Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French political culture in the eighteenth century

382 Pages·1999·22.598 MB·English

by  Keith Michael Baker

Inventing the French Revolution
IDEAS IN CONTEXT
Edited by Wolf Lepenies, Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind,
and Quentin Skinner
The books in this series will discuss the emergence of intellectual traditions and
of related new disciplines. The procedures, aims, and vocabularies that were
generated will be set in the context of the alternatives available within the con-
temporary frameworks of ideas and institutions. Through detailed studies of the
evolution of such traditions, and their modification by different audiences, it is
hoped that a new picture will form of the development of ideas in their concrete
contexts. By this means, artificial distinctions among the history of philosophy, of
the various sciences, of society and politics, and of literature may be seen to
dissolve.
Titles published in the series:
Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in
History: Essays in the Historiography of Philosophy
J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and
History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century
M. M. Goldsmith, Private Vices, Public Benefits: Bernard Mandeville's Social and
Political Thought
Anthony Pagden (ed.), The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe
David Summers, The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of
Aesthetics
Laurence Dickey, Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit, 1770—1807
Margo Todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order
Edmund Leites (ed.), Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe
Lynn S. Joy, Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in an Age of Science
Gerd Gigerenzer et al., The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science
and Everyday Life
Wolf Lepenies, Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology
Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American
Historical Profession
Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson (eds.), Political Innovation and
Conceptual Change
Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: Aspects of a European Disorder, c. 1848—1918
This series is published with the support of the Exxon Education Foundation.
Inventing
the French Revolution
Essays on French Political Culture
in the Eighteenth Century
KEITH MICHAEL BAKER
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
cambridge university press
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Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521385787
© Cambridge University Press 1990
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1990
Reprinted 1992, 1994, 1996
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library ofCongess Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available

isbn 978-0-521-34618-4 Hardback
isbn 978-0-521-38578-7 Paperback
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this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
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timetables, and other factual information given in this work is correct at
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the accuracy of such information thereafter.
To my mother,
and in memory of my father

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 On the problem of the ideological origins of the French
Revolution 12
Part I. French history at issue
2 Memory and practice: politics and the representation of
the past in eighteenth-century France 31
3 Controlling French history: the ideological arsenal of
Jacob-Nicolas Moreau 59
4 A script for a French revolution: the political
consciousness of the abbe Mably 86
Part II. The language of politics at the end of the
Old Regime
5 French political thought at the accession of Louis XVI 109
6 A classical republican in eighteenth-century Bordeaux:
Guillaume-Joseph Saige 128
7 Science and politics at the end of the Old Regime 153
8 Public opinion as political invention 167
Part III. Toward a revolutionary lexicon
9 Inventing the French Revolution 203
10 Representation redefined 224
11 Fixing the French constitution 252
Notes 307
Index 357
vu

Acknowledgments
In the years during which these essays have been written, I have bene-
fited from generous institutional support, as from the warm encourage-
ment and criticism of friends and colleagues. It has been a distinct plea-
sure to acknowledge these contributions to each of the essays previously
published, as they appeared. The opportunity to reiterate those ex-
pressions of thanks here simply adds to the enjoyment of publishing a
volume such as this.
My research and writing have been supported at various stages by the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; the National Endow-
ment for the Humanities; the John M. OJin Foundation; the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; the Institute for Advanced
Study, Princeton; the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral
Sciences, Stanford; and the University of Chicago. I am grateful to each
of these institutions for the generous facilities and stimulating environ-
ments I have been privileged to enjoy in consequence of their support.
Two groups of friends and colleagues, in Paris and Chicago, have been
of particular importance in offering regular critical responses to this
work as it has taken form. In Paris, I owe much to the participants in the
seminar on eighteenth-century French political culture directed by Fran-
cois Furet and Mona Ozouf at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales (and now the Institut Raymond Aron), and especially to Fran-
cois Furet, Mona Ozouf, and Ran Halevi. In Chicago, I am above all
grateful for the intellectual support and critical stimulation provided by
colleagues and students. To Jan Goldstein, Harry Harootunian, Robert
Morrissey, Peter Novick, George Stocking, and (again) Francois Furet, I
wish to express my particular appreciation and thanks. And I could have
wished for no better scholarly colleagues and critics than that group of
students who participated in the workshop on the history of political
culture, particularly Thomas Bellavia, Daniel Gordon, Jim Johnson, Alan
ix
x Acknowledgments
Kahan, Matthew Levinger, and Kent Wright. I am grateful, too, for the
technical help received from the project for American and French Re-
search on the Treasury of the French Language at the University of
Chicago (a joint project of the Centre National de Recherche Scienti-
fique and the University of Chicago).
The publishers who have permitted me to reprint and revise essays
previously published are identified as appropriate at the beginning of
each essay. I wish to thank them formally here. I wish, too, to thank the
editors who lavished scholarly attention on those essays in their original
form, particularly Steven Kaplan, Jack Censer, and Colin Lucas. I am also
grateful to William Sewell, Dena Goodman, Carroll Joynes, Jeremy
Popkin, William Doyle, Dale Van Kley, Dominick LaCapra, Elizabeth
Eisenstein, Lionel Gossman, and John Bosher for help and information
at particular points.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to Catherine and Terence Murphy,
and to Thomas and Maureen, for the unfailing warmth of their welcome
in Paris.
Finally, I want to thank my wife, Terry, and my sons, Julian and Felix,
who have helped in so many ways to bring this volume about.