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- Title
ALLIES AND OPPONENTS: NOBILITY AND THIRD ESTATE IN THE SPRING OF 1789.
- Authors
Marxoff, John
- Abstract
Scholars continue to debate the nature of the bitter political polarization in the French Revolution of 1789. One view is that prosperous urban notables (property-holders, office incumbents, elite professionals, entrepreneurs) held a coherent world-view at odds with that held by nobles. Others argue that the prosperous, nobles and non-nobles alike, shared a vision of social change. I use statements of grievances drawn up at the beginning of the French Revolution-the cahiers de doléances-to measure local variation in the extent to which nobles and prosperous commoners agreed on their programs for the future of France. This variation is used as the dependent variable in a multiple regression analysis to identify the social processes that helped either forge elite unity or drive the two groups apart. Unity was more characteristic of the prosperous areas of the kingdom and the regions more directly administered by the central government, while increasing town size promoted divisions. Mobility opportunities played no role. if the organized activities of intellectuals played a role, it was a unifying force (although a weak one). Finally, the more severe the immediate economic crisis, the more the elites found common ground, perhaps through common concern over revolt from below.
- Subjects
POLARIZATION (Social sciences); POLITICAL science; NOBILITY (Social class); BUSINESSMEN; CAHIERS de doleances de 1789; ELITE (Social sciences); SOCIAL change; SOCIAL sciences
- Publication
American Sociological Review, 1988, Vol 53, Issue 4, p477
- ISSN
0003-1224
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2095844