Confiscating the Common Good: Small Towns and Religious Politics in the French Revolution

Comprising five microhistories, this book proposes that the French Revolution's religious politics in small towns weakened democratic society to such an extent that it precluded political democracy. It details two revolutionary dynamics that damaged the civic life of small towns: social polarisation and the loss of local institutions that had been a source of social capital as well as a common good. Detailed narratives about Pont-?Mousson, Gournay-en-Bray, Vienne, Haguenau, and Is-sur-Tille also reveal that contrary to the view now upheld by most scholars, small-town religious politics extended far beyond the pivotal Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791. Other developments--the nationalisation of Church property, the dissolution of religious orders, and the elimination of bishoprics, chapters, parishes, and collegial churches--also adversely affected the wellbeing of these small urban communities not only in the Revolution but also in the two centuries that followed.