Revolutionary State Formation in France, 1789-1799

1. Revolutions and State Formation in
Europe, 1789-1871
Dr Christos Aliprantis
American College of Thessaloniki – Anatolia College

2. Revolutionary State Formation in France,
1789-1799: Introduction
 Combination of Revolution and State Formation
 Forceful state formation when the revolutionaries
had to defend themselves in war (Charles Tilly)
 - relations between center and periphery
 - building of a new civil state bureaucracy
 - justice in the new state
 - welfare state initiatives (education, pensions)
 - new means of policing
 - the revolutionary army and state formation

3. 1. French Revolutions: Debates from the
Marxist Tradition to the Intellectual Alternative
 Marxist “school” (1950s-1970s): Albert Soboul,
Georges Lefebvre, Theda Skocpol: class struggle,
esp. the agency of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry
(the state as tool of social oppression)
 Intellectual/Cultural Alternative (1980s-1990s):
origins in Alexis de Tocqueville’s, L’Ancien Régime
et la Révolution (1856) [Lumiéres => Revolution =>
Terror]: Daniel Mornet, esp. François Furet, Penser
la Révolution française (1978): Lumiéres =>
Jacobins => 20th century Totalitarianism (Stalinism)

4. 2. State Formation in Revolutionary France:
Introductory Remarks
 Long vs short term developments in state formation:
French revolutionary decade => transformed state
structures in a highly condensed form (Charles Tilly):
 i) rebuilding of the state machinery;
 ii) extraction of taxes;
 iii) conscription of soldiers;
 iv) organization of production;
 v) distribution of food
 In a context of continuous domestic and external threats

5. 3. A New Civil State Apparatus – New
Relations between Center and Periphery
 “The transformation of an absolute monarchy encumbered by
"medieval rubbish" into a centralized, bureaucratic, and mass-
incorporating national state” (Theda Skocpol). This happened by:
 1) Rise of the status of certain provincial cities and lowering of
that of other cities
 2) Power transfer from provincial elites to provincial middle class
(patriot coalitions) and then to professional administrators
 3) Stripping away of ancient liberties of many localities, which
led to resistance and counter-revolution (esp. regarding taxation)

6. 4. From an Old Regime State to a New Bureaucracy
 Before 1789 few could be characterized “civil servants”
(mainly heads and clerks of the scattered bureaux of royal
ministries, esp. of the financial administration)
 Even in this case, these “civil servants” were rather personal
servants of the monarch or their superiors instead of
employees of an abstract State
 State services provided by multiple intermediaries
 No centralized financial system; numerous fragmented funds
 Before 1789 the financial and tax services were in the hands
of “profit-seeking capitalists”, i.e. individuals, who had
rented the right to collect taxes with large margins of personal
profit

7. 5. The Building of a New Bureaucracy
 The abolition of seigneurial rights (August 1789) led
swiftly to the reshaping of the French public administration
 The revolutionary governments wished to replace the often
inept and fragmented royal administration with more
centralized and rationalized administrative structures
 Ideal of an impersonal hierarchy of salaried state officials
 The rise of the French bureaucracy rose fivefold from
50,000 to nearly 250,000
 Central ministry employees: 420 (1788) => 5,000 (1796)
 150,000 new public servants appointed only during the
years of Terror (1793-94)

8. .
 Government finance: end of private capitalism leading to the age of
public administration (J.F. Bosher); - the birth of “La France
fonctionnaire” (Richard Cobb)
 The French regime(s) after 1789 were based on a combination of
“democratic governance” and “bureaucratic administration”
 Effort of the revolutionary governments to control the administration
 In theory the salaried civil servants followed impersonal rules, were
more specialized, and were subjected to central supervision and
control in the name of the People, i.e. the new sovereign
 Corruption and clientist structures remained important components
of the system; recruitment was not always objective; survival of the
past ethos of patrimonial administration

9. 6. Justice in the New State: the Justices
of the Peace (justice de paix)
 "The most beautiful institution for which we are indebted to the
Constituent Assembly, that which has been the most useful to
society, is the institution of the justice of the peace.” (Thuriot, 1793)
 Charente Inférieure (Charente-Maritime): i) in theory good ratio of
royal judges per inhabitant (1 for 880) before 1789 - BUT:
 ii) low quality infrastructures (e.g. no courtrooms);
 iii) judges were frequently absent (staffed among local notables);
 iv) decision making process required excessive amounts of time, red
tape and financial resources
 v) often instrument of social control in the hands of local social elites

10. . End of this justice; March 1790: establishment of the Justice de
Paix (Justice of the Peace): a lower-level, local justice official
 Responsible for negotiation and reconciliation of small scale
cases; popularly-salaried magistrates; no formal legal training
 Helped relieve the court system from a large number of cases
 Inexpensive, fast and popularly supported means of local justice
 Establishment of social peace as the Justice de Paix’s decisions
were deemed fair; hence its extensive usage by rural dwellers
 “... Litigants experienced the reality of equality before the law,
[and thus] the institution of the justice of the peace was a
schoolhouse of modern citizenship.” (Anthony Crubaugh)
 Despite administrative changes in successive regime, the Justice
de Paix retained its position and impact in the following years

11. 7. Revolutionary welfare state initiatives
 Under the Old Regime, the Catholic Church was broadly responsible
for all sorts of welfare activities from education to pensions
 After the revolutionary dismantling of the Church, the
revolutionaries planned to fill this gap but they never did
 Aim for a secular education => neglect of primary education;
secondary schooling based mostly on fees
 Ambitious pension system (for orphans, widows), which was
cancelled due to lack of resources
 By 1795 state welfare leaned towards soldiers and their families
 Due to repetitive economic crises (after 1797) this state support net
weakened; most resources were directed to the army and the police

