A Social and Cultural History of Early Modern France

William Beik is Emeritus Professor of History at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. His previous publications include Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution (1997) and Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Study with Documents (2000).

• Introduction: France and its population; 1. Rural communities and seigneurial power; 2. Peasant life, agriculture, and social distribution; 3. Domination by the nobility; 4. City life and city people; 5. The monarchy and the new nobility; 6. Ecclesiastical power and religious faith; 7. Warfare and society; 8. Social bonds and social protests; 9. Traditional attitudes and identities; 10. Emerging identities - education and the new elite; 11. Monarchs and courtly society; 12. Aristocracy's last bloom and the forces of change; A brief synopsis of early modern French history; Genealogy of the kings of France.

'William Beik culminates his years of scholarship with a stunning picture of the social groupings, political dynamics, beliefs and customary practices of early modern France. We look at France from its provinces and its center, we see it through the eyes of peasants, townsfolk, and nobles. We savor the difference between its village tax-payers, its enterprising tax-collectors, and its sumptuously supported king and his courtiers. Especially, Beik gives us a lucid analysis of how the whole political and social system worked, its tensions and means of equilibrium, its sources of resistance and renewal. By the end we understand both the self-congratulation of the French elite and the deep dissatisfaction that led to revolution.' Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto and author of Society and Culture in Early Modern France