Interpreting the ancien régime David Bien Ed.

(previously SVEC)
Interpreting the ancien régime
David Bien
Ed. RAFE BLAUFARB,
MICHAEL S. CHRISTOFFERSON and DARRIN M. MCMAHON
Preface by KEITH BAKER
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Interpreting the ancien régime. David Bien
Ed. RAFE BLAUFARB, MICHAEL S. CHRISTOFFERSON and DARRIN M. MCMAHON
Preface by KEITH BAKER
The work of David Bien, one of America’s foremost historians of eighteenth-century France,
transformed our understanding of the ancien régime and the origins of the French Revolution. The
editors bring together for the first time his most important articles, other previously unpublished
essays and an interview transcript.
Bien’s empirically-grounded approach made him a central figure in the ‘revisionist’ debates
on the origins of the French Revolution. His re-reading of the Calas affair as an anomaly in a
growing trend of tolerance (rather than a sign of widespread bigotry among an entire class of
magistrates) opened up significant new insights into the history of religious persecution, long
influenced by Voltaire. Bien’s ground-breaking research on the army and the sale of offices revealed
the surprising extent of social mobility at the time and challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that it
was frustration of the bourgeoisie which contributed to the outbreak of the Revolution.
With a preface by Keith Baker and an introduction by Michael Christofferson, Interpreting the
‘ancien régime’ underlines the seminal importance of David Bien’s work for contemporary debates
about the social and political history of late-eighteenth-century France. It will be an indispensable
resource for historians and historiographers alike.
Preface, Keith Michael Baker
Introduction: David D. Bien and the paradoxical history of Old Regime France,
Michael Christofferson
1. The background of the Calas affair
2. Catholic magistrates and protestant marriage in the French Enlightenment
3. Aristocracy
4. Manufacturing nobles: the chancelleries in France to 1789
5. Property in office under the ancien régime: the case of the stockbrokers
6. Every shoemaker an officier: Terray as reformer
7. Old Regime origins of democratic liberty
8. The army in the French Enlightenment: reform, reaction and Revolution
9. Military education in eighteenth-century France: technical and non-technical
determinants
10. The nobilities of Toulouse
11. Interview with Norman Cantor
Bibliography
Index
Rafe Blaufarb is the Ben Weider Eminent Scholar Chair and Director of the Institute on Napoleon and
the French Revolution at Florida State University and works on eighteenth-century French military, social,
financial and legal history.
Michael S. Christofferson is Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department at Adelphi
University and works on twentieth-century French intellectual and political history.
Darrin M. McMahon is Ben Weider Professor of the French Revolution and Distinguished Research
Professor at Florida State University, and works on eighteenth-century French cutural and intellectual
history.
Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, September 2014
ISBN 978-0-7294-1144-8, xiv+292 pages, £65 / €85 / $120
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