Introduction: France and its population; 1. Rural communities and seigneurial power; 2. Peasant life, agriculture, and social distribution; 3. Domination by the nobility; 4. City life and city people; 5. The monarchy and the new nobility; 6. Ecclesiastical power and religious faith; 7. Warfare and society; 8. Social bonds and social protests; 9. Traditional attitudes and identities; 10. Emerging identities - education and the new elite; 11. Monarchs and courtly society; 12. Aristocracy's last bloom and the forces of change; A brief synopsis of early modern French history; Genealogy of the kings of France.
A major history of French society between the end of the Middle Ages and the Revolution.
William Beik is Emeritus Professor of History at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. His previous publications include Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution (1997) and Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Study with Documents (2000).
'William Beik culminates his years of scholarship with a stunning
picture of the social groupings, political dynamics, beliefs and
customary practices of early modern France. We look at France from
its provinces and its center, we see it through the eyes of
peasants, townsfolk, and nobles. We savor the difference between
its village tax-payers, its enterprising tax-collectors, and its
sumptuously supported king and his courtiers. Especially, Beik
gives us a lucid analysis of how the whole political and social
system worked, its tensions and means of equilibrium, its sources
of resistance and renewal. By the end we understand both the
self-congratulation of the French elite and the deep
dissatisfaction that led to revolution.' Natalie Zemon Davis,
University of Toronto and author of Society and Culture in Early
Modern France
'Drawing on a lifetime engagement with the subject, William Beik
has written a masterly analysis of early modern France. He combines
an eye for gritty detail and out-of-the-way examples drawn from
ordinary lives with an informed grasp of the key questions which
puzzle historians. The result is an exemplary survey, which
students and scholars at all levels will warmly appreciate.' Colin
Jones, Queen Mary University of London author of The Great Nation:
France 1715–99
'William Beik, one of the preeminent historians of early modern
times, offers here a remarkable synthesis of two generations of
early modern French historiography. Beik's highly readable and
comprehensive text integrates contemporary scholarship on French
cultural history with the social history insights of the great
Annalistes, showing us how to tether cultural and political
developments to their social base. The French have the perfect word
for it: incontournable.' James Collins, Georgetown University and
author of The State in Early Modern France
'Aimed squarely at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate
students, as well as those looking for a thorough and reliable
introduction to the past several decades of scholarship, A Social
and Cultural History of Early Modern France, provides a thoughtful,
well-written, and consistently engaging synthesis of a prodigious
amount of scholarship on a vast array of topics.' H-France,
www.h-france.net
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