12. 8. The Revolutionary State polices Society
 Organized city police in Paris already since the mid-17th century
 After 1789 the new state institutions acquired a firmer grasp on
society than ever before
 State institutions became more accessible to citizens BUT
ALSO the state maximized its capacity to monitor, regulate and
police its citizens as well
 The concentration and retrieval of information was helped by
the unique rise of registers, file indexes, and case codes
 Domestic resistance and counter-revolution alongside external
threats pushed the government to use this apparatus for police
purposes => Ministry of General Police (1796), which slowly
expanded in size, whereas other ministries fired civil servants

13. . Republican leaders consolidated the fragile base of revolution
with foreign expansion esp. after 1794
 Late Directory-Consulate, 1797-1802: Democratic
republicanism was replaced by liberal authoritarianism => the
New Security State (Howard Brown) i.e. law and order
became greater priorities than democracy
 Repetitive use of exceptional state police measures (e.g.
violation of habeas corpus; permanent forms of exceptional
justice; replacement of elected officials with appointed ones)
 Freedom of speech was restricted; censorship was (re)imposed
(Law of Suspects, 17 September 1793; revolutionary tribunals)
 Society was policed by the bureaucracy and the army
suppressing seditious and counter-revolutionary movements

14. .
 Joseph Fouché, the Napoleonic minister of police personalized the
new extensive state police powers
 E.g. a set of hefty registers with biographical information on
brigands was compiled to help put an end to decade-long instability
in western France (1793-96 royalist uprisings in Vandée, etc.)
 Eventual repression became possible thanks to the better
coordination between civil and military law enforcement agencies
 1792: emigration became punishable by death and (notably
inaccurate) lists of émigrés were compiled; in 1800 the émigrés
were allowed to return to France and partial amnesty was granted
 A new civil-military police, the Gendarmerie was formed and its
staff was rapidly increased from 8,500 (1797) to 15,700 (1801) for
the needs of effective policing

15. 9. The Revolutionary Army and its Impact
on State Formation
 The revolutionary armed forces were not only essential for the
defense and security of the regime; they functioned as a
“school” to the revolutionary principles for those who joined it
 The France Revolution acted as a catalyst regarding the
professionalization of the officer corps and the creation of a
national army
 The pre-revolutionary officer corps were made by nobles, who
bought their military ranks; only a part of the corps were
functioning officers
 After 1789 the officers had largely middle-class origins and
were –in theory- promoted based on meritocratic principles

16. .
 Parts of the (lower) aristocracy still had the chance to rise
up – Napoleon is the most representative example
 18th century French armies were generally small (in
comparison to the country’s population) and badly paid
 The new needs and ideology (“the nation in arms”) of the
revolutionary regime gave rise to more massive armies
 From 200,000 (1789) the army rose fast to 770,000 (1794)
 Initially the army was manned by volunteers; later the
pressing needs of war made conscription mandatory
 Law of Conscription, 1798: “Every Frenchman is a soldier
and owes himself to the defense of the Fatherland”
 Between 1804 and 1813 Napoleon drafted 2,4 million men

17. .
 Contrary to the 18th century logistical care, the new massive
armies cared little for logistics and training; esp. after 1793
the marching French forces lived off plundering the lands
they conquered
 This dazzling size led to organizational and internal problems
 After 1793 –when foreign enemies had been pushed back
from France- massive desertions began; numerous commu-
nities tried to avoid recruitment and rebelled repetitively
 Despite state efforts, resistance continued: a massive
rebellion broke out around Toulouse (1799) fueling a guerilla
warfare in western France
 In 1798-1800, more than 1/3 of men called up evaded recruit-
ment or deserted; the state reacted with punitive measures,
which deepened the animosity with the rural populations

18. . The Directory was weakened due to foreign wars,
economic crises, and counter-revolutionary movements
and had to rely increasingly on the army for domestic
security:
 i) direct repression of rebellions;
 ii) system of military justice (martial courts) esp. against
rebels;
 iii) repeated purges of the elected legislative councils
 This dependence on the army opened the way for the end
of the Directory and the rise of Napoleon to power (coup
of 18th Brumaire -9th November- 1799)

19. 10. Conclusion: The Revolutionary State
in Society
 After 1789 the French state obtained an unprecedented capacity of monitoring
and interfering to the private lives of its citizens
 E.g. in case of financial crisis, Napoleon could confiscate the properties of even
the wealthiest and most powerful Frenchmen, an option that no Bourbon king had
 While in many cases this administration was beyond doubt much more effective
than that of the Old Regime, this intrusion was equally unwelcome in the eyes of
many citizens (esp. re. taxation and recruitment)
 Rural communities had to provide more resources to external authorities; and
were often coerced regarding grain supplies, military conscription, punishing of
refractory priests or suppressing Catholic rituals

20.  Napoleon inherited the revolutionary bureaucracy and administration
and only based on them he was able to extract resources and use the
revolutionary armies to conquer Europe
 Alexis de Tocqueville’s comment that Napoleon relied heavily on the
past royal administrative structures is only partly accurate
 “The overall outcome of the French Revolution can be characterized as
the symbiotic coexistence of a centralized, professional-bureaucratic
state with a society dominated by some moderately large and many
medium and small owners of private property. In this French New
Regime, the state was not oriented to promoting further social-
structural transformations. It was geared instead to maintaining itself
and guaranteeing the social order based upon professional or
bureaucratic status and upon private property and market relations.”
(Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, 1979, pp.204-205)