The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy

From the Old Regime to the French Revolution

Edited by Julian Swann and Joël Félix

A British Academy Publication

Proceedings of the British Academy

Offers a new interpretation of the origins of the French Revolution
Brings together scholars from Britain, France, and North America
Based on new and original research
Will be of value to professional historians and students
Contains full and up to date bibliography

The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy

From the Old Regime to the French Revolution

Edited by Julian Swann and Joël Félix

A British Academy Publication

Proceedings of the British Academy

Description

For generations of historians, 1789 was a defining moment in world history and it has been said to mark, amongst other things, the triumph of the bourgeoisie, the birth of modernity, the rise of nationalism or even the invention of ideology. To explain an event of such magnitude it was understandable that historians should seek no less portentous explanations of its origins and that factors such as the rise of capitalism, class struggle or the impact of the Enlightenment were cited as the long-term causes of Revolution.
In recent years, however, there has been a preoccupation with the actual course of the Revolution. The prevailing concern with political culture and gender as analytical tools has illuminated developments in Paris and in the French provinces, and has brought to prominence many themes inadequately explored during earlier scholarly generations. Rather less attention is given currently to how France was plunged into revolutionary turmoil, which is now taken largely as a 'given'. The present collection, by contrast, focuses once again upon the origins of the dramatic events within and beyond France which transformed later eighteenth-century Europe so comprehensively and established the terms of political and social struggle for the next two centuries. It presents a series of up-to-date essays which, collectively, provide a new interpretation of the origins of the Revolution. Uniquely among recent contributions to the field, this volume transcends national historiographical traditions and includes contributions by leading experts from France, Britain and the United States, giving it a breadth of approach which previous scholarship has lacked.

The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy

From the Old Regime to the French Revolution

Edited by Julian Swann and Joël Félix

A British Academy Publication

Proceedings of the British Academy

1. Introduction: The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy, Julian Swann
2. How, and how not, to use the concept of crisis in the reign of Louis XVI, Jean-Philippe Poussou
3. The End of a Golden Age or the Implosion of a False Absolutism? The Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia from Absolutism to Revolution, 1685-1814, Michael Broers
4. From servant of the king to "idol of the nation": The breakdown of personal monarchy in Louis XVI's France, Julian Swann
5. The marechal de Castries and the pre-revolution, Munro Price
6. The problem with Necker's Compte Rendu au Roi (1781), Joel Felix
7. Necker and aristocratic constitutionalism: the British connection, Nigel Aston
8. The Culture of War in Europe, 1750-1815, David A. Bell
9. The Austrian Alliance, the Seven Years' War, and the Emergence of a French 'National' Foreign Policy, 1756-1790, Thomas E. Kaiser
10. A Model of Conduct from the Age of Chivalry?: Honour, International Decline and the End of the Bourbon Monarchy, Hamish Scott
11. Franco-British naval rivalry and the crisis of the monarchy (1759-1789), Olivier Chaline
12. 'Complaints Lost in the Wind'. French India and the Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy: a Global Dimension?, Mike Rapport
13. The Maison militaire du Roi and the disintegration of the Old Regime, Guy Rowlands
14. The crisis of the nobility at the twilight of the monarchy, Michel Figeac
15. The making of a bourgeois identity? Urban histories and their historians in eighteenth-century France, Clarisse Coulomb
16. William 'Bill' Doyle and the Origins of the French Revolution, T.C.W. Blanning

The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy

From the Old Regime to the French Revolution

Edited by Julian Swann and Joël Félix

A British Academy Publication

Proceedings of the British Academy

Author Information

Julian Swann is a professor at Birkbeck College.

Joël Félix is a professor at the University of Redding.

Contributors:

Nigel Aston is Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Leicester.

David A. Bell is Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Department of History at Princeton University.

Tim Blanning is a retired Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 1990.

Michael Broers is Professor of Western European History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall.

Joël Félix is Professor of History at the University of Reading.

Michel Figeac is Professor of Modern History at the University of Bordeaux.
Thomas E. Kaiser is Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Jean-Pierre Poussou is Professeur émérite d'Histoire moderne à l'Université de Paris-IV.

Munro Price is Professor of Modern European History at Bradford University.

Guy Rowlands is Director of the Centre for French History and Culture and a Lecturer in the School of History at the University of St Andrews.

Hamish Scott is Wardlaw Professor Emeritus of International History at the University of St Andrews, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Julian Swann is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London.