The French Revolution was one of the most important upheavals in world history. This course examines its origins, course and outcomes. This course is designed for you to work through successfully on your own. However you will not be alone on this journey. Use the resources included in the course and take part in the suggested learning activities to get the most out of your learning. To successfully complete this course, it is recommended that you devote at least six hours to every module over the six weeks of the course. In that time you should watch the video lectures, reflect and respond to in-video pause points, and complete the quizzes. As part of the required reading for this course, during each week of this course you will have free access to a chapter of Peter McPhee's textbook, The French Revolution, which is also available for purchase as an e-book.
1.6 The 'Enlightenment': 'from below'
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來自 The University of Melbourne 的課程
The French Revolution
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Week 1 - France in the 1780s
We begin this course with an introduction to the French Revolution. We will examine the social and institutional structures of the Old Regime. We will look at the main occupational groups and the roles of the First and Second estates (the clergy and nobility) in particular. We will also consider the relationship between Paris and the provinces in Old Regime France. Finally, you will be introduced to the Enlightenment and we will reflect on its significance and its possible revolutionary implications.
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Peter McPheeHonorary, Melbourne Graduate School of Education
At the end of my previous lecture I warned of an easy assumption.
That just because the great writers of eighteenth century France,
the great philosophes of the
enlightenment, wrote books that challenged some
of the essential underpinnings of power in that society that,
that somehow meant that was the cause of the French Revolution,
that people read their work.
What I'd like to do in this lecture
is to explore more carefully the enlightenment from below.
What did people read?
I mentioned at the end of the last lecture
that the greatest work of
the enlightenment, the multivolume encyclopedia
was at a price that very few people, a very
thin segment of that society could hope to afford.
Moreover when we look at the works of one of
the greatest of the philosophes Jean-Jacques Rousseau, we find that
what, from our perspective seemed to be his
most radical, revolutionary works, particularly Emile and the
Social Contract, that they were not the books
that were the most sought after that he'd written.
Easily his bigger seller before 1789 was the novel Julie or the New Eloise
which is essentially a romantic novel of sensibilities
a romantic love story, a novel of manners,
rather than his trenchant political and educational critiques.
A warning to us not to make easy assumptions that
radical ideas lead inexorably to revolution.
One of the difficulties we have in asking this question about
the enlightenment from below, is that there are no best seller lists.
But historians certainly have tried in various ways to answer
this crucial question about what people were reading in the 18th century.
More than a century ago, Daniel Mornet for example, investigated the catalogs
of 500 private libraries when people had died and their libraries were cataloged.
Of course a tiny fraction of society who
would have been wealthy enough to have large libraries.
Interesting though that Mornet in those 500
private libraries found one copy of the Social Contract.
Then in the 1960's Francois Furet made an important
distinction between those books which receive full public permission,
that were approved of by the regime and those
which were given tacit permission by the regime censors.
In other words, we don't like what you're
publishing but we'll let it pass this time.
And certainly Furet found that in the second category of
the tacit permissions, a bit of a nod and a wink,
that, certainly, that's where books that
were rather more radical, were being published.
In other words, there was evidence that people were wanting to
read more critical books as the 18th century wore on.
But the biggest breakthrough came from the work of Robert Darnton in the 1980's
work that, continues today.
Because what Darnton, wanted to do
was to investigate whether in fact there were, there was a whole
pirate industry, of producing cheap versions of
enlightenment classics outside France, and shifting them in across the borders.
And what he found is that in Britain, but particularly in Switzerland
and in the city of Neuchâtel in Switzerland,
there was a large scale manufacturing industry, which was effectively
devoted to producing pirate editions, cheap editions of enlightenment classics,
breaking the law by shipping them across the
border into France and selling them off cheaply.
Darnton's argument and I think it was a very powerful one was if we look at the
illegal book trade we are most likely to get
a sense of what people really wanted to read
because people have to break the law to
print those books to ship them into France, they have
to break the law to sell them and people have
to break the law to buy them and read them.
What Darnton found was fascinating.
For a start, he found that something like 25,000 pirate editions, cheap editions
of the Multivolume encyclopedia were produced
in Switzerland and sold in France-
far more than we had previously realized. In other words,
people did want to get their hands on the encyclopedia if possible.
But he also found that, not only were there cheap, pirate
editions being produced in Switzerland and elsewhere and shipped into France.
But there was whole other category of books
which weren't pirate editions, they were just bad books.
They were books that would never have
been allowed to be published in France at all,
and these are some of the titles of the books that Darnton found.
They're essentially works of pornography or pornography that's mixed with politics.
Some of the titles from one list of books that was to be sold off in Lyon,
the second city of France, Venus in the
Cloister, or the Nun in the Nightshirt, with illustrations.
Then some works of the enlightenment by d'Holbach, Systeme Social,
an anti-clerical volume, The Falsity of Miracles, La fille de
joie, The Prostitute with illustrations, a copy of Rousseau's Social Contract.
