DOCSLIB.ORG

In Early Modern France

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
In Early Modern France Patronage, Politics, and the "Rule of Law" in Early Modern France Michael P. Breen Reed College Old Regime France, David Bell has observed, was a "judicial society" where "the experiences of the law courts were central to the way in which political action was conceptualized."1 Theorists distinguished the king's "absolute power" from the rule of a tyrant by emphasizing that monarchs governed according to the law and the public good, not their personal will.2 "The best kind of Commonweal," Jean Bodin wrote in his epochal Six Books of a Commonweale (1576), "is that wherein the sovereign holdeth what concerneth his majesty, the Senate maintaineth the authority thereof, the magistrates execute their power, and justice hath her ordinary course."3 From 1 David A. Bell, "The 'Public Sphere,' the State and the World of the Law in Eighteenth-Century France," French Historical Studies 17:4 (1992): 933. 2 This was perhaps best expressed by the oft-cited Roman Law principle digna vox maiestate regnantis legis alligatum se principem profiteri. ("It is a statement worthy of the ruler's majesty for the Prince to profess himself bound by the laws.") Codex 1.14(17). 4. For a further discussion, see Kenneth Pennington, The Prince and the Law, 1200- 1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 78-83. 3 Jean Bodin, The Six Books of a Commonweale, ed. Kenneth Douglas McRae, trans. Richard Knolles (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 4:6; and David Parker, "Law, Society and the 95 96 Michael P. Breen local courts to the royal council, law provided the principal linguistic, cultural, and procedural framework through which individuals and corporations articulated, contested, and resolved disputes over the allocation of resources, status, authority, and power, even at the height of the so- called "administrative monarchy" of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indeed, if we accept Keith Michael Baker's definition of political culture as "the set of discourses or symbolic practices" through which individuals and groups "articulate, negotiate, implement and enforce the competing claims they make upon one another and upon the whole," then law was clearly a central element of early modern French political culture. It was the law which constitut[ed] the meanings of the terms in which these claims [were] framed, the nature of the contexts to which they pertain[ed], and the authority of the principles according to which they [were] made binding. It shap[ed] the constitutions and powers of the agencies and procedures by which contestations [were] resolved, competing claims authoritatively adjudicated, and binding decisions enforced.4 While David Parker and others have emphasized the "all-pervasive legalism" of Old Regime society, historians still struggle to understand how the law shaped politics and State in the Thought of Jean Bodin," History of Political Thought 2 (1981): 273-5. 4 Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 4-5. Proceedings of the Western Society for French History Patronage, Politics, and the 'Rule of Law' 97 governance in early modern France.5 Indeed, it has been over fifteen years since Parker pointed out our need to better understand how French law and the legal system worked in practice.6 While a number of recent studies have helped to shed much needed light on the subject,7 we are 5 David Parker, La Rochelle and the French Monarchy: Conflict and Order in Seventeenth-Century France (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980), 19. 6 David Parker, "Sovereignty, Absolutism and the Function of the Law in Seventeenth-Century France," Past and Present 122 (1989): 36- 74. 7 Studies of criminal justice have dominated work on early modern law courts and justice. Some examples include Richard Mowery Andrews, Law, Magistracy and Crime in Old Regime Paris, 1735-1789 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Alfred Soman, Sorcellerie et justice criminelle: le parlement de Paris, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles (Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1992); Malcolm R. Greenshields, An Economy of Violence: Crime and Justice in the Haute-Auvergne, 1587-1664 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994); Steven Reinhardt, Justice in the Sarladais, 1770-1790 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991); and Christiane Plessix- Buisset, Le Criminel devant ses juges en Bretagne au XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Maloine, 1988). James R. Farr has recently traced the workings of a noted case in seventeenth-century Dijon, exploring both the legal and extra-legal maneuvering that surrounded the so-called "Giroux affair." See A Tale of Two Murders: Passion and Power in Seventeenth-Century France (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). Recently, scholars have begun to explore the workings of civil courts, which accounted for the vast majority of cases under the Old Regime. Some examples include Julie Hardwick, "Women 'Working' the Law: Gender, Authority and Legal Process in Early Modern France," Journal of Women's History 9 (1997): 28-49; idem., "Seeking Separations: Gender, Marriages and Household Economies in Early Modern France," French Historical Studies 31 (1998): 157-80; Jeremy Hayhoe, "Illegitimacy, Inter-Generational Conflict and Legal Practice in Eighteenth-Century Northern Burgundy," Journal of Social History 38 (2005): 673-84; and Zoë A. Schneider, "The Village and the State: Volume 33 (2005) 98 Michael P. Breen still a long way from fully comprehending why the legal institutions, legal processes, and the very language and concepts of the law itself were so pervasive in early modern French government, politics, and society.8 Most studies of early modern France tend to downplay the law's role in understanding the state's operations. Instead, they focus on patronage networks and personal ties as determining the flows of power and authority among the panoply of local, regional, and national authorities that collectively made up the French state.9 While a number of Justice and the Local Courts in Normandy, 1670-1740" (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1997). For a more general overview, see Arlette Lebigre, La Justice du roi: La vie judiciaire dans l'ancienne France (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988). 8 David A. Bell, Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); David Parker, Class and State in Ancien Régime France: The Road to Modernity? (New York: Routledge, 1996); Sarah Hanley, "Social Sites of Political Practice: Lawsuits, Civil Rights and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500-1800," American Historical Review, 102 (1997): 27-52; idem., "The Jurisprudence of the Arrêts: Marital Union, Civil Society and State Formation in France, 1550-1650," Law and History Review 21 (2003): 1-40; and Hilary Bernstein, Between Crown and Community: Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2004). 9 Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Sharon Kettering, Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Katia Béguin, Les Princes de Condé: rebelles, courtisans et mécènes dans la France du Grand Siècle (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1999); Jay M. Smith, The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in Proceedings of the Western Society for French History Patronage, Politics, and the 'Rule of Law' 99 recent studies have argued that clientage ties and networks of informal personal influence became more impersonal, administrative, and bureaucratic over time,10 historians of the Old Regime still tend to minimize the role of law: its procedures, institutions, and concepts.11 France, 1600-1789 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Sara E. Chapman, Private Ambition and Political Alliances: The Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain Family and Louis XIV's Government, 1650-1715 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004); Robert Descimon, "Power Elites and the Prince: The State as Enterprise," in Power Elites and State Building, ed. Wolfgang Reinhard (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 100-21. Among those who consider the interplay between law and patronage are David Parker and James B. Collins. On Parker, see below, note 11. Collins sees "law," which he defines primarily in terms of the monarch's unfettered right to promulgate positive law, as an instrument of royal power. He distinguishes this from "custom" or "contractual agreements" that served as guarantees against arbitrary behavior by the king and his officials. See Classes, Estates and Order in Early Modern Brittany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 24-5. Old Regime legal thinkers, however, considered "custom" to be a basic component of the law. For this reason, I do not follow Collins's distinction here, but rather see custom and positive law as two elements of the larger network of institutions, procedures, principles, and texts that comprised the "law" in early modern France. 10 Jay M. Smith; Michael Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France: Liberté, Egalité, Fiscalité (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); David Kammerling Smith, "Structuring Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century France: The Political Innovations of the French Council of Commerce," Journal of Modern History 74 (2002): 490-537; and Beth Nachison, "Provincial Government in the Ancien Régime: The Princes of Condé in Burgundy, 1660-1730 (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1992). 11 One exception is Parker, who has described the legal system as "a mechanism for the mediation and resolution" of "factional, patrimonial, and corporate" conflicts between families and clans who had purchased their positions in the state's administrative system. See Volume 33 (2005) 100 Michael P.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 2013: Cambridge, MA
