Lettres de Cachet and Social Control in the Ancien Régime, 1659-1789

Lettres de Cachet and Social Control in the Ancien Régime, 1659-1789 PDF Author: Brian Eugene Strayer
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Lettres de cachet, one of many social control mechanisms of Old Regime France, needs reassessment today after two centuries of distorted interpretations portraying these royal arrest warrants as symbols of despotism. In reality, these private ordres du roi were preventive measures to control deviant elements in society (juvenile delinquents, prostitutes, the insane, etc.). These ordres enabled the King, police, and parents to preserve family honor, enforce socially acceptable behavior, and prevent crimes embarrassing to the family and disruptive to social harmony. This book examines the legal and administrative framework, police methods and procedures, family problems and concerns, and the actual lifestyles of inmates at some of the foremost carceral institutions of 17th and 18th century Paris from 1650 to 1789.

Lettres de Cachet and Social Control in the Ancien Régime, 1659-1789

Lettres de Cachet and Social Control in the Ancien Régime, 1659-1789 PDF Author: Brian Eugene Strayer
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
Lettres de cachet, one of many social control mechanisms of Old Regime France, needs reassessment today after two centuries of distorted interpretations portraying these royal arrest warrants as symbols of despotism. In reality, these private ordres du roi were preventive measures to control deviant elements in society (juvenile delinquents, prostitutes, the insane, etc.). These ordres enabled the King, police, and parents to preserve family honor, enforce socially acceptable behavior, and prevent crimes embarrassing to the family and disruptive to social harmony. This book examines the legal and administrative framework, police methods and procedures, family problems and concerns, and the actual lifestyles of inmates at some of the foremost carceral institutions of 17th and 18th century Paris from 1650 to 1789.

Moral Cupidity and Lettres de cachet in Diderot’s Writing

Moral Cupidity and Lettres de cachet in Diderot’s Writing PDF Author: Jennifer Vanderheyden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429614810
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This volume explores the influence of the lettre de cachet on both Diderot’s personal life and his works, beginning with an examination of Diderot’s experience as recipient of two such arrest warrants, followed by an analysis of his references to these warrants in three of his fictional works, Le Père de famille, Jacques le fataliste and Est-il bon? Est-il méchant?. A scrutiny of Diderot’s mémoire/lettre novel La Religieuse proposes that, on the basis of moral cupidity, or self-gain, Madame Simonin sends her daughter Suzanne two veiled lettres de cachet that demand her confinement to a convent. The exploration of a fascinating real-life case of Henriette-Émilie de Bautru, a young comtesse whose mother confined her to a convent as a result of a lettre de cachet also based on motives of greed, leads to an examination of the similarities between Suzanne and the Comtesse in terms of their illegitimacy, questioning of authority and subsequent rebellion. A consideration of writing and communication in La Religieuse as they relate to this rebellion leads to an investigation of Diderot’s admiration of the mystery of female genius and artistic creativity as discussed in his essay Sur les femmes. The works of Julia Kristeva, especially her Post-Scriptum addressed to Diderot at the end of her work Thérèse mon amour: Thérèse d’Avila, serve as a theoretical basis for an interpretation of Suzanne’s experience as victim of a lettre de cachet and her search for a psychological rebirth of her être caché.

Marc-Antoine Caillot and the Company of the Indies in Louisiana

Marc-Antoine Caillot and the Company of the Indies in Louisiana PDF Author: Erin M. Greenwald
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807162876
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Between 1717 and 1731, the French Company of the Indies (Compagnie des Indes) held a virtual monopoly over Louisiana culture and trade. Among numerous controls, its administrators oversaw the slave trade, the immigration of free and indentured whites, negotiations with Native American peoples, and the purchase and exportation of Louisiana-grown tobacco. In Marc-Antoine Caillot and the Company of the Indies in Louisiana, Erin M. Greenwald situates the colony within a French Atlantic circuit that stretched from Paris and the Brittany coast to Africa's Senegambian region to the West Indies to Louisiana and back. Focusing on the travels and travails of Marc-Antoine Caillot, a company clerk who set sail for Louisiana in 1729, Greenwald deftly examines the company's role as colonizer, developer, slaveholder, commercial entity, and deal maker. As the company's focus shifted away from agriculture with the reversion of Louisiana to the French crown in 1731, so too did the lives of the individuals whose fortunes were bound up in the company's trade, colonization, and agricultural mission in the Americas. Greenwald’s focus on Caillot provides an engaging microhistory for readers interested in the culture and society of early Louisiana and its place in the larger French Atlantic world.

Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France

Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France PDF Author: Nicole Bauer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031122364
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This book traces changing attitudes towards secrecy in eighteenth-century France, and explores the cultural origins of ideas surrounding government transparency. The idea of keeping secrets, both on the part of individuals and on the part of governments, came to be viewed with more suspicion as the century progressed. By the eve of the French Revolution, writers voicing concerns about corruption saw secrecy as part and parcel of despotism, and this shift went hand in hand with the rise of the idea of transparency. The author argues that the emphasis placed on government transparency, especially the mania for transparency that dominated the French Revolution, resulted from the surprising connections and confluence of changing attitudes towards honour, religious movements, rising nationalism, literature, and police practices. Exploring religious ideas that associated secrecy with darkness and wickedness, and proto-nationalist discourse that equated foreignness with secrecy, this book demonstrates how cultural shifts in eighteenth-century France influenced its politics. Covering the period of intense fear during the French Revolution and the paranoia of the Reign of Terror, the book highlights the complex interplay of culture and politics and provides insights into our attitudes towards secrecy today.

Decadence, Radicalism, and the Early Modern French Nobility

Decadence, Radicalism, and the Early Modern French Nobility PDF Author: Chad Denton
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498537278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
The image of the debauched French aristocrat of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is one that still has power over the international public imagination, from the unending fascination with the Marquis de Sade to the successes of the film Ridicule. Drawing on memoirs, letters, popular songs and pamphlets, and political treatises, The Enlightened and Depraved: Decadence, Radicalism, and the Early Modern French Nobility traces the origins of this powerful stereotype from between the reign of Louis XIV and the Terror of the French Revolution. The decadent and enlightened noble of early modern France, the libertine, was born in a push to transform the nobility from a warrior caste into an intelligentsia. Education itself had become a power through which the privileged could set themselves free from old social and religious restraints. However, by the late eighteenth century, the libertine noble was already falling under attack by changing attitudes toward gender, an emphasis on economic utility over courtly service, and ironically the very revolutionary forces that the enlightened nobility of the court and Paris helped awaken. In the end, the libertine nobility would not survive the French Revolution, but the basic idea of knowledge as a liberating force would endure in modernity, divorced from a single class.

Domestic Surveillance and Social Control in Britain and France during World War I

Domestic Surveillance and Social Control in Britain and France during World War I PDF Author: Gary Edward Girod
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040012965
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 117

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Book Description
Domestic Surveillance and Social Control in Britain and France during World War I examines the rapid development and expansion of agencies and governmental power to monitor and control the homefront in Britain and France during World War I. It documents the rapid shift in focus from the feared but unimportant threat of German espionage toward homegrown radicals. The book utilizes a vast array of documents generated during the war by top-level government committees, intelligence agencies, and police services as it demonstrates the emergence of mass domestic surveillance. Detailing how events and ideas in one country impacted the other, the book argues that Britain and France developed remarkably similar intelligence agencies and policies due to their shared experiences before, during, and after the war. This book will appeal to students and scholars alike, though its moderate length and chronological approach make it accessible to a wider audience. Additionally, it will fit a number of courses, including studies of the state, intelligence studies, and modern European history courses.

