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Ancien régime

The ancien régime (/ˌɒ̃sjæ̃ rˈʒm/; French: [ɑ̃sjɛ̃ ʁeʒim] ; lit.'old rule')[a], now a common metaphor for "a system or mode no longer prevailing",[1] was the political and social system of the Kingdom of France that the French Revolution overturned[2] through its abolition in 1790 of the feudal system of the French nobility[3] and in 1792 through its execution of the king and declaration of a republic.[4]

The administrative and social structures of the ancien régime in France evolved across years of state-building, legislative acts (like the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts), and internal conflicts. The attempts of the Valois Dynasty to reform and re-establish control over the scattered political centres of the country were hindered by the Wars of Religion from 1562 to 1598.[5] During the Bourbon Dynasty, much of the reigns of Henry IV (r. 1589–1610) and Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643) and the early years of Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) focused on administrative centralization. Despite the notion of "absolute monarchy" (typified by the king's right to issue orders through lettres de cachet) and efforts to create a centralized state, ancien régime France remained a country of systemic irregularities: administrative, legal, judicial, and ecclesiastic divisions and prerogatives frequently overlapped, while the French nobility struggled to maintain their rights in the matters of local government and justice, and powerful internal conflicts (such as The Fronde) protested against this centralization.


The drive for centralization related directly to questions of royal finances and the ability to wage war. The internal conflicts and dynastic crises of the 16th and the 17th centuries between Catholics and Protestants, the Habsburgs' internal family conflict, and the territorial expansion of France in the 17th century all demanded great sums, which needed to be raised by taxes, such as the land tax (taille) and the tax on salt (gabelle), and by contributions of men and service from the nobility.


One key to the centralization was the replacing of personal patronage systems, which had been organised around the king and other nobles, by institutional systems that were constructed around the state.[6] The appointments of intendants, representatives of royal power in the provinces, greatly undermined the local control by regional nobles. The same was true of the greater reliance that was shown by the royal court on the noblesse de robe as judges and royal counselors. The creation of regional parlements had the same initial goal of facilitating the introduction of royal power into the newly assimilated territories, but as the parlements gained in self-assurance, they started to become sources of disunity.

Origin of term[edit]

By the end of 1789 the term Ancien Régime was commonly used in France by journalists and legislators to refer to the institutions of French life before the Revolution.[7] It first appeared in print in English in 1794 (two years after the inauguration of the First French Republic) and was originally pejorative. Simon Schama has observed that "virtually as soon as the term was coined, 'old regime' was automatically freighted with associations of both traditionalism and senescence. It conjured up a society so encrusted with anachronisms that only a shock of great violence could free the living organism within. Institutionally torpid, economically immobile, culturally atrophied and socially stratified, this 'old regime' was incapable of self-modernization".[8]

under – Provence (1482), Dauphiné (1461, under French control since 1349)

Louis XI

under – Milan (1500, lost in 1521), Naples (1500, lost in 1504)

Louis XII

under – Brittany (1532)

Francis I

under – de facto Trois-Évêchés (Metz, Toul, Verdun) (1552), Calais (1559)

Henry II

under – County of Foix (1607)

Henry IV

under – Béarn and Navarre (1620, under French control since 1589 as part of Henry IV's possessions)

Louis XIII

s supervised by a prévôt;

prévôté

or (as was the case in ) into vicomtés supervised by a vicomte, a position that could also be held by non-nobles;

Normandy

or (in parts of northern France) into supervised by a châtelain, also a position that could be held by non-nobles;

châtellenies

or, in the south, into or baylies supervised by a viguier or a bayle.

vigueries

Conseil d'en haut ("High Council", concerning the most important matters of state) – composed of the king, the crown prince (the "dauphin"), the chancellor, the contrôleur général des finances, and the secretary of state in charge of foreign affairs.

Conseil des dépêches ("Council of Messages", concerning notices and administrative reports from the provinces) – composed of the king, the chancellor, the secretaries of state, the contrôleur général des finances, and other councillors according to the issues discussed.

Conseil de Conscience

The struggle against nature and society

Life and death in the peasant village

Scarcity and insecurity in agrarian life

A source of peasant strength; the village community

Peasant protests and popular uprisings

The peasant revolution of 1789.

France in the early modern period

Censorship in the Ancien Régime

Fundamental laws of the Kingdom of France

French forestry Ordinance of 1669

Aston, Nigel (2000). Religion and Revolution in France, 1780-1804. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.  978-0-8132-0977-7. OCLC 59522675., comprehensive overview

ISBN

Bély, Lucien (1994). La France moderne: 1498–1789. Collection: Premier Cycle (in French). Paris: PUF.  2-1304-7406-3.

ISBN

Major, J. Russell (1994). From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles & Estates. JHU Press.  0-8018-5631-0.

