to realize socially-defined purposes. Institutions thus bridge the cultural and social realms in complex ways. Another reason for advocating the study of institutions is empirical in nature. The French Revolution was an institutional transformation of enormous scope, the greatest attempt to date in European history to overturn and rewrite the principles governing the distribution of power and resources of a society and to institutionalize those principles in new organizations and procedures. If, as the economist Douglass North has argued, institutions are “the rules of the game,”1 then the revolutionaries were attempting to be game changers of massive proportions. There is certainly nothing dramatic about calling for the study of institutions in order to understand the origins of the Revolution and its social, as

1Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 3. 10 Gail Bossenga

well as political, dimensions. Most likely, this approach conjures up the books along the lines of Roland Mousnier’s erudite work, The Institutions of France under the , a valuable reference work, but one whose interpretive framework was couched in terms of a hierarchical society of orders that was evolving, although it was not really clear how or why, into a society of classes.2 One problem with arguing in favor of institutional history is that, although institutions have played a central role in interpretations of the old regime, much of this history has not been considered institutional history as such. Rather, depending on the topic, it has been labeled social, political, or cultural history, or it has been subsumed under the historiographical question at stake, such as, was the French Revolution a “bourgeois revolution”?3 David Bien’s analyses of important institutions, including the army and venality of office, provided path-breaking insights into the workings of the old regime, including social mobility, intra-noble relations, state finance, and the failure of reform before 1789.4 Yet Bien never tried to define institutions as such as a historical methodology. Although historians often use institutions to explain broad historical trends, institutions are rarely granted explicit causal weight in their own right. In the Marxist interpretation of the Revolution, institutions came into play, but were viewed as epiphenomenal offshoots of deeper class relations. The parlements, for example, were seen as spokesmen for the noble class. Divisions between the parlements and other elitist institutions like the provincial estates, therefore, were defined out of existence as questions for further research.5 Keith Baker placed his study of the discourses of “reason, justice and will” within institutional contexts, but left the study of the corresponding practices of actual institutions to others.6

2Roland E. Mousnier, The Institutions of France Under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598- 1789, 2 vols., trans. Brian Pearce (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979). 3In the early stages of revisionism, valuable studies were published of institutions, such as provincial parlements, bailliage courts, and provincial estates, but they were cited primarily as revisionist refutations of the Marxist interpretation and generally considered part of the new wave of “social” history. 4Many of his articles have been republished in two volumes: David D. Bien, Jay M. Smith, and Rafe Blaufarb, Caste, Class and Profession in Old Regime France: the French Army and the Ségur Reform of 1781 (St. Andrews: Centre for French History and Culture of the University of St Andrews, 2010), and David D. Bien, Rafe Blaufarb, Michael Scott Christofferson, et. al. Interpreting the Ancien Régime: David Bien (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2014). 5For one example of ongoing battles between provincial estates and parlements see Julian Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: the Estates General of Burgundy, 1661- 1789 (Cambridge, University of Cambridge Press, 2003), ch. 9. 6Keith Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Simona Cerutti notes a general tendency of “American imprint” to

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As a result, institutions have often appeared as inert or stable containers that receive and transmit signals from more important historical processes and agents. If not passive recipients of impulses from other forces, how might institutions be defined? This is a question at the core of the so-called “new institutionalism” that over the past decades became a major source of debate in economics, political science, and sociology. A quick survey of several handbooks dealing with this development in the social sciences reveals that defining institutions is about as easy as nailing jello to a wall.7 Definitions vary by academic discipline, and are shaped by the intellectual concerns and research agendas particular to each.8 Drawing on this diverse literature, I would emphasize three elements important to defining institutions. First, institutions involve a cultural dimension, for example, a “guiding idea” or “a set of rules, beliefs and norms.” Second, these institutional rules and norms generate recurrent, durable forms of collective behavior, or practice. “An institution is a relatively enduring collection of rules and organized practices,” states two scholars.9 Another cites the oft-quoted aphorism of Douglass North, that institutions “are the rules of the game,” and then asks pointedly, “or do the rules only become institutions when they are acted out?”10 Third, institutions are both endowed with resources and accumulate them. In an illuminating discussion, William Sewell, Jr. argued that institutional resources can be material--such as money, land, tools, and the like--that help individuals to produce goods, compete in markets, and accumulate wealth. Yet they can also be intangible, consisting of