Montesquieu's Science of Politics

Montesquieu's Science of Politics PDF Author: David W. Carrithers
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461640172
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws is one of a handful of classic works of political philosophy deserving a fresh reading every generation. The product of immense erudition, Montesquieu's treatise has captured since its first printing (1748) the imagination of an impressive array of intellectuals including Rousseau, Voltaire, Beccaria, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, Herder, Siey_s, Condorcet, Robespierre, Bentham, Burke, Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville, Emile Durkheim, Raymond Aron, and Hannah Arendt. In what constitutes the only English-language collection of essays ever dedicated to the analysis of Montesquieu's contributions to political science, the contributors review some of the most vexing controversies that have arisen in the interpretation of Montesquieu's thought. By paying careful attention to the historical, political, and philosophical contexts of Montesquieu's ideas, the contributors provide fresh readings of The Spirit of Laws, clarify the goals and ambitions of its author, and point out the pertinence of his thinking to the problems of our world today.

Prostitution and Eighteenth-Century Culture

Prostitution and Eighteenth-Century Culture PDF Author: Ann Lewis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131732286X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The eighteenth century saw profound changes in the way prostitution was represented in literary and visual culture. This collection of essays focuses on the variety of ways that the sex trade was represented in popular culture of the time, across different art forms and highlighting contradictory interpretations.

Between the Queen and the Cabby

Between the Queen and the Cabby PDF Author: John Cole
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773585591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
In Between the Queen and the Cabby, John Cole provides the first full translation of de Gouges's Rights of Woman and the first systematic commentary on its declaration, its attempt to envision a non-marital partnership agreement, and its support for persons of colour. Cole compares and contrasts de Gouges's two texts, explaining how the original text was both her model and her foil. By adding a proposed marriage contract to her pamphlet, she sought to turn the ideas of the French Revolution into a concrete way of life for women. Further examination of her work as a playwright suggests that she supported equality not only for women but for slaves as well. Cole highlights the historical context of de Gouges's writing, going beyond the inherent sexism and misogyny of the time in exploring why her work did not receive the reaction or achieve the influential status she had hoped for. Read in isolation in the gender-conscious twenty-first century, de Gouges's Rights of Woman may seem ordinary. However, none of her contemporaries, neither the Marquis de Condorcet nor Mary Wollstonecraft, published more widely on current affairs, so boldly attempted to extend democratic principles to women, or so clearly related the public and private spheres. Read in light of her eventual condemnation by the Revolutionary Tribunal, her words become tragically foresighted: "Woman has the right to mount the Scaffold; she must also have that of mounting the Rostrum."

Dramatic Justice

Dramatic Justice PDF Author: Yann Robert
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812250753
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, classical dogma and royal censorship worked together to prevent French plays from commenting on, or even worse, reenacting current political and judicial affairs. Criminal trials, meanwhile, were designed to be as untheatrical as possible, excluding from the courtroom live debates, trained orators, and spectators. According to Yann Robert, circumstances changed between 1750 and 1800 as parallel evolutions in theater and justice brought them closer together, causing lasting transformations in both. Robert contends that the gradual merging of theatrical and legal modes in eighteenth-century France has been largely overlooked because it challenges two widely accepted narratives: first, that French theater drifted toward entertainment and illusionism during this period and, second, that the French justice system abandoned any performative foundation it previously had in favor of a textual one. In Dramatic Justice, he demonstrates that the inverse of each was true. Robert traces the rise of a "judicial theater" in which plays denounced criminals by name, even forcing them, in some cases, to perform their transgressions anew before a jeering public. Likewise, he shows how legal reformers intentionally modeled trial proceedings on dramatic representations and went so far as to recommend that judges mimic the sentimental judgment of spectators and that lawyers seek private lessons from actors. This conflation of theatrical and legal performances provoked debates and anxieties in the eighteenth century that, according to Robert, continue to resonate with present concerns over lawsuit culture and judicial entertainment. Dramatic Justice offers an alternate history of French theater and judicial practice, one that advances new explanations for several pivotal moments in the French Revolution, including the trial of Louis XVI and the Terror, by showing the extent to which they were shaped by the period's conflicted relationship to theatrical justice.