A Radical Reformer in the Old Regime: the marquis d'Argenson

This talk will focus on the political thought of René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d’Argenson (1694-1757), a political writer and a statesman who advocated some of the most far-reaching political and social reforms of the eighteenth century. D’Argenson was an insider with substantial experience in government, serving as an intendant in the early 1720s and then minister of foreign affairs in the 1740s; a reader, writer, and active philosophe; and an increasingly disillusioned analyst of the day’s politics and of the monarchy itself. The linchpin of his reformist vision was a plan to democratize the monarchy through the empowerment of “popular and municipal magistrates.” The suite of reforms d’Argenson hoped to implement furthermore aimed to establish a more egalitarian order and alleviate poverty in the countryside by dismantling the legacy of feudalism, introducing more just taxation, and reviving France’s agrarian economy.

 

Andrew Jainchill is Associate Professor of History at Queen’s University. He is the author of Reimagining Politics after the Terror (Cornell University Press), the editor of D’Argenson, Considérations sur le gouvernement, a critical edition, with other political texts (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment), and the forthcoming study A Radical Reformer in the Old Regime: The Political Thought of the Marquis d’Argenson.