emphasize culture and discourse at the expense of social practice in “Normes et pratiques, ou de la légitimité de leur opposition,” in Les Formes de l’experience: Une autre histoire sociale, ed., Bernard Lepetit (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), 127-149. 7 R.A.W. Rhodes, Sarah A. Binder, and Bert A. Rockman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutionalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Glenn Morgan, John L. Campbell, Colin Crouch, et. al, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Institutional Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Karl Orfeo Fioretos, Tulia Gabriela Falleti, and Adam D Sheingate, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); hereafter OHPI, OHCIA and OHHI, respectively. As Mousnier observed, “this word [institution] has been used by sociologists in so many different senses that the philosopher-sociologist George Gurvitch was no longer able to make any sense of it and wanted to ban its use completely.” Institutions of France, I: xiii 8For example, John L. Campbell, “Recent Trends in Institutional Political Economy,” The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 17, nos. 7/8 (1997): 15-56; and Jean Blondel, “About Institutions Mainly, but Not Exclusively, Political,” in OHPI, 716-730. 9 James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “Elaborating the ‘New Institutionalism,” OHPI, 3-22 at 3. The term “guiding idea,” is from Mousnier, Institutions. 10 Marie-Laure Djelnic, “Institutional Perspectives–Working Towards Coherence or Irreconcilable Diversity?” in OHCIA, 15-40, at 25.

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things such as loyalty, esteem, or knowledge.11 Institutional resources thus encompass not only economic capital, but what Pierre Bourdieu has called “social” and “cultural” capital.12 As sociologist Richard Scott has observed, scholars treat the cultural, rule- like dimension of institutions--that is, their ability to shape social behavior--in three different ways: regulative, normative, and cognitive.13 Scholars stressing regulation see institutions as constraining or encouraging different kinds of behavior through rules, sanctions, and incentives. An example is the work of Douglass North who argued that if the institutional structure of a society provides incentives to piracy, that society will find itself overrun with pirates.14 One criticism of this perspective is that although it asserts that institutional rules channel behavior into different avenues, it does not alter an underlying view of human nature as essentially rational, self-interested, and materially acquisitive. It is still assumed that human nature, so-called “rational man,” is the same across time and culture. A normative view implies a stronger view of how institutions condition human nature. Norms and values specify how things should be done, what constitutes the appropriate and legitimate means for achieving social goals. To the degree that these norms are internalized, they leave a deeper imprint on human decision-making and collective behavior. The action of individuals is shaped by a sense of expectation or obligation, and not only self-interest. What is perceived as “rational” in society, therefore, is framed by socio-cultural rules and depends on context. Finally, recently scholars have become interested in the underlying, hidden “cognitive” frameworks by which institutions classify social experience into seemingly “natural” categories that define what is socially desirable, worthy, and appropriate, or the reverse. These modes of classification are so deeply ingrained in human consciousness that individuals remain unaware of their role and respond to them simply because it is the “normal” way to do things.

11William H. Sewell, Jr., “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation,” American Journal of Sociology 98 (July 1992): 1-29, at 9. Reprinted in chapter four of his Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 12Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J. Richardson (New York: Greenwood, 1986); see also Craig Calhoun, “"Habitus, Field and Capital: the Question of Historical Specificity,” in Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, eds. Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma, Moishe Postone. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 61- 89. 13 Richard Scott, Institutions and Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1995). I am drawing on pp. 33-62. 14 Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 4, cited by Scott, Institutions, 36.

