A Reassessment of the Abolition of Feudalism, 1789-1793

Rafe Blaufarb
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Rafe Blaufarb: UF - University of Florida [Gainesville]

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Abstract: This paper reassesses the French Revolutionary abolition of feudalism. The existing scholarship on the subject has been primarily concerned to measure the socio-economic impact of feudal abolition and has concluded that the Constituent Assembly's attempt to end the feudal regime through a system of gradual rachat was a failure. This paper breaks from this conventional approach by taking a legal and institutional approach to the problem of feudal abolition and concludes that, while the rachat programme did indeed fail in the countryside, where peasants most definitely did not use rachat vis-a-vis their particular lords, it was a great success in the towns and cities of France. There, urban bourgeoisie indeed made use of the rachat system to free their properties from the emprise of formerly ecclesiastical (after December 1789, nationalized) feudal lordships.

Keywords: feudal abolition; seigneurial dues; nationalized property; féodalité; rachat; biens nationaux (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-12-13
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Published in La Révolution française - Cahiers de l’Institut d’histoire de la Révolution française, 2018, Économie politique et Révolution française, 15

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01957528

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