Roland Mousnier

Roland Émile Mousnier (born September 7, 1907 in Paris ; † February 8, 1993 there ) was a French historian. He was the founder of a school of early modern social historians at the Sorbonne (University of Paris IV).

life and work

Mousnier studied at the Sorbonne and the École pratique des hautes études (Agrégation 1931) and was then from 1932 high school teacher in Rouen at the Lycée Corneille (Rouen) Lycée Corneille and later in Paris . In 1934 he married Jeanne Lecacheur. During World War II he was in the Resistance. In 1947 he became a professor at the University of Strasbourg and in 1955 at the Sorbonne . Because he was interested in social history, he went to study in the United States, where he trained in sociology and anthropology. However, he was neither close to the Annales School nor Marxists, but was more of a conservative Catholic historian who chose a prosopographical approach. He founded a school of social history in Paris at the Sorbonne, which stood in opposition to the Annales school at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. In 1977 he retired.

In 1958 his violent dispute with the Soviet Marxist historian Boris Fedorowitsch Porschnew (1905-1972), author of Les soulèvements populaires en France de 1623 à 1648 (Russian 1948, French translation 1962), where he was in Leningrad parts of Pierre's estate, became known Séguier used. Mousnier rejected his view of peasant revolts of the 17th century (or more precisely tax revolts) in France as class struggles. On closer inspection, they would not have happened spontaneously, but would have been organized by members of the nobility who opposed the administration of Mazarin and Richelieu, for example. According to Mousnier, class consciousness only arose in the 18th century with the development of capitalism. In contrast, according to Mousnier, society from the 15th to the 18th century was shaped by vertical orders of class consciousness (theory of the Société d'ordres ) and dominated by networks of relationships and systems of patronage, which he examined in his historical work. He focused on the elites, but also wrote a book on peasant revolts in the 17th century (Fureurs paysannes 1968). For example, he examined the political climate in France at the time of the assassination of Henry IV. In his book Les Hiérarchies sociales from 1969, he made comparative studies of societies in Germany, Russia, France, China and Tibet and criticized communism and technocratic systems. Other books dealt with institutional history in French absolutism and he wrote several large comprehensive accounts of historical epochs. His first work in 1945 was on the purchase of offices in France in the early modern period, the subject of his dissertation.

In 1964 he published the private notes of Chancellor Séguier. In 1992 he wrote a biography of Cardinal Richelieu .

Mousnier was considered an excellent teacher and was known for the quality of his lectures, but saw the primacy in research and his research seminar. He cultivated close ties with students and employees, albeit with an authoritarian leadership style. He reacted with disgust to the 1968 student revolts.

The Center Roland Mousnier of CNRS at the Sorbonne for the History of Early Modern is named after him. It emerged from his Center de recherches sur la civilization de l'Europe modern , which he founded in 1958 with Victor-Lucien Tapié and Alphonse Dupront and which he directed until 1977.

He was an opponent of the communists and also had little sympathy for social Catholicism. During the Algerian War in the late 1950s, he was a strong advocate of cracking down on the insurgents.

In 1977 he became a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques and in 1971 a corresponding member of the British Academy .

Fonts

• La vénalité the offices sous Henri IV and Louis XIII , Rouen: Maugard 1945, second edition 1971
• Les règlements du Conseil du Roi sous Louis XIII , Paris 1949.
• Le XVIIIe siècle: révolution intellectuelle, technique et politique, 1715-1815 1953
• with Ernest Labrousse , Marc Bouloiseau Le XVIIIe siècle: l'époque des "Lumières" (1715–1815) , PUF 1963
• Les XVIe et XVIIe siècles: la grande mutation intellectuelle de l'humanité: l'avènement de la science moderne et l'expansion de l'Europe , 1953, 1993
• Les XVIe et XVIIe siècles: les progrès de la civilization européenne et le déclin de l'orient (1492–1715) , 1954.
• Progrès scientifique et technique au XVIIIe siècle , 1958.
• Paris au XVIIe siècle , 1962
• L'assassinat d'Henri IV: 14 may 1610 , Gallimard 1964.
  • German translation: A regicide in France , Propylaea 1970
• Lettres et mémoires adressées au chancelier Séguier (1633–1649) , 1964.
• with J.-P. Labatut, Y. Durandà Problèmes de stratification sociales: deux cahiers de la noblesse pour les États géneraux de 1649-1651 , 1965.
• Les XVIe et XVIIe siècles, la grande mutation intellectuelle de l'humanité, l'avènement de la science moderne et l'expansion de l'Europe , 1965
• La participation des gouvernés à l'activité des gouvernants dans la France du XVIIe et du XVIIIe siècles , 1966.
• État et société sous François Ier et pendant le gouvernement personnel de Louis XVI , 1966
• Fureurs paysannes: les paysans dans les révoltes du XVIIe siècle (France, Russie, Chine) , 1968
• Les hiérarchies sociales de 1450 à nos jours , 1969
• "French Institutions and Society, 1610-1661", in: JP Cooper (Ed.) The New Cambridge Modern History , Volume 4: The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Year's War , 1970
• La plume, la faucille et le marteau: institutions et société en France du Moyen age à la Révolution , 1970.
• Les institutions de la France sous la monarchie absolue, 1598-1789 , 2 volumes, 1974, 1980.
• La famille, l'enfant et l'éducation en France et en Grande-Bretagne du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle , 1975.
• Recherches sur la stratification sociale à Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles , 1976.
• Paris, capitale au temps de Richelieu et de Mazarin , 1978.
• La monarchie absolue en Europe: du Ve siècle à nos jours , 1982.
• "Les fidélités et les clientèles en France aux XVIe, XVIIe, et XVIIIe siècles", in: Histoire sociale , Volume 15, 1982, pp. 35-46
• Monarchies et Royautés , 1989
• L'homme rouge, ou la vie du cardinal de Richelieu , 1582-1642, 1992.

Web links

• Literature by and about Roland Mousnier in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Obituary in The Independent (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography Encyclopedia Universalis
2. ^ Obituary in The Independent by Douglas Johnson, February 13, 1993
3. ^ Center Roland Mousnier
4. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 9, 2020 .