Crimes et criminalité en France, 17e–18e siècles by A. Abbiateci, et al. (review)

REVIEWS 113 behaviour of mostof these titheproducts in theseventeenth century.According to Labrousse and Simiand,from 163oto •7=o the French economysettledinto a phase ofdepression, a'phase B'inSimiand's terminology, marked bydeclining prices andtheirconsequence, economic stagnation, andimpoverishment. Butthegenerally good results ofharvests throughout most oftheseventeenth century would seem to implythatthemass ofconsumers inthisruraleconomy must have foundless, rather thanmore,difficultyin feedingthemselves. Need risingpricesovera longterm necessarily implyprosperity; ordeclining prices, impoverishment? Needtherebea necessary correlation between highprices andpoorharvests, except in theverybad years? In anyevent, itisnolongerpossible toaccept Labrousse's seventeenth-century depression or eighteenth-century expansion on the evidence of pricesalone.So, behindapparently innocuous questions aboutagricultural product,thereliesa fundamental critiqueof themethods of Labrousse andhisschool. There is,to be sure,adangerhereof throwing outtheoldmodelforitsdeficiencies whilethenew workisstillbacked upbyinsufficient evidence; butthiscollection of papers andthe debates surrounding it areahealthy sign thatworkisbeingdoneinscientific fashion onasubject toolonganarticleoffaith. T.J.A. LE GOFF YorkUniversity Crimes etcriminalitd enFrance,z7e-z8esi?cles. Contributionsde A.ABBIATECI, F. BILLACOIS , Y.BONGERT, N.CASTAN, Y.CASTAN, and P.PETROVICH. Paris, Librairie Armand Colin, •97 •. CahiersdesAnnales,33. PP. 269, cartes.22F. A properdoorisat oncea goodentrance anda goodexit.Soisa properbook.A well-built book takes us out of the chamber in which we have been enclosed and into a lighter,largerroom.Crime.• etcriminalitd serves betterasanexitthanananentrance; thespace intowhichit leads us,although full of fascinating objects, iscluttered and dark. The book takesusout of the incidental,anecdotal,illustrativestudyof oldregimecrimeintoa serious collective efforttoanalyze thewholerangeof materials left by the multiple judicialorganizations of seventeenthandeighteenth -century France. Those materials are rich, abundant, and informative. Crimesetcriminalitd restricts its attention to the archives of the Paris ChS_teletand the Parlements of Paris and Toulouse (and within the•n to lessthan half the available series andyears),but thevolumeof thosedocuments aloneforcesthe authorsinto highlyselective, schematic summaries of theevidence. The resultisthatthevolume gives a sense of theremarkable potentialities of theavailable documentation, providessomecrudestatistical descriptions of portionsof the record,and offersa numberof scattered, provocative, butfinallyinconclusive observations concerning the crimesand criminalsof the old regime.If thoseobservations convergeon any single argument,it isthatthebulkof the'crime' judgedbytheseseventeenthand eighteenth-century tribunalssimplyextendedor exaggerated behaviourwhichwas routineand comprehensible in the contextof the old regime:the spillingoverof familyquarrelsintothecourtsof Languedoc; the pettytheftswhichmotivatemore than four-fifths of the casesbefore the ChS_teletof Paris; even arson, which Andre5 114 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW Abbiateci shows tobeanall-purpose actof vengeance performedbyawidevarietyof ordinarypeople.On thewhole,theauthorsattributerelativelylittleimportance to madmen, professional criminals, distinct dangerous classes, ormass crises. The argumentisreasonable, sofar asit goes,but it raises somehard questions. Firstly,the survivingdocuments describe an unknown,but probablyvery small, proportionofallthethefts,rapes,assaults, andotheroffenses whichmighthavebeen prosecuted: somevictimsnevercomplain,manyoffendersescape undetected, authorities exercise greatdiscretion in how,where,when,andwhomtoprosecute, and the very existence of some'crimes'- vagrancyis an obvious example- depends almostentirelyon the actions of authorities. In order to interpretvariations in detected criminalactivity across time,space, andsocial category, wemusthavean ideaoftheundetected behaviour which accompanies it.Abbiateci andhiscolleagues giveusneither theirtheorynortheirevidence inthatregard.Secondly, itisintriguing to discover •o commissionaires, •6 ddcrotteurs, oneclerc tonsurd, twojockeys, two seamstresses, andsoon,amongtheroughly•5ø 'delinquents' broughtbeforethe Parlement of Paris in theeighteenth century whomYvonneBongert describes. But the informationisnot reallyveryhelpfuluntil weattachit to somenotionof the occupational distribution of thepopulation atlarge.It isacross-section, or ahighly selective sample of thecity's youth? The question cutstwoways, for thepatternof selection isprecious evidence ofthedistribution ofcrimeanditsrepression, butif the apprehended criminals area highlyselected sample of thetotalpopulation wecan only generalizefrom their experienceto the characterof life in general(asYves Castandoesto suchinterestingeffectin hisessay on rural and urban mentalitiesin theregionof Toulouse,asrevealed bythecriminalproceedings of theParlement) at the greatestrisk.One of the book'sfew effortsto addressthisquestiondirectlyis PorphyrePetrovitch's suggestion (p. 238) that in the later eighteenthcenturythe proportions of Parisian nativesin the general population and among persons chargedat the Chftteletwereaboutthe same- onethird - whichwouldindicateno particulartendency for migrantstoplungeintocrime.We needamuchmoreserious effort to relate the apprehendedcriminalsto the entire urban population,via statistical comparisons, via studiesof the processes by whichthey cameto be apprehended ,viaanalysis of theunprosecuted portionof prosecutable activity. Crimes etcriminalitd shows thatatleastpartof suchaneffort torelatelaw,crime,repression, androutinesocial lifeist•asible andrichlyrewarding. CHARLES TILLY University ofMichigan Basle a•tdFrance i• theSixtee•tth Ce•ttu•,:TheBasle Humanists andPrinters i• theirContacts withFrancophone Culture.PETER G. BIETENHOLZ. Geneva,Libratie Droz; Toronto, University of TorontoPress, •971. Pp.367.$x2.5o. PeterBietenholz,in hisstudyof the Baslehumanistsand printersin their contacts with Francophone culture,hasproducedanadmirablebookof impeccable scholarship .The work,whichisthefirstof atwo-volume series, isdividedintothreeparts.In Part • hediscusses theBasleprintersandFrenchbookmerchants whoadoptedthe ...