eBook

The Political Economy of Virtue

Shovlin, John

2006,2007

Overview

Political economy, John Shovlin asserts, can illuminate the social and economic contexts out of which a revolutionary impulse developed in France. Beyond the role of political economy in political life, massive public engagement with problems of economic order mediated an enduring cultural transformation. Economic activity was reimagined as a patriotic pursuit, and economic agents-farmers, merchants, and manufacturers-came to be viewed as potential citizens. Drawing on hundreds of political economic tracts published in France between the 1740s and the early nineteenth century, Shovlin shows how mid-level French elites (magistrates, clerics, lawyers, soldiers, landed gentlemen) sought to balance their interests and values with the need to regenerate a nation that had seemingly entered a period of decline. In their view, France's moral, political, and economic power depended not simply on expanding the national wealth but also on reviving civic spirit. The \"political economy of virtue\" held that luxury was the cause of the nation's economic and moral degeneration. When the monarchy failed to reform its political economic structures in the 1760s and 1770s, mid-level elites sought to eliminate the stranglehold of the plutocracy. Shovlin argues that the Revolution grew out of a debate on how to establish a commercial society capable of fostering both wealth and virtue, and the revolutionaries sought to create such a society by destroying the institutions that channeled modern wealth into the hands of courtiers and financiers.

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Subject: 18th century / Economic aspects / Economic conditions / Economic history / Economics / Economics -- France -- History -- 18th century / Europe / France / France -- Economic conditions -- 18th century / France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Economic aspects / France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Moral and ethical aspects / France -- Intellectual life -- 18th century / French Revolution / HISTORY / Intellectual life / Luxury / Luxury -- Moral and ethical aspects -- France -- History -- 18th century / Moral and ethical aspects / Patriotism / Patriotism -- France -- History -- 18th century / Political Economy / Political history / POLITICAL SCIENCE / Revolution, 1789-1799
• ISBN: 0801444799, 9780801444791, 9780801474187, 0801474183, 9780801463471, 0801463475