    The Society for French Historical Studies 59th Annual Meeting April 4 – 7, 2013 Sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University Cambridge Marriott Hotel Cambridge, MA Photo Credit: Tristan Nitot SFHS Executive Committee Mary D. Lewis, Harvard University, Co-President Jeffrey Ravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Co-President Linda Clark, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Executive Director %DUU\%HUJHQ*DOODXGHW8QLYHUVLW\)LQDQFLDO2I¿FHU B. Robert Kreiser, American Association of University Professors, Past )LQDQFLDO2I¿FHU Rachel Fuchs, Arizona State University, Editor, French Historical Studies J. Kent Wright, Arizona State University, Editor, French Historical Studies Elinor Accampo, University of Southern California, Past President Joelle Neulander, The Citadel, Second Past President Julie Hardwick, University of Texas, Austin, Member-at-Large Martha Hanna, University of Colorado at Boulder, Member-at-Large Susan Whitney, Carleton University, Member-at-Large David Kammerling Smith, Eastern Illinois University, H-France Program Committee Ann Blair, Harvard University Barbara Diefendorf, Boston University Venita Datta, Wellesley College Elizabeth Foster, Tufts University Laura Frader, Northeastern University Arthur Goldhammer, Harvard University Jennifer Heuer, University of Massachusetts Amherst Mary D. Lewis, Harvard University Jeffrey Ravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Daniel Smail, Harvard University Rosalind Williams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Local Arrangements Andrew
    [Show full text]
  • The Idea of Medieval Heresy in Early Modern France
    The Idea of Medieval Heresy in Early Modern France Bethany Hume PhD University of York History September 2019 2 Abstract This thesis responds to the historiographical focus on the trope of the Albigensians and Waldensians within sixteenth-century confessional polemic. It supports a shift away from the consideration of medieval heresy in early modern historical writing merely as literary topoi of the French Wars of Religion. Instead, it argues for a more detailed examination of the medieval heretical and inquisitorial sources used within seventeenth-century French intellectual culture and religious polemic. It does this by examining the context of the Doat Commission (1663-1670), which transcribed a collection of inquisition registers from Languedoc, 1235-44. Jean de Doat (c.1600-1683), President of the Chambre des Comptes of the parlement of Pau from 1646, was charged by royal commission to the south of France to copy documents of interest to the Crown. This thesis aims to explore the Doat Commission within the wider context of ideas on medieval heresy in seventeenth-century France. The periodization “medieval” is extremely broad and incorporates many forms of heresy throughout Europe. As such, the scope of this thesis surveys how thirteenth-century heretics, namely the Albigensians and Waldensians, were portrayed in historical narrative in the 1600s. The field of study that this thesis hopes to contribute to includes the growth of historical interest in medieval heresy and its repression, and the search for original sources by seventeenth-century savants. By exploring the ideas of medieval heresy espoused by different intellectual networks it becomes clear that early modern European thought on medieval heresy informed antiquarianism, historical writing, and ideas of justice and persecution, as well as shaping confessional identity.
    [Show full text]
  • The Subversive Court of Louise Bénédicte De Bourbon, Daughter-In-Law of the Sun King (1700–1718)”
    Phi Alpha Theta Pacific Northwest Conference, 8–10 April 2021 Jordan D. Hallmark, Portland State University, graduate student, “Parody, Performance, and Conspiracy in Early Eighteenth-Century France: The Subversive Court of Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon, Daughter-in-Law of the Sun King (1700–1718)” Abstract: This paper examines how the French princess Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon, duchesse du Maine (1676–1753), the wife of Louis XIV’s illegitimate son, the duc du Maine, established an exclusive court at her château de Sceaux beginning in the year 1700 that challenged the centralized cultural system of the French monarchical state. Located twenty kilometers away from the rigid and controlling political center of Versailles, the court of the duchesse du Maine subverted social norms by inventing and performing parodies of court protocols, chivalric orders, emblems, and other forms of monarchical imagery. In a time and place where women were both legally and socially barred from holding positions of authority, the duchesse du Maine created a parallel world in which she was the sovereign, presiding over a court of important political, cultural, and intellectual figures, including the philosopher Voltaire. By considering the significance of this subversive court culture in the context of the factional divisions and dynastic crises emerging in the last years of Louis XIV’s reign, this paper will show how the seemingly frivolous aristocratic divertissements of the duchesse du Maine and her circle were informed by political, social, and dynastic ambitions that would culminate in a conspiracy to overthrow the French regent, Philippe d’Orléans, in 1718. “Parody, Performance, and Conspiracy in Early Eighteenth-Century France: The Subversive Court of Louise-Bénédicte de Bourbon, Daughter-In-Law of the Sun King (1700–1718)” by Jordan D.
    [Show full text]
  • HSTR 352.01: French Revolution 1789-1848
    University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Syllabi Course Syllabi Summer 6-2016 HSTR 352.01: French Revolution 1789-1848 Linda S. Frey University of Montana - Missoula, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/syllabi Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Frey, Linda S., "HSTR 352.01: French Revolution 1789-1848" (2016). Syllabi. 4242. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/syllabi/4242 This Syllabus is brought to you for free and open access by the Course Syllabi at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Syllabi by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Summer 2016 Prof. Frey FRENCH REVOLUTION Required Reading Wright, France in Modern Times Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled Rowe, “Civilians and Warfare during the French Revolutionary Wars.” (reserve) Holtman, The Napoleonic Revolution Walter, Diary of a Napoleonic Soldier Supplementary readings are available at the reserve desk at the Mansfield Library. Exams This class is only offered for a traditional grade. Midterm (tentative date June 8) will cover Wright pp. 3-56, Tocqueville, Rowe, Palmer, and readings on reserve. Final will cover Wright, pp. 57-122, Holtman, and Walter, and readings on reserve. Papers are due June 13 at the beginning of the class hour. No electronic submissions will be accepted. LATE PAPERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. Length: 5-7 pages double spaced. Style: Chicago Manual of Style, Footnotes. All papers should be submitted with the usual scholarly apparatus, that is, title page, footnotes, and bibliography.
    [Show full text]
  • Early Modern France, 1450-1700
    Early Modern France, 1450-1700 PHILIP T. HOFFMAN T 1s ALWAYS SAID," observed Richelieu in his Testament politique, I "that money forms the sinews of the state." 1 Most historians of early modern France would agree. "Absolutism was, in large part, the child of the fisc," notes one influential essay on early modern France, and a chorus of recent works repeats the same refrain.2 Fiscal crises, it seems, provoked nearly every change in the French political system from the Hundred Years War to the Revolution; and the tax system brings into sharper focus than any other facet of the French state both the limits of absolutism and the peculiar nature of liberty in France. To speak of the limits of absolutism may of course seem self contradictory, particularly in the case of the kings of France, who have usually been considered models of unconstrained power, able to judge, to legislate, and to tax at will. But in practice absolutism was hemmed in on all sides. To begin with, any king, even a Louis XIV, could only tax the wealth available in his country: he could not take what his subjects did not have. In France the wealth available was by and large land-some 464,000 square kilometers at the end of the sixteenth century, and 514,000 a century later. The king's subjects­ roughly 8 million in 1440, 16 million in 1560 and 1600, and 27 mil­ lion at the end of the Old Regime-by and large tilled the soil. It is estimated that 73 percent of them worked in agriculture in 1500, a figure that fell only slightly in the next two centuries: to 69 percent in 1600 and to 63 percent in 1700.
    [Show full text]
  • WIAS Discussion Paper No.2020-002 the Royal Consultants
    WIAS Discussion Paper No.2020-002 The Royal Consultants: The Intendants of France and the Bureaucratic Transition in Pre-modern Europe June 5, 2020 Yu Sasaki Faculty of Law and School of International Studies, Kanazawa University 1-21-1 Nishiwaseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-0051, Japan Tel: 03-5286-2460 ; Fax: 03-5286-2470 WIAS Discussion Paper No.2020-002 The Royal Consultants: The Intendants of France and the Bureaucratic Transition in Pre-modern Europe* Yu Sasaki† This version: May 13, 2020 Comments welcome Abstract This article explores the pre-modern French bureaucrats of the intendants as proto-modern bu- reaucrats. Historical research highlights their role in consolidating the state’s authority, but few works provide empirical evidence on the intendants as bureaucrats. My paper fills this gap by constructing a new data set of 430 intendants for the period of their most systematic use from 1640 to 1789. My panel data set comprises the prosopography of nearly universal observa- tions in the period to document evidence on recruitment, promotion, and family backgrounds. My findings indicate that although France relied on the intendants for governance, it did not manage them well as the distribution of service duration and appointment age varies greatly. Dense networks intendants form through kinship and marriage also threaten impersonality. My analysis suggests the difficulty of structuring incentives to follow and implement rules. *I thank seminar participants at Keio University and Kwansei Gakuin University and participants at the 2020 Winter Workshop of the Japan Society for Quantitative Social Science for their constructive feedback to the previous drafts.
