Hendrickson, Kenneth E.

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

180 Histoire sociale / Social Historyconstituted a break in this pattern, and after 1685 they did not always concludemarriages for economic advancement. According to Mentzer, confessional compati-bility, physical security, and psychological comfort became new and importantfactors in making marriage arrangements (p. 86).Allegiances and kinship ties constituted one of the variables which Mentzer seesas particularly important in maintaining the prominence of the Lacger family after1685. As previously mentioned, some of the family converted to maintain theiroffices and commissions. One of these, François de Lacger, was a decorated seniorofficer who had abjured Protestantism. At his death in 1758, he left to his closestmale relative, Marc-Antoine II, a fortune of close to 200,000 livres, enough to re-establish the dwindling fortunes of the Protestant family. Mentzer notes that thekinship ties that bound together early modern families like the Lacgers transcendedthe superimposed religious conversions of the period after 1685.The conclusions of Blood and Belief indicate that the Lacger family correspondedto the general comportment of minor noble families during the early modern period.They achieved noble status through holding office, expanded their fortune andholdings through astute management of their capital and land as well as throughinheritance customs and marriage alliances. They deviated from these generalpatterns, however, by their adherence to Protestantism. Their religious beliefs,especially after 1685, put them on a different track from the majority of the minornoble families in France and excluded them from certain of the typical paths tosocial and economic advancement.Mentzers book is well structured, well written, and generally very convincing.One quibble might be with his assumption that the Lacgers initial conversions toProtestantism in the 1560s were inconsistent with the familys desire for social,economic, and political advancement (pp. 4647). In fact, they were following ageneral trend at that time among judicial officeholders. Certainly, in Dauphinéduring the 1560s there were a series of such conversions among the judges atRomans, Vienne, and Valence. Were the Lacger actions such a paradox in thiscontext? As to the structure of the book, its thematic approach avoids the long andboring descriptive method, but does lead to annoying repetitions of people andcases, like François de Lacger who is mentioned in almost every chapter.This is an excellent case study which transcends a simple treatment of onefamily. It is another interesting and useful contribution to the growing school ofresearch on family history.Daniel HickeyUniversité de MonctonBiancamaria Fontana, ed.  The Invention of the Modern Republic. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xii, 234.This is a fascinating work, both for what it is and what it is not. Assuredly it is astimulating collection of scholarly essays on the intellectual history of the republicComptes rendus / Book Reviews 181and republican ideology. However, it is a collection that pointedly lacks due consid-eration of the Americans and of the Christian churches.The absence of the Americans is puzzling, especially since in the introductionBiancamaria Fontana declares the 1989 world-historical victory of a particularpolitical regime that she identifies with the American and French revolutions. Yet,of the various scholars presenting essays, only Bernard Manin directly considers theAmerican case; he dedicates much space to elucidating the positions of the anti-Federalists of the 1780s. Certainly this is valuable historical scholarship; Maninamply illustrates that the anti-Federalists suffered not so much from incoherence assimply from defeat by superior forces and arguments. Yet one might ask why theeditor could not allot at least equal coverage to the development of actual constitu-tional practice in the America of the 1790s. An overemphasis on France and theeditors apparent willingness to prefer any European subject (even the abortiveRepublic of Naples) make it difficult to understand the absence of the Americansexcept as wilful neglect. It is more difficult still to understand how a scholarlydiscussion of the emerging modern republic can proceed without some detailedanalysis of the early United States Constitution.While neglect of America is a fault, the second lacuna of Modern Republicresults from theoretical proclivities, in themselves not guilty, but definitely provoca-tive of debate. In the introduction, Fontana asserts that the bourgeois liberalrepublic has its origins in domains of political reflection distinct from traditionalrepublican concerns with civic identities and values. Instead of constituting aunique innovation of the modern commercial republic, Fontanas observation couldalso indicate its greatest historical failure. An unspoken theme of this book is thefailure of republican theorists to present (sometimes even to care about) a stabledefinition of citizenship.Surely this is a terrible gap in the Invention of the Modern Republic: it largelyignores the problems of virtue and citizen. Despite the predilections ofhistorians and political ideologues, those concepts have occupied a pivotal positionin the intellectual construction of the republic. This book would have benefited froma consideration of moral culture in would-be republican societies, specifically themoral authority of the Christian churches. After all, the liberal catch-phrase, thepursuit of legitimate self interest, obviously presupposes that citizens, or at leastthe law, will understand clearly just what constitutes legitimate. Property is amoral category and, pace Fontana, the republic even in its commercial form mustremain a metaphysical proposition.It is no revelation that many eighteenth-century radical republican theorists usedappeals to Reason to gloss over this question formerly handled by official religion.Reason, according to theory, would (perhaps not without controversy) validate thepublic moral practices necessary for stable republican society. In the only essay ofModern Republic relevant to this problem, Gareth Stedman Jones demonstrates thatconcerns about the moral construction of the citizen occupied Kant and placedlimits on subsequent German republican thinking. Kant surmised, and we nowknow, that the republican experiment absolutely requires a definite moral descriptionof Man. This is itself impossible to achieve from within the individual; we can only182 Histoire sociale / Social Historydo so by embracing a toxic moral relativism. In the West, the strongest argumentagainst the ultimate nihilism of the moral relativist traditionally emanated