James B. Collins is Professor of History at Georgetown University. His seven books include The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge University Press, 1995; 2nd ed. 2008) and La monarchie républicaine ( 2016), based on his lectures at the Collège de France. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Polish, and Chinese.

• Preface; Introduction: Political theory read in the light of politics; 1. La chose publique de nostre royaume; 2. Political vocabulary in action; 3. Murder, justice, and la chose publique in an age of madness; 4. The commonwealth under siege: Louis XI; 5. La chose publique and urban government; 6. The Orléanist offensive: 'Puissance absolue' and republicanism; Conclusion.

'Subjects of the king of France acted as if they were citizens of a 'monarchical commonwealth' from the middle of the fourteenth century until the Wars of Religion. In this marvelous and novel work, James B. Collins recovers an underappreciated political discourse in competition with 'the monarchical one' and proposes that 'this commonwealth discourse was, in fact, France's primary language of politics' during this period … This is a great and ambitious book from a senior scholar that causes us to look with new eyes upon late medieval and early modern France.' Tyler Lange, Journal of Modern History