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The French nobility was acculturated to violence that coexisted with courtliness. Feuding is indelibly associated with the Middle Ages, with a culture that is opposed to modernity. But, in fact, evidence for feuding in France before 1559 is fragmentary. Among the aristocracy at least private violence was increasingly under control during the late Middle Ages: revenge killing as a feature of high politics had been eradicated by the beginning of the 16th century. Factors often identified with modernity did much to create the conditions for a recrudescence of vindicatory violence: social mobility, Protestantism, and duelling. Vindicatory violence increased in France because of, not in spite of, the social and economic dynamism associated with the Renaissance, as the traditional elite was challenged by the enterprising and socially mobile.

State formation to be an essential part of the capitalist revolution and of the modernization process that begins with the Renaissance and the commercial revolution. Its completion, which happened with the industrial revolution, required definite and regulated markets, which were brought by the absolute state. Hypothetically, the absolute state was the outcome of a Hobbesian social contract; in actual terms, the consequence of a historical agreement between the monarch and the new emerging merchant bourgeoisie at the expense of the feudal lords’ power. The monarch used tax revenues to maintain a dependent patrimonial aristocracy, living at the court, to take care of war, and a patrimonial bureaucracy to collect taxes and administer justice. It is a mistake to see patrimonial administration as merely corrupt and inefficient. Under such bureaucracy, the state apparatus advanced hugely in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

In the background of the Jovinianist controversy there is plentiful evidence of Christian opposition to asceticism, especially at Rome. One reason for this is that by the mid‐fourth century a Christian aristocratic culture had begun to develop, in which ‘assimilation and accommodation’ (Salzman) to traditional aristocratic values was the norm. Even when late Roman aristocrats adopted asceticism, they often did so in line with traditional aristocratic expectations of their class and without significant disruption of lifestyle. The adoption of asceticism by female members of the gens Anicii is a notable example.

The first two sections of this chapter discuss the two main approaches to the analysis of the ratification debate over the US Constitution. Until the late 1960s, the predominant interpretation described the debate over ratification as a conflict between “aristocratic” and “democratic” ideals and interests, but at about that time, scholars began to shift to a second approach that used the terms “liberalism” and “classical republicanism” to account for ideological differences during the revolutionary era; this shift was also accompanied by a change in the interpreters’ concerns away from social struggle toward the study of the development of political ideas. The argument presented here is that the terminology so far favored by historians and political scientists has obscured important aspects of the ideological differences between the Federalists and their opponents because it has drawn attention away from the actual issues debated during the ratification struggle. This claim can be supported in different ways, but the approach used here is to look closely at what prominent interpreters say about the limits of their own interpretation, even though this it risks being unfair to the perspectives reviewed. The last two sections of the chapter present an approach that promises better to capture the essence of the ideological disagreement between the Federalists and the Antifederalists as presented in the debate over ratification, and suggest that the debate is best seen as neither about democracy nor about liberalism, but about state formation.

The civic republican public philosophy is rooted in Aristotle and Machiavelli. It stresses the civic virtues deliberative self-government requires in the citizenry, and makes the formation of character–that is, the fostering of the capacities for active citizenship–a chief and direct aim of legislation and public policy. There are severe unexplored tensions among some of the virtues that Sandel’s narrative evokes, and he appeals to Jeffersonian republicanism while hiding the aristocratic cornerstone of authentic Jeffersonianism in embarrassment. If Sandel were to reconsider Aristotle attentively, he would be forced to enlarge his conception of virtue, and of what Aristotle–and the entire classical tradition through Jonathan Swift–means by “virtue.”

There is no question that the 4th century saw a revival of Latin literature. After the nadir of the 3rd century there was only one way to go. But in much of the modern literature it has been widely characterized as a pagan revival and associated with the aristocracy of late 4th-century Rome, reacting to the threat of Christianity. However, this chapter argues that this is perhaps the single most serious obstacle to a true understanding of this important development.

The “editing” of classical texts has long been identified as one of the principal ways the pagan aristocracy of Rome tried to maintain and promote the old order. At the end of certain works (or individual sections or books within those works) some manuscripts preserve subscriptions—notes stating that some person with impressive sounding titles has “emended,” “reviewed,” or “checked” the text at such and such a time and place. Some of these subscribers are familiar names, and it is clear that many were members of the elite of their day. This chapter discusses Greek subscriptions, subscriptions by owners and other private subscriptions, subscriptions in manuscripts copied for friends, and subscriptions in newly copied texts.

