Lawyers and Citizens by David A Bell
Among the men who rose to power in France in 1789, lawyers were heavily represented. To a large extent, they also shaped the evolution of French political culture of the ancien regime. Lawyers and Citizens traces the development of the French legal profession between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution, showing how lawyers influenced, and were influenced by, the period's passionate political and religious conflicts. David Bell analyzes how these key middling figures in French society were transformed from the institutional technicians of absolute monarchy into the self-appointed voices of public opinion, and leaders of opposition political phamphleteering. He describes the birth of an independent legal profession in the late seventeenth century, its alienation from the monarchy under the pressure of religious disputes in the early eighteenth century, and its transformation into a standard-bearer of enlightened opinion in the decades before the Revolution. Lawyers and Citizens also illuminates the workings of politics under a theoretically absolute monarchy, and the importance of long-standing constitutional debates for the ideological origins of the Revolution. It also sheds new light on the development of the modern professions, and of the French legal system. Based on extensive primary research, this study will be of interest to historians and legal scholars alike.
This is a definitive portrait of a group whose claim to one is long overdueIt is written with clarity and a control which, while addressing all the major issues along the way, never allows the argument to become unduly side-tracked. * French History *
This book fills an important gap in the historiography of eighteenth-century France ... an important book ... It resurrects a significant and neglected aspect of eighteenth-century French history, and makes a major contribution to the debate on the origins of the French Revolution. * Munro Price, University of Bradford, British Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies. vol.19, part 2, Autumn 1996 *
This book fills an important gap in the historiography of eighteenth-century France ... an important book ... It resurrects a significant and neglected aspect of eighteenth-century French history, and makes a major contribution to the debate on the origins of the French Revolution. * Munro Price, University of Bradford, British Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies. vol.19, part 2, Autumn 1996 *
David A. Bell is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University. He formerly taught at Yale and Johns Hopkins, where he also served as Dean of Faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences. He was born in New York and educated at Harvard, Princeton, and the École Normale Supérieure. He has written three prize-winning books, the most recent of which is The First Total War (2007).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780195076707 |
| ISBN 10 | 0195076702 |
| Title | Lawyers and Citizens |
| Author | David A Bell |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 1994-07-28 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Prizes | Winner of Winner of the Pinkney Prize of the Society of French Historical Studies for the best book in French History in 1994.. |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |