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In English
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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Note on Translations -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Early Works: Genealogy and the Problem of French Feudalism -- 3. Boulainvilliers and the Burgundy Circle -- 4. Boulainvilliers and the Due d'Orleans: Toward the Regency -- 5. The Affaire du Bonnet ( 1715-1 716) and Boulainvilliers' Hopes -- 6. The Affaire des Princes (1716-1717) and Boulainvilliers' Failure -- 7. Conclusion -- Bibliographical Appendix: Boulainvilliers' Works on French History -- Bibliography -- Index
Suspicious of the French monarchy, and scornful of the new elites that served it, Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658-1722) has been considered one of the Old Regime's paradigmatic aristocratic reactionaries, a founder of modern racist theory. Some scholars, however, have admired his "constitutionalism" and judged him a progenitor of an enlightened aristocratic liberalism now commonly held to have been a major force in shaping the ideology of the French Revolution. In a close contextual study of the writings of this enigmatic, pivotal thinker, Harold A. Ellis persuasively rethinks both images of Boulainvilliers, finding him a controversialist who interpreted French history as a self-consciously political writer seeking to address an emergent political public