Interpreting the ‘Ancien Régime’

In an academic economy dominated by ever-increasing productivity despite diminishing (if not negative) returns, the œuvre of David Bien offers a refreshing alternative. With an output that would appear modest by today’s quantitative standards, he has left a lasting impact on the scholarships of the ancien régime and of the origins of the French Revolution. Bien was master of the article, another academic form partially eclipsed today by its bigger relative, the monograph. In the absence of a synthesis, the current collection, edited by Rafe Blaufarb, Michael S. Christofferson and Darrin M. McMahon, of ten of Bien’s essays (including one previously unpublished) is thus especially welcome. It closely follows the republication (2010) of his ground-breaking Annales articles on the Ségur army reform, in the St Andrews series of Studies in French History and Culture. Between them, the two editions offer the English reader nearly all of Bien’s important essays (‘Offices, Corps, and a System of State Credit’ is perhaps the major exception, but is nevertheless widely available, in Volume One of The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture [1987])

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