From deficit to the deluge the origins of the French Revolution

Even twenty or more years after the event, any set of acknowledgments for a book about the origins of the French Revolution must begin with the series of bicentennial conferences entitled "The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture," especially the first one at the University of Chicago in 1987 on the subject of the political culture of the Old Regime. Organized, as were the others, by Keith Michael Baker, Colin Lucas, the late François Furet, and Mona Ozouf, it was that conference in particular and the volume of its proceedings published in its wake that brought three decades of "revisionist" thought to a climax and made the origins of the great Revolution the "problem" that it remains today. In the case of this volume, the debt is quite concrete. Besides Keith Baker and the coeditors of this volume, two other contributors-Gail Bossenga and Jeremy Popkin-are also veterans of that seminal conference. In addition to writing their chapters, both Gail Bossenga and Jack Goldstone went well beyond the call of duty in giving the editors' introduction and conclusion a very close reading, from which those two essays-the bookends of this book, as it were-benefited not a little. It goes without saying that the editors alone remain responsible for the ways in which they mined Bossenga's and Goldstone's chapters as well as the others in elaborating the line of argument contained in that introduction and conclusion. In the regretful-and unplanned-absence of any French contributors to the volume, the editors' introduction and conclusion also benefited from very thorough readings by Yann Fauchois of the Bibliothèque Nationale and Rita Hermon-Belot of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes et Sciences Sociales. Where other individual chapters are concerned, Jack Goldstone wishes to thank William Doyle of the University of Bristol for a very helpful reading of his chapter, Jeffrey Merrick thanks the Wisconsin French History Group for collective comments in reaction to his i introductory and concluding sections. That seminar generated some of the best discussions in which either editor has ever had the privilege of participating. Editing a book takes time, of course-more of it than either editor anticipated. Dale Van Kley found some of the needed time during a halfyear sabbatical leave in 2007-08, for which he wishes to thank Ohio State University's College of Humanities. In addition, some of the research that contributed to his own chapter and the conclusion was made possible by earlier grants, most notably from Chicago's Newberry Library, to which he remains eternally indebted. For his part, Thomas Kaiser would like to thank the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for supporting his research in France, upon which much of his chapter and contributions to the introduction and conclusion are based. An essay collection that analyzes how fiscal, social, religious, diplomatic, and other issues added fuel to the entire revolutionary conflagration. From Deficit to Deluge takes stock of shifts in scholarly investigation of the origins of French Revolution. During the last decade, scholars have moved beyond “revisionist” historians of the 1970s, who highlighted the monarchy’s degeneration into despotism, to explore related conflicts in the realms of finance, social relations, religion, diplomacy, the Enlightenment, and colonial policy. In this book, seven established authorities explore some of these critical intersections, and together they make clear the role that unresolved tensions in these realms played in the essentially political narrative told by post-Marxian revisionist historiography. While each chapter of From Deficit to Deluge focuses upon one site of contention—fiscal, social, religious, diplomatic, ideological, and colonial—they all help to explain how long-standing structural problems of the Old Regime caused a fairly “normal” fiscal crisis to metastasize into a revolution. As the editors show in their introduction and conclusion, the growing democratization of politics sparked by the monarchy’s clumsy efforts to solve the fiscal crisis put these wide-ranging problems at the epicenter of political debate, thereby sapping the foundations of royal authority and the social hierarchy. “This book undoubtedly makes an inspiring contribution to the debate on the origins of 1789. Its nuanced approach to how the changing institutional, fiscal, political, social, and economic landscape of eighteenth-century France simultaneously influenced and was influenced by specific contingencies and historical players will make it an important first port of call for students, and veteran scholars, of the French Revolution.” —Ambrogio A. Caiani, English Historical Review Introduction: Theses And Themes / Thomas E. Kaiser And Dale K. Van Kley -- Financial Origins Of The French Revolution / Gail Bossenga -- The Social Origins Of The French Revolution Revisited / Jack A. Goldstone -- The Religious Origins Of The French Revolution, 1560-1791 / Dale K. Van Kley -- From Fiscal Crisis To Revolution : The Court And Foreign Policy, 1787-1789 / Thomas E. Kaiser -- Enlightenment Idioms, Old Regime Discourses, And Revolutionary Improvisation / Keith Michael Baker -- Gender In Pre-revolutionary Political Culture / Jeffrey Merrick -- Saint-domingue, Slavery And The Origins Of The French Revolution / Jeremy D. Popkin -- Conclusion : From Old Regime To French Revolution / Thomas E. Kaiser And Dale K. Van Kley. Edited By Thomas E. Kaiser And Dale K. Van Kley. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [271]-322) And Index. Contents 6 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction 14 1. Financial Origins of the French Revolution 50 2. The Social Origins of the French Revolution Revisited 80 3. The Religious Origins of the French Revolution, 1560–1791 117 4. From Fiscal Crisis to Revolution: The Court and French Foreign Policy, 1787–1789 152 5. Enlightenment Idioms, Old Regime Discourses, and Revolutionary Improvisation 178 6. Gender in Pre-Revolutionary Political Culture 211 7. Saint-Domingue, Slavery, and the Origins of the French Revolution 233 Conclusion: From Old Regime to French Revolution 262 Notes 284 Index 336 Contributors 356 Seven authorities in their respective fields come together to offer a new interpretation of the French Revolution: they show how the French monarchy's clumsy efforts to solve a fiscal crisis politicized long-standing structural problems, metastasizing an apparently fairly "normal" fiscal crisis into a revolution.