from theChristian churches, and that is why they ought to have appeared in this volume.Taking the problem from another angle, note that the modern republic grew upin the soil of Christendom at a time when the churches (politically imperfect thoughthey could and can be) still commanded the role of cultural guarantor of virtue anddefinitions of human freedom. In fact, the Christian heritage so thoroughly under-girded acceptable public manners among the higher and aspiring Western classesthat republican theorists (usually in the negative sense) could take it as the norm.Of course men and women then, as always, evaded or rejected Christian moralprecepts and prohibitions, but never safely in public. Thomas Jeffersons freethinking was notorious at his dinner table. In public life he rooted his politicaldoctrines in language which purposely gave the impression (despite his obviouspersonal reservations) of invoking the moral authority of the Protestant Christianunderstanding of God. Even the most decadent British and European aristocratsfaced limits and public censure for open transgressions.Traditional arguments against the liberal republic, or aspects of it, attack on thisvery point. What has been the product of republican thinking without definitivemoral reference? Admirable and precious statements of the inherent dignity of eachhuman being, notably couched in distinctly Christian traditional language. But inpursuit of a rather abstract freedom, republican thinkers frequently assumed themoral autonomy and sufficiency of the individual self. For that very reason republi-can ideals have been gutted by the licence and materialist excesses of republicanpopulations. Why? Because under bourgeois liberal republican theory the free-dom and dignity of the citizen emanated primarily from within and of himself, thatis to say without referent, thus rendering the concept of self meaningless. Theconfines of the referenceless self are too small to house such treasures. Withinsuch a self alone, freedom cramps into narcissism and infantile gratification; dignitystifles under ego; truth wilts into a relative concept subsumed into the pursuit ofunfettered consumption and the appeasement of other appetites.Unwilling and thus unable to confront the intellectual and spiritual collapse ofmeaningful freedom and civil dignity, contemporary modern republics have simplyretreated. Contemporary republics emphasize tolerance (even of the intolerable) overtruth, for such flabby tolerance is all that remains of freedom without moral refer-ence. For it to be otherwise, Western societies once again would have to undertakea real investigation of freedom and personhood, and that would entail makingdistinct decisions and judgements in the spheres of morality and public behaviour.Without the churches in their former roles of defining those decisions and evaluat-ing those judgements, the process cannot even begin. Tragically, it has alreadybecome unthinkable, even incomprehensible, for far too many denizens of the West.Long live the individual (if he can); the citizen (even as an aspiration) is dead.The choice not to address this dilemma of the citizen in concrete historicalterms is the contentious strategy of Modern Republic. Joness essay on Kant is anexception, but that approach is limited. After all, the philosophy of Kant was andis an extremely elitist affair; the vast majority of Europeans never heard of him inComptes rendus / Book Reviews 183his lifetime or afterward. They have instead wrestled with questions of morality,virtue, and the validity of the republic, inasmuch as they have done so at all, withinthe context of Christian tradition. Since the republics were intended to be populargovernments constructed from popular societies, the virtue inherently necessary tomake a citizen (if he even agreed to undertake the project) had to be cast in lan-guage intelligible to him. Thus, by definition, the theory of the republic cannot existisolated from the civic identities and values which Fontana casts off in the veryfirst pages of the book. She could only do so by pointing to the stratospheric realmsof theory. The revolutionary upheavals of the latter eighteenth century gave birthto republics on the ground.No civil society in the West before now has ever attempted to exist withoutserious reference to God. In part, Western republican ideology, so singularly unsuc-cessful at producing a morally meaningful notion of freedom, has led us into theattempt. We do not know, and must rather doubt, whether any such society canpersist. Scholarly inquiry into the theory and nature of the Western republic literallycannot succeed without God. Until the middle twentieth century, God remained thehistorical language of civic values in the societies from which republican theoristshoped to construct their projects. To plan such projects without formal recognitionof God seemed crassly utopian. If we seek real understanding of the emergence ofrepublican theory and practice, why repeat that mistake?Ken HendricksonSam Houston State UniversityBeatrix Le Wita  French Bourgeois Culture, translated by J. A. Underwood.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. x, 168.This brief study of an elusive subject is primarily an ethnography informed byPierre Bourdieus sociological concepts of distinction, practice, and reproduction,published as part of an agreement with the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences delHomme. French Bourgeois Culture pays little attention to classic economic oroccupational definitions of class. Instead, Beatrix Le Wita set out to answer thequestions: why is it so hard to name the bourgeoisie, or why are quotation marksplaced around the term bourgeoisie? After a fascinating account of the difficultiesof gathering wary bourgeois subjects in comparison to the conventional non-Europe-an and non-privileged subjects of ethnographies, she describes how she conductedinterviews with about 100 men and women and observed many of them in theirhomes. She had to rely upon personal and professional contacts to act as intermedi-aries and limited her study to Catholics. Although her findings are about contempo-rary, Catholic bourgeois culture, they offer historians more than a glimpse into thediscreet charm of the bourgeoisie.To answer the question about naming the bourgeoisie, Le Wita draws on RolandBarthes notion of name defection, whereby bourgeois people deprecate or denythe label, in effect forbidding its use to describe them. Fortunately, Le Wita excels

Biancamaria Fontana, ed. — The Invention of the Modern Republic

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Biancamaria Fontana, ed. — The Invention of the Modern Republic

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