A show of hands for the republic : opinion, information, and repression in eighteenth-century rural France
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
A show of hands for the republic : opinion, information, and repression in eighteenth-century rural France
(Changing perspectives in early modern Europe)
University of Rochester Press, 2014
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p. 267-298
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A fresh perspective on rural responses to the French Revolution, using sedition investigations to reveal how villagers took their place on the political stage.
In the French village of Segonzac in 1796, weaver Thomas Bordas spoke out during a municipal ceremony. Frustrated by how stifling the politics of the Revolution had become, he proposed a show of hands: who wants a republic, and who wants a king? Soon after, he was arrested and charged with attempting to reestablish the monarchy.
Drawing on archival sources ranging from village council minutes and reports of government spies to investigations into sedition and seditious speech, A Show of Hands for the Republic provides a new account of the politicization of the French peasantry from the early eighteenth century through the Revolution. Jill Maciak Walshaw demonstrates here that villagers were well-informed and outspoken on political issues. In addition, though the political authorities characterized peasants as ignorant and easily manipulated, Walshaw shows that the ruling elite also carefully monitored and suppressed their opinions, revealing a contradiction in the governing practices of the state.
By documenting the lively political forum that existed in eighteenth-century rural France, this study challenges not only the bourgeois nature of the public sphere, as defined by Jurgen Habermas, but also the notion that it was predominantly urban. A Show of Hands for the Republic presents a fresh understanding of rural political culture, one in which villagers responded to revolutionary change with their own agenda and came to play a new role on the political stage.
Jill Maciak Walshaw is assistant professor of history at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.
Table of Contents
Introduction
La France Profonde? News and Political Information in the Village
From Emotion Populaire to Seditious Words: Rural Protest in the Ancien Regime
Bringing Them into the Fold: The Struggle against Ignorance and Dissent in the French Revolution
"Long Live Louis XVII": The Prosecution of Seditious Speech during the French Revolution
Tricksters, Dupes, and Drunkards: Truth and Untruth in the Search for Rural Political Opinion
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"