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Book Review
| Michael P. Breen, Law, City, and King: Legal Culture, Municipal Politics, and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007. Pp. xiii + 307. $75 (ISBN 978-1-58046-236-5).
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| Using lawyers in the city of Dijon as his focal point, Michael Breen explores what the formation of the French monarchical state looked like from a local, urban, and legal perspective. Provincial capital of Burgundy and judicial center of the region, Dijon was home to hundreds of legal professionals in the early modern period. From this judicial population, Breen chooses to examine the role of lawyers who sat in the town council of Dijon during the seventeenth century. Through a close study of these lawyers, Breen traces the relationship of the monarchy to the city, the viability of municipal privilege, jurisdictional rivalries in the city, opportunities for political participation in local politics, depictions of royal "absolute" authority, and the emergence of public opinion as a mode of legitimating royal authority. |
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Whereas it has become common to argue that the rise of French absolutism under Louis XIV was characterized by a pragmatic and mutually satisfactory compromise between provincial elites and the monarchy, Breen paints a gloomier picture. Unless they possessed substantial wealth, lawyers were progressively excluded from the institutions constituting the emerging state. In the early seventeenth century, venality of office made it impossible for lawyers to become magistrates in the sovereign court known as the parlement. Nonetheless, lawyers successfully regrouped, at least for a time, and readily sat in the town council of Dijon where they defended the city's urban privileges. Given that a good deal of politics in this period was characterized by the defense of institutional privileges in court, lawyers were well-suited to this political role. |
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Owing to factional disputes at the local level, and the tenuous grip of royal authority over the town before Louis XIV, Dijon was characterized by a fairly open political system in which both municipal elections and patronage by the powerful provincial governors played a role. Following the civil war known as the Fronde (1648–1653), however, the Sun-king's government succeeded in imposing its grip more firmly over municipal political life. The crown's own officials (intendants) and the provincial governor came to control the appointment of individuals to the town council. The vibrant political life of Dijon was tamed as the town council was transformed into a royally supervised oligarchy that largely did the work of the crown. |
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Lawyers were unable to play an active municipal role in this political climate. Instead of abandoning their interest in politics, they channeled their concern into scholarly pursuits. Rather than glorifying the magnificence and sovereign authority of Louis XIV, Dijon's lawyers turned to a careful study of provincial customs and revived contractual, constitutionalist interpretations of royal power. Breen argues that one lawyer, Claude Gilbert who wrote a critique of Louis XIV's France under guise of a Utopia, actually embraced republicanism. |
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Finally, in his epilogue, Breen suggests yet another transmutation. In the eighteenth century Dijon's excluded but scholarly minded lawyers helped to create a "public sphere" of debate that blended traditional legal concepts such as provincial custom with newer rhetoric about the right of the "public" and "citizens" to participate in politics. Thus the legal public sphere of the seventeenth century, rooted in the legal defense of customary rights and privileges, played a noteworthy role in the formation of the wider enlightened public sphere characterized by a more abstract and broader defense of civic rights. A detailed analysis of eighteenth century political life, however, goes beyond the scope of this book. |
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Breen's story of the transformation of urban government from a relatively independent body to a closed, oligarchic, administrative arm of the monarchy supports a long-standing historiographical tradition that stretches back to Alexis de Tocqueville. Although Breen emphasizes the routinization of authority characterizing local government under the emerging administrative state, the widespread sale of municipal office under Louis XIV and continuous patron-client ties point to the creation of a well-oiled political machine rather than a modern bureaucracy. |
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Breen's archival research is meticulous, but tends to be somewhat narrowly focused on lawyers' relationship to the town council. His book thus leaves a number of other issues aside. The mayor of Dijon played an essential role in the Third Estate of the provincial estates of Burgundy, but the provincial estates scarcely receive a mention in the book. There is also no comparative context elucidating the role of lawyers in institutions outside the town council. Nonetheless, Breen's narrative of Dijon's lawyers provides a well-written case study of municipal political culture and state formation from the ground up that illuminates the story of lesser provincial elites that often have been ignored in the scholarly literature. |
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| Gail Bossenga
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| The College of William and Mary |
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