French Finances 1770–1795: From Business to Bureaucracy (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History) - Hardcover

Bosher, J. F.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521077648 ISBN 13: 9780521077644

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1970

Synopsis

The monarchy of Louis XVI suffered revolution and then destruction after failing to settle its financial difficulties. What precisely were those difficulties? In this book, Professor Bosher shows that the monarchy was financed by a chaotic system of private enterprise which proved increasingly unmanageable and wasteful. Hundreds of profit-seeking accountants - 'capitalists', in the language of the time - stood in the way of reform and even of clear accounting until governments of the French Revolution eventually nationalized the financial system and changed it 'from capitalism into a bureaucracy'. From his close study of the administrative changes Professor Bosher concludes that the National Assembly planned to guard the public finances by bureaucratic organization. 'With a vision of mechanical efficiency and articulation', he writes, 'systems of clock-like checks and balances such as eighteenth-century Frenchmen found everywhere, even in nature itself, the revolutionary planners hoped to prevent corruption, putting their faith in the virtues of organization to offset the vices of the individual men.'

About this title

Book Description

The monarchy of Louis XVI suffered revolution and then destruction after failing to settle its financial difficulties. What precisely were those difficulties? In this book, Professor Bosher shows that the monarchy was financed by a chaotic system of private enterprise which proved increasingly unmanageable and wasteful.

About the Author

Bosher taught the history of France and New France for forty years at King's College, London, University of British Columbia, Cornell, and York University.

John Elliott has had an industrial and academic career and for the past twelve years has been chairman of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodrion. He was Director of the Institute for Employment Studies based at the University of Sussex and until recently was a Professor of Business Studies.


Olwen H. Hufton is a professor of European History and Women's Studies at Harvard University.

Professor H. G. Koenigsberger FBA is one of Britain's senior historians. German by birth, he has taught at Manchester, Nottingham, Cornell and London, and is now Professor of History Emeritus and Fellow, King's College London. Koenigsberger is also a Past President of the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, and in 1987 Cambridge published a festschrift in his honour under the title Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Mack and Jacob. In the late 1960s Koenigsberger was a founder-editor (with Professor Sir John Elliott) of the 'Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History' series, where his book is now being published.

Hamish Scott is Professor of International History, University of St Andrews. He is the author of The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648 1815 (1983, with D. McKay) and British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution (1990).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1970
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521077648
• ISBN 13: 9780521077644
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 386