    [Show full text]
  • Logan J. Connors
    LOGAN J. CONNORS [email protected] Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in French Faculty Director, UParis Department of Modern Languages & Literatures University of Miami UPDATED: 01/01/2018 PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS 2017 – Faculty Director, UParis: The University of Miami in Paris 2016 – Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Univ. of Miami 2015 – Series Editor, Scènes francophones, BucKnell University Press 2015 – 2017 BucKnell University, NEH Chair in the Humanities 2014 – 2017 BucKnell University, Associate Professor 2010 – 2014 BucKnell University, Assistant Professor 2013 – 2018 Research Group Member, La Haine du théâtre, LABEX-OBVIL (Dept. of Comparative Literature, Université Paris-Sorbonne) 2012 – 2013 Université Paris-Sorbonne, Visiting Scholar (Chercheur invité) 2012 – 2013 Université Paris-Sorbonne, Adjunct Professor (Chargé de cours) 2009 – 2010 Ecole de Management de Lyon (EM-Lyon), Adjunct Instructor 2009 – 2010 Université Paris-Sorbonne, Membre-doctorant du CRHT 2007 – 2009 Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, Pensionnaire scientifique international et Lecteur en civilisations anglophones 2005 – 2007 Louisiana State University, Graduate Teaching/Research Assistant 2004 – 2005 Louisiana State University, Andrew Mellon Fellow EDUCATION • 2010 Louisiana State University, Ph.D., French and Francophone Studies; Ph.D. minor, Comparative Literature • 2009 – 2010 Université Paris–Sorbonne, Visiting Doctoral Student • 2007 – 2009 Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, Visiting Doctoral Student • 2006 Louisiana State University, M.A. in French and Francophone Studies • 2004 Univ. of Rhode Island, B.A. in French and History, summa cum laude • 2002 – 2003 Université d’Orléans, Undergraduate courseworK PEER-REVIEWED SCHOLARSHIP BOOKS AND BOOK-LENGTH EDITIONS (published or in press) • A Critical Edition of Le Siège de Calais by Pierre-Laurent De Belloy (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2014).
    [Show full text]
  • History 707: the OLD REGIME and the FRENCH REVOLUTION
    UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON Department of History Semester II, 2011-2012 History 707: THE OLD REGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Suzanne Desan [email protected] Office Hours: Thurs. 1:30-3:30 PM 5120 Humanities (262-8694) This course will focus on the social, cultural, and political history of France from the late seventeenth century through the French Revolution and Napoleon. We will pay particular attention to recent historiographical debates over method. We will study various approaches to the French Revolution, and recent work on state-building, colonization, the Enlightenment and public sphere, gender, and political culture. All books marked with an asterisk should be available at the University Bookstore. All of the books are on reserve in HC White. There is also a crucial packet of all the other articles and chapters. It is available in the Humanities Copy Center at 1650 Humanities. Each student will choose between two different options for the course's written work: 1.) write three medium-length papers (c. 10 p.) which will analyze and critique historiographical or methodological issues raised by the readings; OR 2.) write two short (5-6 p.) reviews or think pieces on method, and one long final paper (c. 20 p.) on a pertinent historiographical or methodological issue. In either of these options, if it is appropriate, one paper may be a research proposal on a topic chosen by the student. Students will also be responsible for leading the discussions in certain weeks. WEEK 1 (JAN. 24): INTRODUCTION Those students who do not have much background in early modern French history may wish to use this period to read in surveys, such as selected essays in William Doyle, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • CURRICULUM VITAE William Beik Emeritus Professor of History Department of History Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322
    July 2009 CURRICULUM VITAE William Beik Emeritus Professor of History Department of History Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 Home Address: 229 Seegar Road Pittsburgh, PA 15241-2143 [email protected] 412-831-3871 EDUCATION: B.A., 1963, Haverford College M.A., 1966, Harvard University Ph.D, 1969, Harvard University AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION: Early Modern France, especially seventeenth century: rise of the state from a regional perspective, social history, urban politics, popular protest and popular culture; early modern violence, Early Modern Europe. EMPLOYMENT: Boston College: Teaching Fellow, 1965-66, 1967-68 Northern Illinois University: Assistant Professor, 1968-84; Associate Professor, 1984-90; Director of Graduate Studies, 1980-1985 Emory University: Associate Professor, 1990-1997, Professor 1997—2007 Emeritus Professor of History, 2007-- HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPS: Phi Beta Kappa, 1963 Woodrow Wilson Fellow, 1963-64 Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship, 1966-67 Northern Illinois University, Summer Research Grants, 1970, 1984, 1985, 1988 American Philosophical Society, Research Grant, Summer 1971 Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Princeton University, Fellowship as Scholar in Residence, Fall 1974 National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship, 1974-75 William Beik vita, page 2 American Council of Learned Societies, Grant-in-Aid, Summer 1974 American Council of Learned Societies, Grant-in-Aid, Summer 1984 National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend, 1986 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the AHA (see below) American Philosophical Society, Research Grant, Fall 1987 Invited to serve as Directeur d'Études at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France, May, 1991 University Research Committee of Emory, research grant, Fall 1999 ICIS, Emory, Curriculum Development Grant, Summer 2002 ICIS, Emory, International Travel Grant, for May 2003 ICIS, Emory, International Travel Grant for June 2004 (declined) Senior Fellow at Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory University, 2005-06 Mellon Emeritus Research Fellowship, 2009-11.
