A Beautiful Madness
Privilege, the Machine Question and Industrial Development in Normandy in 1789
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3201394 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James Horn (Manhattan College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 217 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 149-185 |
| Publication date | 2012-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Past & Present (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-2746 • E-ISSN: 1477-464X |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/pastj/gts010 |
| OpenAlex | W2114012315 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
In the 1780s privileges — widely held special exemptions from France’s complex system of economic regulations — obsessed the political elites of the province of Normandy. A number of influential pamphlets informed by economic considerations criticized the inequities and inefficiencies stemming from privilege in favour of sweeping changes in the productive role of privilege. The polemics concerning privilege in Normandy are familiar to historians, not least because they fuelled political discontent throughout France. But the looming presence of 1789 has obscured why the issue of privilege was so important in this province and clouds the pivotal impact that the evolution of Norman views on privilege had on the outbreak of the French Revolution. The missing piece of the puzzle concerns the royal government’s use of privilege as a tool of economic development to nurture the birth of machine production in Normandy. Privilege was the basis of the society of orders in Bourbon France. The privileges of the nobility, clergy and king formed the apex of a structure that reached into most provinces and affected nearly all cities and towns, through the urban occupations that formed corporations (occupational groupings or trade guilds). Critics such as the abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, whose An Essay on Privileges helped to crystallize public sentiment, repeated the common assertion that privilege was ‘a dispensation or exemption in favour of him who possesses it and a discouragement to those who do not’.1
Government (linguistics) · Jurisdiction · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing) · Sociology · European Political History Analysis · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2017 (4) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |