Exploring French venality in the seventeenth century: Insights from a new database on offices

Emilie Bonhoure, Olivier Musy and Ronan Tallec

Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 2024, vol. 57, issue 2, 80-99

Abstract: Venality was the French system of sales of public positions called offices. It was a stable and central institution within the French Old Regime. Though widely studied by historians, the topic lacks large-scale quantitative analysis. In this article, we fill this gap by presenting a novel and comprehensive database of 17th-century French offices, which includes more than 15,000 offices and large information about their characteristics, the institution they depended on, and their geographical jurisdiction. We also propose three quantitative examples of how this database could be used. Following the proposed research agenda, our database could be used for quantitative empirical studies and for multidisciplinary work, including history, political sciences, economics and administration.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2024.2378794

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