Then other, pornographic and political works.
But, Darnton's crucial point was this is cheap literature, roughly produced
literature that people are breaking the law to produce, transport, sell and buy
and it gives us a very clear sense of
what people really did want to get their hands on.
And what he found was this mixture
of obscenity, ribald literature on the one hand,
and works of the enlightenment that had been
banned on the other, like the Social Contract.
An explosive mixture.
The authorities called them all philosophical
books, or bad books, the same thing.
What is particularly explosive in this is not just that, yes,
people were getting their hands on cheap editions of the Social Contract,
but that the ribald literature, the obscene mockery of the soft pornography
was targeting in particular the aristocracy, the clergy-
in other words, the pinnacle of society and
indeed, the king and the royal family himself.
Louis XVI, marries Marie-Antoinette, of Austria in 1770
and he is only 15 she's just 14
and it takes them a long time to consummate their marriage at least
to produce an heir. That's of critical importance because under French Royal
law the Salic Law there can only be a king of France, there can't be a queen and it
is essential that Louis and Marie Antoinette produce a male heir.
It takes eight years after their marriage in 1770 for
them to produce a child and she is a little girl.
And it's not until 1781 that they manage finally to produce a male
heir, the little boy on the right of this picture, born in 1781.
By the way, he dies tragically in June, 1789 at the age of just eight years old,
it broke the heart of the royal family.
But in a situation where there needs to be a male heir,
and where it's more than a decade after the marriage of Louis and Marie
Antoinette for a boy to be born, there's an explosive situation where
mockery of the king's sexual incapacity becomes politically explosive.
It's not just mocking the alleged impotence, of
the king, like other members of the court aristocracy.
It's also suggesting that the regime itself is in trouble.
What do you do if you can't produce an heir?
Marie Antoinette becomes a particular target for this type of ribald obscene
mockery because it is argued by many of
these underground authors, that she has effectively emasculated the king,
that she is such a strong woman that she has reduced Louise the 16th to a type of a
emasculation, a type of impotence that in a way seems
to symbolize what's gone wrong with the regime in general.
If you are mocking the royal family, the court, the senior aristocracy, the clergy
for their sexual infidelities,
for their sexual practices there is a real danger
that this is also mocking, the pillars of the system.
Because this afterall is a regime which is based on the
principle of the king being there by the grace of God
and that the privileges of the nobility
and the clergy are essential, to that regime.
It's explosive, once people start turning
their mockery, their barbs, at the personal behavior,
of the most senior members, of the two privileged orders.
Louis is mocked mercilessly for the fact that he much prefers
to go hunting, than to run the, the kings realm.
And it's true that he's a passionate hunter.
Across the 1780's he keeps a diary of the many
many thousands of birds and animals that he kills every year,
often averaging 20 or 30 a day.
Even though the king and his ministry pay special attention to trying to reach
international agreements, to close down these smut factories, as they see them.
in Britain and Switzerland and elsewhere, still the material keeps flooding in.
Here's another catalog from 1784, to the eastern
town of Troyes, ostensibly a sleepy, church dominated provincial
town, and yet this is what one of the book sellers in that town wants to order
to be sold under the counter to his clientele:
Six copies of the Little Suppers at the Hotel de Bouillon,
that's a work of soft pornography,
Little Suppers is a euphemism for sexual orgies,
six copies of an anti-clerical work, the Devil in the baptismal font,
six copies of one of the masterpieces of 18th century pornography, The Burgled Spy,
incidentally written by one of the most, eminent nobles in the kingdom,
ehe Count, de Mirabeau.
Then there are a few political, books:
Collected remonstrances of the reign of Louis XV,
but then there's a book, Louis XV's private life,
12 copies of Louis XV's orgies, etc.,
etc.
Finally, even 1 copy of The Little Suppers, the orgies of the Count
de Vergennes, which is particularly significant
because Vergennes is the Minister for war,
who was given the job of actually closing down all
of these, cheap smut factories in other parts of Europe.
The allegation that comes through again and again from this
literature is that the aristocracy, exemplified by the king himself,
can no longer fight nor make love,
that the foreign policy of the regime has been unsuccessful and
so are the central practices of the most elite members of the aristocracy.
They're reduced to regular sexual infidelities with men and
women of the people, as a way of trying to stimulate their sexual lives.
This mixture of politics and obscenity is explosive.
And Robert Danton's argument is that because it's illegal
because it's bought under the counter, but because people will want to take the risk
to produce, sell, and buy it, this gives us our best gauge of
what it is that is circulating in the streets of cities like Paris.
And it is profoundly unsettling
for the assumptions, for the ideological justifications of this regime.
One of the stories for example, concerns the
Chevalier d'Eon, who's one of the most eminent of
French military men and ambassadors, a hero of France's
participation in North American conflicts earlier in the century,
and the word is put about that actually the Chevalier d'Eon is a woman.