ISBN

Salmon, J.H.M. (1975). Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century. University paperbacks. Vol. 681. London: Methuen.  0-4167-3050-7.

ISBN

Viguerie, Jean de (1995). Histoire et dictionnaire du temps des Lumières 1715–1789. Collection: Bouquins (in French). Paris: Laffont.  2-2210-4810-5.

ISBN

(1968). Louis XIV. Gollancz. ISBN 978-0-5750-0088-9.

Wolf, John B.

Baker, Keith Michael (1987). The French Revolution and the creation of modern political culture. Vol. 1, The Political Culture of Old Regime. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Behrens, C.B.A. Ancien Regime (1989)

Black, Jeremy. From Louis XIV to Napoleon: The Fate of a Great Power (1999)

Bluche, François (1993). L'Ancien Régime: Institutions et société (in French) (Livre de poche ed.). Paris: Fallois.  2-2530-6423-8.

ISBN

Brockliss, Laurence and Colin Jones. The Medical World of Early Modern France (1997); highly detailed survey, 1600–1790s  0-1982-2750-7

ISBN

Darnton, Robert. (1982). Literary Underground of the Old Regime. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Doyle, William, ed. (2001). Old Regime France: 1648–1788.  0-1987-3129-9. OL 6796918M.

ISBN

Doyle, William, ed. The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime (2012)  0-1992-9120-9; 32 topical chapters by experts

ISBN

(1972). Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen. ISBN 978-0-3947-1751-7., social history from Annales School

Goubert, Pierre

(1986). The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-5213-1269-1.

Goubert, Pierre

Hauser, H. "The Characteristic Features of French Economic History from the Middle of the Sixteenth to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century." Economic History Review volume 4, page 3, 1933, pp. 257–272.  2590647

JSTOR

Holt, Mack P. Renaissance and Reformation France: 1500–1648 (2002)  0-1987-3165-5

ISBN

Jones, Colin. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (2002).  0-1401-3093-4 OL 7348269M

ISBN

Jouanna, Arlette; Hamon, Philippe; Biloghi, Dominique; Thiec, Guy (1998). Histoire et dictionnaire des Guerres de religion (in French) (Bouquins ed.). Paris: Laffont.  2-2210-7425-4.

ISBN

Jouanna, Arlette; Hamon, Philippe; Biloghi, Dominique; Thiec, Guy (2001). La France de la Renaissance; Histoire et dictionnaire (in French) (Bouquins ed.). Paris: Laffont.  2-2210-7426-2.

ISBN

Kendall, Paul Murray. Louis XI: The Universal Spider. (1971).  0-3933-0260-1

ISBN

Kors, Alan Charles. Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (1990; 2nd ed. 2003)  0-1951-0430-7

ISBN

Knecht, R.J. The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France. (1996).  0-0068-6167-9

ISBN

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. The Ancien Regime: A History of France 1610–1774 (1999), political survey  0-6312-1196-9

ISBN

Lindsay, J.O. ed. The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 7: The Old Regime, 1713-1763 (1957)

online

Lynn, John A. The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714 (1999)  0-5820-5629-2

ISBN

(2010) [1981]. The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War. London & Brooklyn, NY: Verso. ISBN 978-1-8446-7636-1.

Mayer, Arno

O'Gorman, Frank. "Eighteenth-Century England as an Ancien Régime," in Stephen Taylor, ed. Hanoverian Britain and Empire (1998) argues that a close comparison with England shows that France did have an Ancien Régime and England did not (an attack on Jonathan Clark. English Society, 1688–1832 (1985))

Perkins, James Breck. France under Louis XV (1897)

Pillorget, René; Pillorget, Suzanne (1995). France Baroque, France Classique 1589–171 (in French) (Bouquins ed.). Paris: Laffont.  2-2210-8110-2.

ISBN

Potter, David. A History of France, 1460–1560: The Emergence of a Nation-State (1995)

Riley, James C. "French Finances, 1727-1768," Journal of Modern History (1987) volume 59, page 2, pp. 209–243  1879726

JSTOR

Roche, Daniel. France in the Enlightenment (1998), wide-ranging history 1700–1789  0-6740-0199-0

ISBN

Schaeper, T.J. The Economy of France in the Second Half of the Reign of Louis XIV (Montreal, 1980).

Spencer, Samia I., ed. French Women and the Age of Enlightenment. 1984.

Sutherland, D. M. G. "Peasants, Lords, and Leviathan: Winners and Losers from the Abolition of French Feudalism, 1780-1820," Journal of Economic History (2002) volume 62, pp. 1–24  2697970

JSTOR

(1856). L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (2008 ed.). ISBN 0-1414-4164-X. OL 25953921M.

Tocqueville, Alexis de

Treasure, G.R.R. Seventeenth Century France (2nd ed. 1981), a leading scholarly survey

Treasure, G.R.R. Louis XIV (2001) short scholarly biography;

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