Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates General of Burgundy, 1661-1790 (review)

For at least twenty years, since the publication of William Beik's Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France (New York, 1985), revisionist theories of absolutism have shaped our understanding of the old-regime French monarchy. Countering the traditional view of the French Crown's tendency to assert its power over and against nobles and other privileged elites, the revisionist understanding of absolutism emphasizes the need for the Crown to negotiate with those powers. The Crown governed best, the revisionist argument goes, when it upheld the underlying interests of elite groups. Recently, Hurt has criticized this revisionist view for its exaggerated emphasis on interdependence, arguing that the Crown could—and did—undermine courts of law, or parlements, as independent political and judicial players.¹ Into this fray Swann has stepped with his solidly researched history of provincial politics as centered upon the Estates General of Burgundy.

In his introduction, Swann adeptly wades through the historiography on absolutism, examining with an equally critical eye the assertions found in both the traditional and the revisionist views. Only recently have historians begun with any seriousness to consider the shortcomings of the revisionist views; it is notable that Swann contributes to this discourse: Revisionism, he argues, runs the danger of presenting the relationship between monarchy and ruling class as "both too static and oversimplified" (16). Further, there is a "danger that the revisionist argument more generally exaggerates the extent to which the monarchy was in thrall to vested interests," in part because it rests on an overemphasis on pays d'États, or those uniquely privileged provinces that had their own estates (16). These are some important critiques, but Swann's study has mixed success in addressing them.

Readers expecting strong statements in support of one position or another will be disappointed. Almost invariably, Swann charts a middle course. For instance, he writes, "Once war returned to darken the horizon after 1672, there was no revival of public resistance to the king's fiscal policies," but he does not conclude that "the Estates had been silenced or that they were simply content to bask in the rays of the Sun King" (192). Swann's tendency to stake out the middle ground does not result in groundbreaking methodological or theoretical innovation; it does, however, represent solid and sensible history.

Swann's scope—the intense focus on one institution over a relatively long term—is ideal for conveying an understanding of political change. Swann succeeds where the revisionist school comes up short. He presents political change as gradual and halting, though clearly in evidence over the long term. Yet Swann's scope does not lend itself to commentary on the critique that the revisionist school's views rest too heavily on research in pays d'États. A comparative approach would be necessary to gauge whether any accommodation between the Crown and local elites could take root in provinces without estates.

Swann presents an image of the Estates of Burgundy as a dynamic and responsive institution that could defend, to an extent, the interests of the local elites while undertaking some limited reforms in local administration. In short, it was an institution that worked well within the confines of the old-regime state. But it was also an institution that depended on the continuing notions of privilege and inequality for its authority, and herein lay its weaknesses, which became exposed as the political culture shifted distinctly away from those ideals before and during the Revolution. Swann has made an important contribution to our understanding of these political processes.