He's seen commonly dressed as a woman.
And there's a whole industry of production
of material about him, again with this implication-
that the best of France's warriors in the 18th
century was actually a woman who dressed as a man,
that's how feeble our aristocracy had become.
And there are countless images of the Chevalier d'Eon dressed as a woman,
fighting duels with male aristocrats.
Louis XVI, in fact orders the Chevalier to get
rid of any misconception by always dressing as a woman,
the implication being that she is a woman, she's not
a man at all, how come she'd fought in the Army?
In fact we know from later life that she's a man.
But the point is that she furnishes a perfect occasion for the writers of this
scurrilous literature to mock the elite, to
mock the aristocracy, even to mock the monarchy.
Because the regime labeled all of this illegal literature, whether
it was works of the enlightenment, works of people like Diderot
or obscene soft pornography,
it's labeled together as bad books, philosophical books-
in a way you could argue the, the regime was digging its own grave.
Great writers like Diderot who produced some
of the great works of the enlightenment are
also willing to dabble in this type of obscene mockery when they need the money.
In other words, elite culture has become profoundly subversive in some ways.
It does seem as though some of this
criticism is widely shared across the social spectrum.
We have the diary of a glass maker, a man named Jacques-Louis Menetra,
and it is suffused with criticism of the elite of his society,
the sort of remarks that are the result of that type of subversive literature.
This is what he has to say about the upper clergy, the bishops, the archbishops,
and so on: These creatures preferred to
see the nation fall into adversity and decrepitude
rather than make the slightest sacrifice.
In other words, to pay taxes.
Thus they were, and always will be, the cause of misfortune
in those nations that they uphold with their ancient Gothic prejudices.
Men of this kind know nothing but to dominate
and wish to rule by their dogmas and fabulous mysteries',
the dismissal of Catholic dogma as mere superstition.
Now, there's no question that in a city like Paris that this type of
literature is widely disseminated and can be
because Paris and other cities are literate communities.
Paris has a primary school for about every 1200 residents.
The vast majority of people in Paris can read and write.
This is an image for example of people in
the backgrounds whose job it is to run through the streets
when there is a new royal decree and put up
handbills or posters so that people can read what's being decreed.
The assumption being that this is a literate place.
Certainly women are less literate.
This is an image of a woman of the people dictating a letter to a public scribe.
And for people like her, the most useful way of
passing on information is through marketplaces, such as this one.
But even so it could be argued that Paris
and other cities are abuzz in the 1770s and 1780s
whether through the written word or through public discussion with ideas
which are certainly disrespectful of the elite of their society.
But what about the countryside?
Don't forget, as I've said, that some 85% of
people in 18th century France live in small, rural communities.
What were they reading?
We know that, about half of men and a quarter of women
were able to sign their marriage acts, and had the rudiments of reading.
What did they want to read?
And they did want to read. This is an image for example of a Colporteur
someone who makes a living by being a traveling
salesman of cheap printed literature going from
village to village across the 18th century
selling printed literature for people to read
aloud at evening gatherings of the family.
We know from French historians the type of literature that they were selling.
So Robert Mandrou for example, has found that
one of the most common forms of literature in
those packs of books that they carried around
the countryside was the Bibliotheque bleue, which is the
little blue library but it was anything but
the enlightenment. These were tales like medieval horror
stories, tales of Gothic horror in the forest, tales
of witches and superstition and spells and so on
but not stories that where infused with concepts from the enlightenment.
Or Genevieve Bolleme who studied the almanachs,
the annual records of practical information
that was regarded as useful by farming families, such as this one.
She found certainly across the 18th century that
such literature was becoming more characterized by secular information,
rather than information about the lives of the saints and all the
rest of it, information like this: warnings given to people about being
careful when you go shopping in town that you don't get pick-pocketed,
that you buy the freshest fish and all the rest of it.
But again, literature that might have
been coming slowly, more secular in orientation,
but had little if anything to do with the enlightenment.
The conclusion of those scholars would very much be that the enlightenment,
whatever form it took was very much an urban phenomenon.
We know however don't we
that in 1789, one of the greatest acts of revolution
in France was the great fear, the great peasant insurrection.
Apparently we can't explain it by, saying that
somehow the sort of people who were here sitting
around the fire in this peasant family were inspired
by having read Rousseau or having read the encyclopedia.
They couldn't have hoped to afford that literature and
certainly the illegal books weren't circulating through the countryside.
They weren't reading the sort of books that urban workers might've
been reading which were mocking the monarchy and mocking the court.
So at their evening gatherings the veilee, when one
household or several households got together, what were they reading?
Not the works of the enlightenment.
And what were they talking about?
And how might we start to explain why people like this household.
Became involved in revolutionary action in 1789 and that's what we're going to be
doing next week when we turn our attention to explaining the outbreak of revolution.