    [Show full text]
  • Medicine in France During the Early Modern Period
    Medicine in France during the Early Modern Period Written by Rebecca Brighton Advisor: April Shelford Spring 2010 General University Honors 1 Abstract: In the latter half of the twentieth century the study of medicine during the early modern period, an underdeveloped if not ignored facet of history, began to attract the notice of historians of many different specializations. As such, particularly within the realm of French medicine, the treatment and analysis of medicine began to experience shifts. This paper attempts to document the development of medicine in France during the early modern period, as well as assess how different historians approach the subject of French medicine. As such, this paper focuses on four different approaches: encyclopedic, literary, intellectual, and sociological. The result of this study is a holistic view of a very intricate subject matter as well as insight into the different methods and perspectives of historians within the field. 2 Introduction: The history of medicine as a professionalized discipline within the historic community is a recent and undefined trend. Somewhat attributed to the methodological approach chosen by historians addressing medicine, typically overly-generalized reviews covering large sections of history, these works made the history of medicine more a field of reference than an independent area of study. As such, for many years the history of medicine was considered to be a subfield or even subdivision of biomedical sciences, with any area of medicine that did not relate to the scientific field viewed as trivial. 1 In recent years the history of medicine as an intellectually independent field has grown.
    [Show full text]
  • France: 1914 Onwards”
    1/8 “France: 1914 Onwards” Lecturer: Dr. M. Jesenský E-mail: [email protected] Winter 2020 Introduction Alexis de Tocqueville described France in the mind-nineteenth century as "of all European nations … the best qualified to become, in the eyes of other people, an object of admiration, of hatred, of compassion, or alarm, never of indifference." France holds a unique status in the world. The "Hexagone" is a driving force for European integration and enjoys, with Great Britain and Germany, the status of first among equals in the European Union. From cinema and theatre to literature and philosophy, from high fashion to luxury manufacture to some of the world's truly great cuisine, France has been a global touchstone of both the arts and the art of living (and eating) well. The course offers a history of modern France, an extraordinary nation, with detailed analyses of politics, society, and culture. Week 1: A "certain idea of France" (pre-1914) It is impossible to understand the present without considering the past, but it might be argued that the impact of the past declines with time. Medieval and early modern France saw the struggle of kings to assert themselves against an unruly nobility. The Revolution and Empire brought a first stages of a transition to modern capitalism. The period from 1815 to 1914 saw the acceleration of changes and reforms. The making of France Sun King Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité The Empire into the Republic Week 2: War and Peace (1914-1929) The Great War, which lasted from August 1914 to November 1918, deeply marked the character of modern France.
    [Show full text]
  • The Treatment of Early Modern French Jews in Politics and Literary Culture
    Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2014 Reality vs. Perceptions: The Treatment of Early Modern French Jews in Politics and Literary Culture Michael Woods Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the History Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/3391 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. © Michael Woods 2014 All Rights Reserved Reality vs. Perceptions: The Treatment of Early Modern French Jews in Politics and Literary Culture A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. by Michael James Woods Bachelor of Arts, The Pennsylvania State University, 2012. Director: Dr. George Munro Professor, Department of History Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia May, 2014 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis adviser, the brilliant Dr. George Munro. Without his time and dedication to my project, this study would not have evolved into what it has become now. The success of this work is a product of his assistance. Many thanks also go to Dr. John Powers and Dr. Angelina Overvold for agreeing to serve on my defense committee and for offering up their expertise and suggestions. A special thanks to every faculty member in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of History that I have had the pleasure to work with: Dr.
    [Show full text]