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Departure from these commonly-accepted, taken-for-granted modes of conduct is regarded as deviant or incomprehensible.15 Undoubtedly, complex institutions are shaped by all of these elements: legal, normative, and cognitive.16 All of them, furthermore, help to explain how institutions operate as sites of power in their own right. Institutions may wield power directly through the deployment of rules, sanctions, penalties and rewards. Or they may continually shape decision-making far more subtly through the internalization of proper modes of conduct and deeply-held values that perpetuate certain kinds of expectations and conduct over time. The complex array of resources available to the most powerful organizations allows them to mobilize the support of others and to acquire skills that give them advantages over competitors. Indeed, although it has sometimes been claimed that institutions constrain behavior and thus undercut human agency, that argument can be turned on its head. Rather, owing to the resources that they provide to groups and individuals, it can be argued that institutions are actually essential to agency. “Indeed, part of what it means to conceive of human beings as agents,” stated Sewell, “is to conceive of them as empowered by access to resources of one kind or another.”17 All in all, as sources of regulatory authority, identity, norms, and resources, institutions constitute social constellations of power by which society continually reproduces itself in regularized fashion. For my own purposes, the regulatory, politico-juridical aspects of institutions remain central: the Revolution redefined the basis of state sovereignty, that is, the supreme right to make law, and legally abolished, or significantly transformed, a host of institutional arrangements. Nonetheless, normative and cognitive elements in this transformation also played a central role. One reason that the institutions of the old regime survived as long as they did was because their organization was embedded in deeply-rooted and shared assumptions of how authority should be delegated and who was worthy of exercising it. Without a change in these very basic notions of social classification and legitimacy, no institutional transformation of any depth was possible. The process of institutionalizing new ways of exercising power and distributing resources would have been stopped in its tracks. Although historians often study individual institutions in isolation as case studies, institutions of any importance never act alone: it is critical to explore the

15 For example, Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986). 16 Marie-Laure Djelic, “Institutional Perspectives,” cited note 10. I accept the idea that sanctions and rewards shape human action, but not that human nature is simply an underlying rational, static entity responding to these prompts. 17 Sewell, “A Theory of Structure,” 10, italicized in the original.

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interactions and relationships among them. The Marxist interpretation looked at institutional networks in terms of a narrative of class conflict and movement through stages of history. Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the process of one institution, the monarchical state, was undermining the liberties and independence of a host of other corporate institutions, including parlements, guilds, town councils, and the like.18 Michel Foucault viewed the effects of a wide variety of institutions--such as schools, prisons, hospitals and bureaucracies–in terms of their constraining and disciplinary effects.19 Instead of positing one overarching process or goal by which to analyze institutions, I contend that not one, but several wider institutional “logics” or cultural frameworks—that is, widely-accepted ways of doing things and legitimizing activities—left their imprint on organizations, formal and informal, in the old regime. These meta- institutional logics were rooted in shared understandings and norms that continually molded organizational structure and practice across French, and even European, society. Three of the most important institutional frameworks were: patrimonialism, status, and religious confessionalism. Their overarching cultural logics were institutionalized at multiple levels and able to mobilize vast resources in society. All three of them were either destroyed or dramatically altered by the Revolution. The most salient feature of patrimonialism was the conceptualization of power and rights as forms of property that could be inherited or sold.20 The distinction between public authority and private possession was blurred and incomplete. Patrimonial attitudes were institutionalized on many fronts, for example: through the ability to inherit or buy seigneuries and venal offices, through the purchase of commissions in the army officer corps, through provisions allowing masters’ sons to enter guilds on special terms, and through the passing down of the monarchy itself through male primogeniture. As a result, family dynasties could be found controlling important offices in the court at Versailles, the parlements, the crown’s financial networks, and certain guilds, not to mention the kingdom of France itself. Second, the logic of status assigned social worth according to collectively

18 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955). 19 See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1979) and The Birth of the Clinic (New York: Vintage Books, 1975). 20 On patrimonialism as an ideal type see , Economy and Society, eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 1070-1110; For a recent analysis of how the French revolutionaries dismembered the public ownership of private power at the heart of patrimonialism see Rafe Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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shared positive and negative estimations of honor.21 The hidden ability of status to structure social relationships was inscribed within language itself, in words like “noble,” for example, which was derived from the Latin nobilis, meaning “high born,” but could also mean having fine personal qualities or high moral principles.22 It was made manifest in myriad ways: through forms of dress, architectural styles, the possession of titles, and the like. The state reinforced the normative dimension of status by using its power to grant legal privileges, such as tax exemptions, to those of elevated status and to restrict access into elitist organizations such as the parlements and army officer corps to those of “distinguished” birth .23 A third meta-logic, confessionalism, posited that religion formed the ultimate justification for political authority and membership in the political community. Catholic beliefs were continually made visible through the frequent celebration of masses and adoration of patron saints in public settings, and reinforced legally by imposing stringent sanctions on those who refused to become members of the Catholic Church. Such penalties included denial of the right to hold governmental office, to attend French universities, to be buried in sacred ground, or even to get married. If these institutional logics were so thoroughly institutionalized at multiple levels, from tacit cultural conditioning to the state’s direct legal validation, then why were they rejected in 1789? In other words, what conditions fostered institutional change of such magnitude? Theorists of institutions have proposed a variety of reasons for institutional change.24 These range from incremental processes of adaptation that pose no threat to the system’s overall integrity, to others that offer the possibility of more radical shifts or ruptures. The latter include substantial change in the resources available to institutions, conflicting claims and cultural logics presented by competing institutions, the transfer of habits and practices from one institution into others with different purposes, and contradictions occurring within institutions themselves. Although all of these elements played a role in the institutional fissures that made the French Revolution possible, I am particularly intrigued by contradictions, both between the various institutional logics of the old regime, as well as within institutions themselves. These contradictions revealed ongoing

