L’absolutisme ou le glas de la monarchie?

After 1789, as if to better convey the rupture between the world before and the world after, the revolutionaries called the monarchy the ancien régime. This was not the first time that there had been a desire for a break or a break with the past: thus the Renaissance had called the period between the end of the Roman Empire and the 16th century the "middle age" and therefore the "Middle Ages." The Renaissance was there in a way to renew its time. In the 19th century, Tocqueville, for the Ancien Régime, showed how artificial this break could be. As for the Renaissance, we have known for several decades that the medieval period experienced at least two or three... Yet, the images remain as if etched in ideological marble. To stick to the Ancien Régime, it would first be wise to distinguish the Valois era from that of the Bourbons. Indeed, the Bourbon monarchy represented a new exercise of power, a power that has been called absolute. How is this power characterized? Why, a few decades after its peak, would it fall to centripetal forces? In this regard, Chateaubriand said of June 17, 1789, the day the Estates-General transformed into a sovereign National Assembly: "It is a mistake to believe that [the Revolution] overthrew the monarchy: it only scattered its ruins." Precisely, without falling into alternate history, could this monarchical power have been renewed? A question posed to modernist historian Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret. He is interviewed by Christophe Dickès. Guest: Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret is a historian specializing in the history of elites in the 18th century. Honorary Director of Studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, he is the author of numerous seminal works. He is well known to the general public for his numerous works on 18th-century France, such as The Nobility in the 18th Century (winner of the Académie française prize in 1976) and his biographies of Mirabeau, Casanova, and D'Alembert, An Intellectual's Life in the Age of Enlightenment (Fayard, 2007). He won the Académie française prize in 1979 for The Daily Life of the French Under Louis XV and in 2001 for Cardinal Dubois. He has just published Variations on the Ancien Régime (168 pages, €19) with Editions Vendémiaire. _______________________________________________________________ Find us at www.storiavoce.com/ Our Twitter account: twitter.com/Storiavoce Our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/storiavoce/