1 the ancien régime
TRANSCRIPT
The Ancien Régime: From this….
King Louis XIV (1643-1715)
….To This
Louis XVI (1774-1792)
Introduction: Defining the Ancien Régime
• Term coined by French Revolutionaries: ‘ancien’ = former
• First systematic analysis Alexis de Toqueville (1856)
• A particularly French story but term also applied to rest of 18th century Europe: Britain, Austria-Hungary, Prussia and Russia
Key features
• Strong absolutist monarchy
• An established church
• Privileged order of nobility
1) Absolute Monarchy
• Personal power
• Peter I (the Great) of Russia (1682-1725): autocrat
• France: Bourbon dynasty: absolutist rule from palace at Versailles
• Britain: constitutional monarchy – power limited by Bill of Rights (1689); Triennial Act (1694); Act of Settlement (1702) but monarch appointed ministers, patronage
Multiple kingdoms and composite states: Size and diversity of territory, needed strong control from
the centre
• Russia: added parts of E.Europe, the Baltic, Ottoman Empire
• Habsburg Empire: ‘a mildly centripetal agglutination of bewilderingly heterogeneous elements’ (Robert Evans) parts of central & E. Europe, N. Italy, Luxembourg,Belgium
• France: different linguistic groups
• Britain: Ruled by Hanoverians, Scotland added (1707); Ireland (1800)
Law and Order
• Need to impress authority and compel obedience
• Extensive capital code everywhere, judicial torture in Eastern Europe
• France – lettres de cachet
• Even in Britain with common law, right of habeas corpus – number of capital offences rose from 160 in 1760 to 200 in 1800 (though juries reluctant to convict)
• Public executions: power of authority made visible
Mercantilism
• Total subjection of economy to needs of state
• Protection of national trades, trade policy = inflow of gold and silver (from Americas and Asia) and outflow of manufactured goods.
• Aim: favourable balance of trade – more exports than imports
• Rationale: easier to tax income from overseas trade than to introduce unpopular domestic taxes
• Required expensive navies and colonies, agriculture neglected
The costs of warfare
•
• 18th century – almost constant warfare
• Gold and silver needed to fund armies and navies
• World trade = zero-sum game
• Trade was war, war = best way to increase trade
• France at war every other year from 1660 to 1780
• 3 expensive wars:
War of Spanish Succession (1713)
War of Austrian Succession (1740)
Seven Years War (1756-63)
• European monarchs reliant on loans to fund warfare
Britain and the ‘fiscal-military’ state
• Monarchs – poor personal credit rating (Charles II defaulted on £1.3 million loan in 1671)
- needed to de-personalize public credit
• 1694: Bank of England founded
• Creation of National Debt – money lent to nation not the monarch – collateral = land and wealth of nation
• National debt: allowed massive government expenditure in wartime to be repaid by tax money in peacetime
• Growth in state bureaucracy:
1660 – 1200 revenue officials; 1750 – 16,000 officials
• Beginning of 18th century Royal Navy had 173 ships, by the end nearly 1,000
And the rest…
• Other monarchies reliant on mercantile policy of ‘liquid cash’ (gold and silver in coffers, expensive loans)
• End of Seven Years war, Louis XV paying 10% interest on loans
• Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary (1740-1780) debt of 7-8 times
Empire’s income after wars with Prussia in 1740s
• Much of instability of ancien regime & desire for enlightened reform derived from need to rationalise finance to pay for war
War and Patriotism
• Patriotism, or national pride – justified financial and personal demands of warfare
but
• Patriotism, could also be used against state
• Idea that the nation, not the ruling dynasty = ultimate source of authority
Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii (1784)
2) The confessional state
• Ancien regime: no separation between church and state
• Most of Europe still in grip of Catholic counter-reformation
• Britain and some smaller states = outposts of Protestantism
• Russia - Orthodox church
Church and civil society
• Function of established church = to uphold established order
