Compass of Society: Commerce and Absolutism in Old-Regime France

477 Pages·2006·2.35 MB·English

by  Henry C. Clark

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, Henry C.
Compass of society: commerce and absolutism in old-regime France / Henry C.
Clark.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
9780739153321
1. France—Commerce—History—18th century. 2. France—Commerce—
History—17th century. 3. France—Commercial policy—History. 4.
Enlightenment—France. I. Title.
HF3556.C53 2007
382.0944—dc22
2006023946

Printed in the United States of America
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I - COMMERCE AND COHESION IN THE LONG SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY
1 - Social Trust and Nascent Globalism Commerce in Early Seventeenth-
Century France
2 - Louis XIV and the Two Kinds of Trade
II - COMMERCE, GOVERNMENT AND HISTORY IN THE AGE OF
ENLIGHTENMENT
3 - “Compass of Society” Commercial Sociability in France, 1715–1740
4 - Corporatism, Nobility and the “Spirit of Commerce,” 1740—1763
5 - Friend of French Mankind Absolute Liberalism in the Physiocratic
Moment
6 - Trust, Information and the Grain Trade under Terray, 1770—1774
7 - Local Knowledge, Local Reform Turgot Toward a New Commercial
Republicanism
8 - Luxury and Commercial Society on the Eve of the French Revolution
III - THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE THEORY OF
COMMERCIAL SOCIETY From Program to Philosophy
9 - Abbé Sieyès on the Commercial Roots of Representative Government
10 - “Apostle of Moderation” Morellet on the French Revolution and
Commercial Society
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Acknowledgments
In a general way, this book would not have been conceived, or taken the form
that it did, without the inspiration furnished by some exceptional scholars who
have done much to raise the standards on the study of early modern ideas and
institutions in the past generation or two, especially David Bien, Keith Baker,
the late François Furet, and John Pocock, as well as their many talented students.
More particularly, a number of individuals have taken time from their busy
schedules to comment on conference papers, read chapter drafts, alert me to
sources or otherwise supply me with information or answers to queries over the
years that this volume was in the making. At the risk of inadvertent omission, I
am at least happy to be able to thank Keith Baker, Hans Blom, David Carrithers,
Loïc Charles, Jonathan Dewald, Michael Fodor, Philip Hoffman, Istvan Hont,
Joanna Innes, Doug Irwin, Thomas Kaiser, Emmet Kennedy, Cynthia Koepp,
Michael Kwass, Catherine Larrère, Johanna Moyer, Salim Rashid, Robby
Schneider, Jay Smith, Michael Sonenscher, Liana Vardi, Kathleen Wellman,
Lawrence White and the late Ellery Schalk. Aurelian Craiutu, Jeremy Jennings
and Paul Rahe gave assistance and encouragement when it was most needed.
Dorothy Medlin not only examined my pages on André Morellet but also
frequently made available to me, in her usual unstinting way, her unrivaled
knowledge of that redoubtable subject. David K. Smith did yeoman service and
Gail Bossenga went beyond the call of duty, each reading through the entire
manuscript and offering many useful criticisms and suggestions. Since my
wisdom in turning to these men and women has not always been matched by a
similar wisdom in heeding their advice, I must absolve them of all blame for
whatever deficiencies may remain.
Departmental archivists in Rennes, Dijon, Montpellier and Toulouse have
made their repositories welcome places to work, as have the staffs at the
municipal archives and the chamber of commerce archives in Toulouse, the
municipal library in Lyon, the Bibliothèque Nationale and Archives Nationales
in Paris, and the Dartmouth and Canisius College libraries, particularly their
interlibrary loan staffs. Generous financial support and release time from
Canisius College helped make the travel to these repositories both possible and
useful. The Western Society for French History, the Society for French
Historical Studies, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the
New York State Association of European Historians, the Department of Political
Science at Indiana University, and the Department of Philosophy at Bellarmine
University provided refreshing venues in which to discuss various aspects of this
project as it unfolded. To Liberty Fund, Inc., I owe thanks both for a rewarding
collaboration on an anthology from which I have drawn sustenance in
composing the pages that follow, and for repeatedly providing me with a most
agreeable atmosphere in which to explore topics related to those addressed in
this book.
Chapter 1 is a revised and expanded version of an article that originally
appeared in French Historical Studies 21, no. 3 (Summer, 1998): 415—40.
Chapter 8 was first published in different form in Eighteenth-Century Life 22, n.,
2 (May, 1998): 83—103. Chapter 6 is a condensed and altered version of “Grain
Trade Information: Economic Conflict and Political Culture under Terray, 1770
—1774,” which appeared in The Journal of Modern History 76, no. 4 (Dec.
2004): 793—834, ©2004 University of Chicago Press. The permission of Duke
University Press to reprint portions of the first two articles, and the University of
Chicago Press to reprint portions of the third, is here gratefully acknowledged.
Finally, my wife and francophone companion Kathleen Wine has offered by
turns whatever combination of patience, common sense, gentle rigor or all-round
support the shifting scene of circumstance may have required.
Introduction
“[T]here is much more than pleasure to expect from a [skilful
merchant]. He is the compass of society.”1
This is not a book on French economic performance in the old regime,2 nor on
government policy concerning trade or industry during this period,3 nor even on
the prehistory of the discipline of “political economy,” as it emerged fully
formed in the early nineteenth century.4
The present book draws gratefully on these and other scholarly labors, and
will engage some of the claims made by their authors where appropriate, but its
goal lies elsewhere. The book aims to articulate the “status,” as it were, of
“commerce” or trade or human exchange relative to the broader scales of
competing this-worldly values from the early seventeenth century to the
Revolution. As is increasingly well known, contemporaries spoke the language
not of “capitalism” but of “commerce” and, at least in some parts of Europe, of
“commercial society.” The present book attempts to chart in an open-ended,
non-anachronistic and non-teleological fashion some of the ways in which
“commerce” was discussed by the most thoughtful and observant Frenchmen
before 1800.5
This book argues that the “liberal” tradition of the middle and late eighteenth
century (Vincent de Gournay, Turgot, Morellet, Sieyès) must be understood not
in the usual abstract and teleological way as the sudden emergence of a “laissez-
faire” ideology grown so familiar to us, but as the multi-faceted response to a
layered array of underlying problems that are better seen as moral, social and
strategic rather than merely economic in character.
Morally, there was the pervasive suspicion that France was what recent
theorists might call a “low-trust” society. French commentators from at least the
early seventeenth century on were troubled by the apparent lack of cohesion in
their society. How to render an essentially mistrustful and mutually suspicious