21 Weber, Economy and Society, 926-33; Anthony Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim, and Max Weber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 163-8. 22The Concise Oxford Dictionary, ed. Angus Stevenson and Maurice Waite, 12th ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 970. 23Gail Bossenga, “Estates, Orders, and Corps,” in William Doyle, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012): 141-166. 24 Djelic, “Institutional Perspectives,” 27-29; Sewell, “Theory of Structure,” 16-19.

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sources of tension within French society and thus potential causes for rupture, but they also pointed toward future paths that society could take in resolving those tensions. Often, exogenous factors, like losses in wars, compounded the effects of these contradictions and made some kind of resolution more imperative. Several examples can illustrate the importance of looking at contradictions within the three institutional meta-logics cited above. A first example is the fundamental contradiction in the logic behind the structure of credit as opposed to that of taxation within the French state. This deep-seated contradiction was particularly significant because initially it allowed the royal government to tap financial resources that enhanced the state’s power, but over time it created powerful vested interest groups that made it virtually impossible to modernize the financial system. As a result, the French monarchy found itself increasingly incapable of competing successfully in international warfare, and increasingly exposed to the threat of post-war bankruptcies, the last of which opened the door to the Revolution of 1789. The contradiction within the crown’s institutional financial base, therefore, eventually helped to undermine the survival of the patrimonial state. Up through the reign of Louis XIV, the French monarchy mobilized a great deal of credit through venality, the sale of offices in the judiciary, municipalities, and financial organs of the state. Since privileges were used to entice buyers to purchase offices, this financial strategy ended up multiplying privileges, including tax exemptions and ennoblement. Yet the need for enhanced revenues from taxes to pay for wars also led the royal reforming ministers to attempt to curtail tax exemptions and streamline the bureaucracy in a drive to tax revenues and create more efficiency, particularly during the Seven Years War and after.25 One logic legitimated privilege and rank as an integral part of the monarchical state, the second challenged their legitimacy by casting them as an impediment to the survival of the state and wellbeing of the community. One promoted decentralization, the other the more well-known trend toward centralization. Yet both were advanced by the monarchy in an attempt to protect its own power and simultaneously satisfy different constituencies with divergent vested interests in alternative institutional arrangements. In this case, it is important not only to look at the existence of a contradiction, but also its depth. Here an understanding of so-called “path dependency” is useful. Path dependency is a term used to describe the increasing numbers of groups over time that have a stake in an

25 For perspectives on venality: David D. Bien, "Offices, Corps, and a System of State Credit: The Uses of Privilege Under the Ancien Régime," in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, ed. Keith Baker (Oxford: Press, 1987), 1, 89-114; idem.,“The Secrétaires du Roi: Absolutism, Corps and Privilege under the Ancien Régime,” in Vom Ancien Régime zur Französischen Revolution. Forschungen und Perspektiven, eds. Ernst Hinrichs, Eberhard Schmitt, and Rudolf Vierhaus (Göttigen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978), 153-86; and William Doyle, Venality: The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford University Press, 1996). For rationalization of taxation, Michael Kwass, The of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France: Liberté, Égalité, Fiscalité (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). For more on fiscal contradictions, Gail Bossenga, “Financial Origins of the French Revolution,” in From Deficit to Deluge: Origins of the French Revolution, eds., Thomas E. Kaiser and Dale Van Kley (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 37-66.

