Peasants and King in Burgundy: Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism

by Hilton L. Root

The example of Old Regime France provides a source for many of the ideas about capitalism, modernization, and peasant protest that concern social scientists today. Hilton Root challenges traditional assumptions and proposes a new interpretation of the relationship between state and society.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520080971
• ISBN13: 9780520080973
• Release Date: December 1992
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Extremely, I mean *extremely*, well-written

The thing about this book is that it's an exquisite example of clear, precise and economical writing (unlike this review). Each sentence is necessary, advancing or supporting the main arguments of the book; it never wanders or belabors. In fact, it is so carefully crafted that it became distracting: I would stop and reread a passage several times just to marvel at the writing, no lie. What's it about? Well, I'm no expert in French history, but Hilton Root (Social science, Univ. of Pennsylvania) undermines prevailing ideological interpretations of the Ancien Regime (i.e., that the state was a tool of the capitalist class, that communal peasant institutions, representing a precapitalist resistance, were the target of this state-bourgeois combination, or that the state was an agent of modernization). His main point is that the state (the Crown government established by Louis XIV) was an independent actor, looking out for its own interests, which very often coincided with those of the peasant villages. In fact, because these villages were the fiscal bedrock of the Crown, the central government's provincial bureaucrats (the intendants) sought to actually preserve and strengthen the communal prerogatives of the peasantry. He also shows that these communal institutions were not always egalitarian in their effects, and were not necessarily antithetical to the operation of the market. As I said, the author admirably presents his thesis and evidence, most of which is based on a detailed reading of the legal documents and correspondence of Burgundy in the period 1661-1793. [How's that for a bookworm's gig? Hanging out in the wine country, poking through the archives--I think I could be up for that.] I had no idea, for instance, that a landslide of lawsuits brought by the villages against their nobility, suits often instigated and supported by the Crown, foreshadowed the Revolution by about forty years; he shows that the language, legal theory and goals of these suits were almost identical to that of the Revolution. The lawyers themselves were later to figure prominently. He brings it all together by showing, in his final chapter entitled "Financing the French Revolution," that the Revolutionary government faced the same dilemmas as the Crown had vis-a-vis the rural villages, and ultimately used the same fiscal and administrative techniques. All in all, an excellent read. Even if you're not interested in French history, or European state-building, or the roots of capitalism, the book is worth it simply as an example of how to write well.