------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (April 2007)

John Shovlin, _The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, 
and the Origins of the French Revolution_. Ithaca, NY: Cornell 
University Press, 2006. xi + 265 pp. $50 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8014-4479-1.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Jonathan Liebowitz, Department of History. 
University of Massachusetts - Lowell.


In his well-written, jargon-free book, John Shovlin, assistant 
professor of history at New York University, subtly analyzes the 
concepts listed in his title. He shows how French views of virtue, 
luxury and patriotism helped produce the Revolution. His concern is 
with how writers from the 1740s to the early 1800s conceived of 
political economy, defined as "the organization of agriculture, 
trade, finance, and manufacturing" (p. 1). Unlike some students of 
the history of economics, he does not try to translate their ideas 
into current economic theory. Economic and political history enter 
from secondary sources as factors that precipitated interest in 
economics.

Shovlin tells his story though chapters that run chronologically from 
the 1740s to the outbreak of the Revolution and even beyond, though 
the final chapter on the revolutionary period seems only distantly 
related to what has come before. Each chapter suggests a debate with 
each side's position laid out in turn. Sometimes this organization 
seems mechanical, but it does give a flavor of the clash of ideas. 
The sources of the book are the writings of the many protagonists in 
the debate. Shovlin also includes a few well-chosen images to 
illustrate his themes -- for example, a print of the dauphin (future 
Louis XVI) plowing (p. 91) to demonstrate how concern for agriculture 
swept the nation in the 1760s. Happily the illustrations are placed 
within the chapters they serve. Cornell University Press is also to 
be commended for its careful editing and placing footnotes at the 
bottom of the page.

In the 1740s, Shovlin maintains, French political economists were 
troubled by luxury, whose pursuit was undermining virtue, as the 
pursuers turned away from the public interest. Often provincial or 
"middling" elites, the critics resented the wealthy court nobility 
and financiers. A major role of the latter was collecting taxes and 
financing government debt, which since John Law were often seen as 
dubious speculations. Louis XV's mistress Mme Pompadour provided an 
ideal target because luxury was regarded as a feminine vice and she 
was connected through her family to the financial world.

But not all political economists disdained luxury. For some, 
following Louis XIV's minister Colbert, production of luxury goods 
could increase trade and thus promote France's international power. 
They distinguished between the harmful luxury of the aristocrats and 
financiers and that which benefited modest consumers. If pursuit of 
this luxury was open to all, merit would be rewarded.

The loss of the Seven Years' War lent new importance to patriotism. 
French political economists would revive their nation through the 
restoration of virtue, which had been sapped by luxury. Many looked 
to agriculture for the response to these problems, thus the 
"agromania" (p. 51) that swept France in the 1750s and '60s. They 
proposed to improve farming by learning from the English model and 
adopting free trade. The physiocrats agreed with the call for free 
trade in grain and also favored a shift to commercial farms. While 
their ideas found favor with the government in the late 1760s, that 
support did not last. They alienated many with their championing of 
commercial agriculture, which made them seem like defenders of the 
rich.

The place of nobles continued to be contentious. Some thought they 
should become merchants and thereby strengthen their country, but 
others believed that entering commerce would destroy their sense of 
honor. But what was honor -- the badge of the hereditary noble or a 
reward for useful activities? Many patriots would use honor, in the 
form of prizes from agricultural societies, to raise the status of 
farming.

According to Shovlin, the 1770s were not favorable for the 
agricultural improvers. Blame for the moral corruption associated 
with luxury was tied to political and social institutions and was 
increasingly anti-aristocratic. Nobles became associated with wealth 
and ostentatious luxury, instead of the honor that had marked them 
before. Merchants, regarded more favorably, had the qualities that 
earlier observers associated with the nobility. The quarrel between 
luxury and agriculture had a place in the conflict between Turgot and 
Necker over the kingdom's finances. The former favored fundamental 
reforms including the strengthening of agriculture, while Necker 
proposed solving the financial crisis by manipulating credit and 
borrowing. Necker's attempts to lessen the importance of the 
financiers, however, turned them against him and he was forced from 
office in 1781.

With the failure of efforts to reform government finances in the 
1770s and 1780s, Shovlin reaches the climax of his argument. Critics 
now attacked the nobility in general, no longer distinguishing 
between the virtuous provincials and the corrupt court aristocracy. 
The hereditary basis of their existence, which earlier was considered 
a source of honor, now seemed a defect: If honor was not open to 
achievement, incentives for virtue would be lacking. With this 
argument about the origins of anti-aristocratic sentiment Shovlin 
adds a valuable building block to the discussion of the causes of the 
Revolution. Assuming that readers know their revolutionary history, 
he does not relate it, but implies that the attacks on the nobility 
that formed so much of the early Revolution proceeded from this 
sentiment.

In his concluding chapter, Shovlin shows how the ideas developed 
earlier persisted during the Revolution. Though luxury was no longer 
an issue, virtue was still important. Revolutionaries thought to 
preserve it by basing their currency (the assignat) on land, in a 
vain effort to avoid speculation. By the end of the 1790s the 
moderate revolutionaries returned to creating agricultural societies 
and, in the spirit of their patriot forebears, hoped to solidify the 
Republic by establishing its foundations in agriculture, commerce, 
and manufacturing. This economic activity would yield a form of 
passive citizenship for those who were again excluded from politics.

The contribution of _The Political Economy of Virtue_ is to show how 
economic circumstances affect ideas and how ideas themselves shape 
history. Though not a book that economic historians would turn to 
unprompted, Shovlin's elegant volume demonstrates that history as 
practiced by today's historians cannot be ignored if our goal is full 
understanding of complex events.


Jonathan Liebowitz is Professor of History at the University of 
Massachusetts - Lowell. His most recent work has been papers on 
French farmers and the late nineteenth century crisis presented at 
the Economic History Association meetings in 1998 and to a seminar at 
the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 2004.

Copyright (c) 2007 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be 
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to 
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the 
EH.Net Administrator ([log in to unmask]; Telephone: 513-529-2229). 
Published by EH.Net (April 2007). All EH.Net reviews are archived at 
http://www.eh.net/BookReview.


-------------- FOOTER TO EH.NET BOOK REVIEW  --------------
EH.Net-Review mailing list
[log in to unmask]
http://eh.net/mailman/listinfo/eh.net-review