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- Title
The Royal Lottery and the Old Regime: Financial Innovation and Modern Political Culture.
- Authors
Kruckeberg, Robert
- Abstract
The French Royal Lottery was founded in 1776 under Louis XVI. The king and his ministers saw the lottery as a way to raise revenue while avoiding the politically contentious debates with the Parlement of Paris over taxation. The monarchy hoped that the lottery would avoid the charges of arbitrary despotism and coercion leveled against taxation measures, since the lottery was portrayed as voluntary consumption by the public. With the lottery, the monarchy entered the marketplace and directly engaged in new patterns of consumption and financial innovation. By entering the marketplace, the monarchy ultimately undermined its own absolutist ideology as critics attacked the monarchy as forgoing its traditional role of royal paternalism in favor of its new role as merchant. An examination of the Royal Lottery shows how the economic and political transformations of the century were deeply intertwined.
- Subjects
LOTTERY proceeds; LOTTERIES; TALLEYRAND-Perigord, Charles Maurice de, prince de Benevent, 1754-1838; PUBLIC finance; FRENCH history; REIGN of Louis XVI, France, 1774-1793; FRENCH politics &; government, 1774-1793; FRENCH Revolution, 1789-1799; HISTORY; CAUSES of war
- Publication
French Historical Studies, 2014, Vol 37, Issue 1, p25
- ISSN
0016-1071
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1215/00161071-2376510