One of the French Revolution's principal accomplishments was to replace the Old Regime's system of hereditary privilege with a new social logic of individual merit. Nowhere was this shift expressed more sharply than in the French military profession. Before 1789, the officer corps had been an aristocratic preserve, open only to those with four generations of noble ancestry. During the Revolution, in contrast, the military became the leading symbol of the new meritocratic order. In the army, it was said, a young man from modest origins could rise to the highest ranks if he had superior merit; in every soldier's backpack was a marshal's baton. By examining the idea and practice of merit in the officer corps from the reign of Louis XV to the Bourbon Restoration, however, this dissertation shows that Revolutionary meritocracy represented less of a break with the Old Regime than is traditionally assumed. To recover a sense of the complexity which attended the emergence of modern notions of merit, this study explores how the officer corps responded to the unprecedented military, political, and social challenges raised in 1789. The clash between aristocratic professionalism and the Revolution was less intense than one might expect. Merit had long been a central concern of the officers. While noble, the officers had grown increasingly angry in the decades before 1789 at how civilians of illustrious birth, wealth, and influence seemed to monopolize advancement. The officers' frustrations shaped their attitude toward the Revolution, and the meritocratic reforms of 1789-91 were mainly a response to their grievances. To be sure, the officers' early optimism faded in the face of troop mutiny, warfare, and radicalization. Although submerged during the Convention, when concern for political loyalty overshadowed the discussion of merit, the ideas which underlay the officers' original Revolutionary aspirations re-emerged with Napoleon's seizure of power. Like the officers of 1789, Napoleon dreamed of a society where status would be measured by neither genealogy nor wealth, but rather by merit earned in state service.Ph.D.European historyModern historySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129945/2/9711926.pd
