Tracing The Shadow Of Secrecy And Government Transparency In Eighteenth-Century France

This book traces changing attitudes towards secrecy in eighteenth-century France, and explores the cultural origins of ideas surrounding government transparency. The idea of keeping secrets, both on the part of individuals and on the part of governments, came to be viewed with more suspicion as the century progressed. By the eve of the French Revolution, writers voicing concerns about corruption saw secrecy as part and parcel of despotism, and this shift went hand in hand with the rise of the idea of transparency. The author argues that the emphasis placed on government transparency, especially the mania for transparency that dominated the French Revolution, resulted from the surprising connections and confluence of changing attitudes towards honour, religious movements, rising nationalism, literature, and police practices. Exploring religious ideas that associated secrecy with darkness and wickedness, and proto-nationalist discourse that equated foreignness with secrecy, this book demonstrates how cultural shifts in eighteenth-century France influenced its politics. Covering the period of intense fear during the French Revolution and the paranoia of the Reign of Terror, the book highlights the complex interplay of culture and politics and provides insights into our attitudes towards secrecy today. Nicole Bauer is Assistant Professor of European History at the University of Tulsa in the USA. A cultural historian of early modern France, she is particularly interested in pulling threads from different directions to understand and uncover the cultural origins of political and social movements Acknowledgments Contents Introduction Creatures of Infamy: Lettres de Cachet, Family Honor, and the Uses of Secrecy The Governor’s Son The Widow Nolan Mlle. de Nogent Growing Resistance and Critiques The Fate of Secrets in a Public Sphere: The Comte de Broglie and the Demise of the Secret du roi The Perils of Secrecy Transparency and a New Masculinity Rejecting Secrecy and the Secret du roi Those Who Know Your Secrets: Jesuit Secrecy and the Proto-nationalism of the Jansenists The Jansenist Worldview and the Monita Secreta The Problematic Jesuit Counter-Attack Secrecy and the Foreign Other, Transparency and the Patriot-Citizen “I Promise Never to Speak to Anyone”: Police Practices and the Bastille Inviolable Secrecy Secrecy and Rumor The Obstacles to Reform Desire, Dread, and the Grateful Dead: The Bastille, Its Cadavers, and the Revolutionary Gothic Imaginary Desire and Repression The Bastille and Its Buried Secrets The Marat of Versailles: Advocates of Transparency During and After the Terror The Marat of Versailles A Hundred Invisible Hands Moderate Thermidoreans and Transparency Conclusion Bibliography Index