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institutional process. Although the origins of an institution may be obscure or accidental, once that institution or set of institutions starts to take shape and undergo successful reproduction, a feedback process of “increasing returns,” begins: that is, the institution acquires an ever greater number of members with a vested interest in its survival. The institution starts to accumulate additional resources and functions, some of them unrelated to its original purpose. Other institutions begin to coordinate their activities with it, creating an institutional “field” of greater depth and complexity. Over time, so many groups acquire interests in linked sets of institutional practices that change becomes increasingly difficult to achieve. As Margaret Levi observes, “Path dependence has to mean, if it is to mean anything, that once a country or region has started down a track, the costs of reversal are very high. . . . the entrenchment of certain institutional arrangements obstruct an easy reversal of the initial choice.”26 The problem of venality of office in the old regime is an excellent example of both path dependency and the influence of patrimonialism and status on institutional arrangements. Henri II initially began to sell judicial and financial offices in order to raise money for war finance. Soon an increasing network of financiers sprung up to loan the king money in return for the right to sell offices. In order to attract buyers, the monarchy attached privileges to the offices, thereby catering to the thirst for distinction characterizing society in the old regime. Over the next century, huge numbers of offices were sold, including ennobling offices, substantially increasing the number of new nobles and privileged subjects who had a vested interest in the system. So many offices were created that the judiciary became bloated, characterized by a multiplicity of courts with overlapping jurisdictions. Periodically, royal ministers deplored the system and even vowed to change it, but that proved to be impossible. The monarchy lost the ability to reform the system, because it could not afford to reimburse all those who had purchased offices, even after the monarchy began to depend increasingly on public credit, rather than offices for its loans.27 Despite the frequent condemnations of the system, venality and its attendant problems persisted. It took a major crisis in French financial resources--the final bankruptcy of the monarchy–before the system could be dismantled. A similar argument could be made for the court of Versailles, where Louis XIV had set in motion the institutionalization of the great nobility in an effort to turn them from frondeurs into allies. Over time, the monarchy reinforced its own power of patronage as it rewarded les grands with offices in the royal household, pensions, top-level military appointments, bishoprics, and opportunities for investment in state-sponsored financial ventures.28 The great nobles

26 Margaret Levi, quoted by Paul Pierson, in his article “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review 94 (June, 2000), 251-67 at 252. 27 Bien emphasized the indebtedness of the state to venal officeholders as a reason for failed reform in “The Sécretaires du Roi,” cited note 23. 28 John McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1:48-56, 215-227; Leonhard Horowski,“‘Such a Great Advantage for my Son’; Officeholding and Career Mechanism at the Court of France, 1661-1789,” The Court Historian, 8, no. 2 (December 2003): 127- 77; Gilbert Bodinier, Les officiers de l’armée royale combattants de la guerre de l’Indépendance des États- Unis (Vincennes: Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre, 1983), 58-64; Gail Bossenga, “A Divided Nobility: Status, Markets, and the Patrimonial State in the Old Regime,” in The French Nobility in the

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thereby perpetuated their hold over the highest-level state functions. At the same time, given the growing complexity of the state, government ministers also found themselves increasingly dependent on officials of a more bureaucratic nature--technically-trained civil servants (commis) and mathematically-conversant military officers in the artillery, for example,--who could actually get the work of the state done.29 The logic of the first strategy presupposed birth and blood as a constituent element of “merit.” The logic of the second defined merit in terms of the individual’s personal accomplishments and efficiency.30 Threats to France’s position in great power politics, including its humiliating losses in the Seven Years War, made it increasingly urgent to deal with the problems that this contradiction posed. It took a crisis of the magnitude of the Revolution to offer an opportunity to dismantle the unwieldly system. A final example comes from the unintended, and contradictory, consequences of the confessional state. In order to uphold the true, that is Catholic, religion Louis XIV rescinded toleration for Protestants in 1685. Henceforth, it was impossible to be baptized, married, have legitimate heirs, or be officially buried unless one participated in the Catholic sacraments. The Catholic sacraments became, in effect, the sole gatekeeper to civil existence in the state. Protestants faced two basic choices. Some of them emigrated or continued to follow their own rites in secret; others decided to convert in order to enjoy a legal existence. Initially, conversion did not pose much of a problem. The Reformed Church recognized Catholic baptism and marriage, and priests did not generally require strong proof of acceptance of Catholic doctrine in order to officiate at the ceremonies of the so-called “new converts.” Over time, however, priests began to complain about the right of conscience–not the consciences of Protestants, but their own. They argued that performing Catholic rites for nominal new converts forced them to engage in the profanation of the holy sacraments. They wanted proofs of true conversion. Interestingly, the demands of bishops for greater scrutiny over the sacraments ended up helping to move legislation in a direction completely unanticipated by Louis XIV–the secularization of citizenship. Many Protestants had rejected the nominal conversions by which they could gain civil rights. True to their consciences, they retreated to the secret practice of Protestant rituals. Over time, this strategy generated even greater numbers of contested inheritances and other legal quandaries, which, in turn, alarmed magistrates and royal reformers interested in preserving good order in the kingdom.31 To these civic-minded royal