• Church responsible for civil registration (births, marriages deaths)
• Notices from government read at Sunday services
• Controlled education – the Jesuits in Austria, Spain and France
• Censorship: The Index in Austria and Spain
• Major landowner (monasteries, estates, universities, schools, charities)
• Supported by its own taxes: tithes to Church of England, portion congrué to Catholic Church in France
Persecution and Toleration
• Russia and Austria notorious for persecution of non-orthodox
• Maria Theresa’s promotion of Catholicism: baroque churches, ‘conversion’ houses for Protestants, ‘heretics’ removed to remote regions
• 1727: decree banishing all Jews from Russian empire
More tolerant: Frederick II of Prussia
• Britain, considered most tolerant kingdom in Europe but
Penal laws against Catholics and non-conformists in Britain
• Test Act 1673 – Prohibited those who were not members of the established church from holding public office
• Marriage Act 1697 – Discouraged marriages between Catholics and Protestants
• Popery Act [1704 & 1709] RCs to divide land equally among sons – diminished RC landholdings
• 1728 - Disenfranchising Act: RCs prohibited from voting
Popular Religion
• Spread of religious enthusiasm
• Jansenism (France)
• Pietism (Germany)
• Wesleyean Methodism (Britain)
• More authentic form of religious observance
• Pietism made state religion in Prussia, 1727
3) Nobility
• 2 to 5 % of population
• Many recent titles – owed their rank to monarch
• Peter the Great: tried to make noble rank dependent on service to Tsar
Table of Ranks (1722): nobility classified into 14 ranks, 262 posts: military, naval, administrative and court – rank = performance related
Privilege and honour
• Usually exempt from taxation, right to carry swords
• Britain – elite relatively open, but small (peerage = 1000 families)
• Prussia – dominated officer class and civil service
• France – church hierarchy, leader of Parlements and intendants
• Britain, magistrates
Privileges also limitations
• Usually, not allowed to trade, or practice professions
• Prussia, banned from selling land outside nobility
• Britain, primogeniture, but most of European aristocracy had to provide for extensive families
• Wealthy nobility – Esterhazys in Austria, Dukes of Devonshire, Earls of Carlisle
• But also poorer cousins
Landownership
• France and Britain nobility owned estimated ¼ of arable land
• Fixed labour force: Prussia, Poland, Russia, eastern provinces of Habsburg monarchy = serfs
• Russia – nearly half population = serfs, around 56% owned by nobility
• Western Europe: Peasants – harsh conditions, no compensations for improvements, payment in kind, obliged to work on royal roads (corvée), liable for military conscription
• Food riots and ‘moral economy’ (grain should be sold at ‘just price’)
• Russia, 1773: Pugachev revolt against landowners
Wealth
• Leverage over monarchs provided by nobles independent wealth
• Coal and iron ore on aristocratic estates, ownership of town property – benefited from urban industrial expansion
• Austria, France and Britain – loans and contracts with royal houses
• France: nobility’s resistance to attempts to reform taxation (eg. By Louis XV’s ministers: Machault, 1749 and Calonne 1780s)
• Monarchs forced to draw on a short-term, high-interest loans – in France would lead to bankruptcy
Conclusion: When (and why) did ancien regime fall?
• Only one regime fell: France in 1789
• Failure of Bourbon dynasty to evolve and adapt
• Ossified political culture, lack of legitimacy
• Financial burdens of warfare, state heavily indebted
• Failed to recognize growing authority of the ‘nation’
And the rest?
• State reform (Prussia, Austria-Hungary) enlightened state reforms. Frederick II of Prussia as ‘first servant of state’
• End of ‘old regime’ in Prussia? Possibly after defeat at Jena in 1806 – revolution from within, rather than without, left monarchy intact
• Evolution and adaptation: King George III’s reinvention as ‘patriot king’
End of ‘old regime’? Possibly 1828-1832, Catholic emancipation, Reform Act
• The persistence of the old regime? (Arno Mayer)