Romans conceived their state as a public domain (res publica), governed by responsible patriots, prepared to die for their country. Their unwritten constitution allocated most power to the senate of notables; citizen assemblies also took part. There were numerous checks and balances. Polybius thought that Rome successfully combined rule by one, the few, and the many. Conquest and empire led to tension between aristocratic and democratic principles. Cicero preached political uprightness, harmony between classes, and freedom of speech. He argued that the various forms of human association, culminating in the state, are all based on consent. He opposed putting expediency before morality. With Augustus, Rome became a de facto monarchy; some personal freedom for citizens under a rule of law survived. Unlike elsewhere, there was little monarchical theory before the adoption of Christianity. Stoicism provided a moral framework for some. The contrast with China, where empire was the culmination of age-old aspirations, was significant.

This chapter examines the historiographical debates inspired by the French Revolution, discussing how the impact of the Revisionist attack on the social (or Marxist) interpretation led to a richer, but ultimately more confused picture as historians pursued a wide variety of political, cultural, and intellectual approaches to the origins of 1789. It argues that current historiography has reached something of an impasse and that in order to understand the breakdown of the absolute monarch it is necessary to reconsider the central political preoccupations of the absolute monarchy, that is to say its military, diplomatic, colonial, and financial policies, and to examine how these interacted with broader social and cultural issues, such as the need to manage social elites, to cope with the expectations of public opinion, and to cope with the broader intellectual changes that were undermining deference for a monarch still officially justified as reigning by the grace of God.

Jacques Necker progressively advocated political values for the French monarchy that were broadly in line with those operative within a British constitutional nexus. He came to see the value of a bicameral constitutional settlement that would allow ‘aristocracy’ in one chamber to act as a counterweight to ‘democracy’ in another. However, he was slow to acknowledge the core difference between the tightly defined British nobility — synonymous with the peerage — and the tensions that existed within the formal, juridical unity of the French Second Estate. Necker's view of what a publicly responsible nobility might undertake within a state had its origins in his (and his wife, Suzanne's) many conversations with David, Seventh Viscount Stormont, British Ambassador to France, 1772–78, whom they saw as the embodiment of aristocratic state service. With the failure of the proposal for a two-chamber National Assembly in the autumn of 1789, Necker was forced to admit that the majority of his countrymen had turned against British models just as he had decided to embrace them wholeheartedly.

This chapter examines the development of the ‘culture of war’ in Europe, focusing on France, from the Old Regime through the First Empire. It argues that before the Revolution, French aristocratic elites saw warfare as an ordinary part of human existence — and indeed, if kept under proper control, a positive and desirable one. It then shows how this idea was challenged during the Enlightenment, by critics who saw warfare as extraordinary and aberrant, with some deeming it extraordinarily horrible, and others depicting it, at least potentially, as extraordinarily sublime and regenerative. The chapter discusses how these conflicting ideas helped to shape the actual practice and course of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, looking particularly at the question of why these wars proved so terribly difficult to control, restrain, and bring to an end.

This chapter discusses Bill Doyle's contribution to the study of the origins of the French Revolution. It shows how his early work delivered a powerful critique of the dominant Marxist interpretation, already under attack from revisionists led by Alfred Cobban. It examines the three editions of his book Origins of the French Revolution, with both continuities and changes identified. Particular importance is assigned to Doyle's ground-breaking work on the part played by venality in eroding the old regime monarchy. A second topic of major importance to which Doyle's researches have contributed a great deal is the role of the Parlements. This is placed in the context of Doyle's critique of the notion of an ‘aristocratic reaction’ in late-eighteenth century France. The chapter concludes with a discussion of his most recent work on aristocracy.

The plantation owners of Mauritius were French settlers who had established an aristocratic style for themselves during the eighteenth century using slaves from Africa. The Indian workers quickly came to constitute three‐quarters of the total population, but they respected the cultural norms the French had already established. Many were soon plantation owners themselves, and they created a parallel Indian aristocracy. There are fine stone temples for the goddesses Mīnākṣi, Draupadī, and Māriyamman in the South Indian style, and a beautiful North Indian‐style temple in Triolet. In the early twentieth century, the Arya Samaj became active and built a plainer style of temple. After the introduction of democratic government in 1968, the Indian political leadership was careful not to change the French‐led cultural pattern too drastically. The one notable change is the new public celebration of Śivarātri.

Within the ranks of the aristocracy many scholars have identified an inner core of literary pagans, the so-called “Circle of Symmachus,” actively nurturing the classics and sponsoring pagan writers in the hope of recalling waverers to the fold. This chapter argues that it is the chance congruence of two factors—one ancient and one modern—that has saddled Symmachus with this unlikely role: Macrobius's Saturnalia, where he appears as one of the three hosts to a fictitious literary gathering; and Otto Seeck's wonderful edition of Symmachus's Letters (1883), with its massive introduction identifying every correspondent and his family. As a consequence, Symmachus has always been seen as the central figure in late 4th-century Roman society.