Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T14:12:27.301Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Reflections on the Revolution in France: Property, the Monied Interest, and the Assignats

from Part VI - The French Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2020

Gregory M. Collins
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Get access

Summary

Chapter 11 unveils Burke’s understanding of the French Revolution through the lens of his principles of political economy. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke attacked the Revolution for violating prescriptive property rights and subverting the market principles of supply and demand that he later defended in Thoughts and Details. In addition, I provide a thorough treatment of Burke’s criticism of the monied interest and the revolutionaries’ frenzied issuance of paper money called assignats. In his judgment, these two aspects of the Revolution shook the foundations of France’s system of revenue and discouraged commercial activity. The monied interest in particular exploited their position as state creditors to drive their pursuit of avaricious self-interest and wield a nefarious influence in the conduct of government affairs, which helped provoke the expansion of the French state. Such financiers, as well as the new middle class, were driven by ambition and speculation, supplanting the landed nobility and unsettling the social order of France. In Burke’s view, the landed interest was necessary to tame and channel such influences because their family pedigrees, ancestral estates, modern disposition, and commitment to the common good provided a stable foundation for market exchange and foreign investment to flourish.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×