Eighteenth Century: Reassessments and New Approaches, ed. Jay Smith (Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, 2006), 45-75. 29 John F. Bosher, “The Premiers Commis des Finances in the Reign of Louis XVI,” French Historical Studies 3 (Autumn 1964): 475-494; Ken Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 30 On the idea that distinguished lineage instilled superior moral qualities see Jay Smith, The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600-1789 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 93-124. Smith shows how a number of institutional impulses led army reformers, all of whom were all noble, to end up with contradictory notions of aristocratic merit, so that they came to view many common practices of the royal court, like exceptional promotions and venality, “as disruptive, irregular, and anomalous,” 249. 31 On parlementary magistrates supporting toleration in order to maintain good order, David D. Bien, “Catholic Magistrates and Protestant Marriage in the French Enlightenment,” French Historical Studies 2

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officials, it seemed that ridding France of Protestantism did not make the French state stronger and more unified: it merely created a group of peaceful, taxpaying subjects inside France that did not fall fully under the king’s sovereignty. Rather than forcing Protestants to convert and violate their consciences, these royal reformers took a different tack: let the government, not the Church and its sacraments, determine the civil status of members of the state.32 Eventually, after a period of contested lobbying, this strategy won. By the Edict of Toleration of 1787, citizenship lost its religious trappings and was secularized. Although Protestants were now accorded civil rights, they did not gain the right to public worship, a condition that preserved the idea that France was a Catholic country. In conclusion, then, I would argue that understanding diverse aspects of institutional logics and organization can help us to see how the origins of the Revolution were social, cultural, and political at once. No one meta-narrative of institutions can account for all the institutional arrangements in French society; the degree of social complexity was too great. Although many institutions have been cast as villains or heroes in the story of the origins of the Revolution, most institutions had multiple roles and resources to offer. Many standard accounts of the monarchy, for example, have cast it either as a progressive agent trying to reform society or a regressive one closely associated with conservative nobles. A better strategy may be to probe how the state itself generated and depended on different institutional arrangements whose resources and guiding myths of legitimation came to be at odds with one another. The state’s own institutional contradictions contributed greatly to tensions within society and thereby played a central role in fostering conditions leading to the Revolution.33 These contradictions also stimulated an often acrimonious and contested search for solutions. Such tensions encouraged philosophes, reformers, Protestants, government officials and eventually the “public” at large to embrace new ways of thinking about how to legitimate authority and distribute the resources of an increasingly powerful state as the Revolution drew nigh.

(1962): 409-429. 32 On the evolution of civil status, see Christian Lugas de la Boissonny, L’état civil (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987), 1-31. Both Huguenots and Catholic royal officials argued for separating civil status from the sacraments as a way to end profanation of the sacraments. See the anonymous Mémoire théologique et politique au sujet des mariages clandestines des protestants (s.p., 1755), 19, 23, 133-4; and Pierre Grosclaude, Malesherbes: Témoin et interprète de son temps (Paris: Librairie Fischbacher, s.d.), 358-380. For the wider context, GeoffreyAdams, The Huguenots and French Opinion, 1685-1787: the Enlightenment Debate on Toleration (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991). 33 Hillel David Soifer also observes that “tensions within the state can underpin the failure of state- building even in the absence of societal resistance,” in “The Development of State Capacity,” OHHI, 181- 194, at 187.

Journal of the Western Society for French History