Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. The most adequate surveys of this field of study and its problems are Chalmers
Johnson, Revolutionary Change (Boston, 1966), Revolution and the Social System
(Stanford, 1964), Lawrence Stone, "Theories of Revolution," World Politics 18 (1966),
159-176, and Isaac Kramnick, "Reflections on Revolution: Definition and Explanation
in Recent Scholarship,"History and Theory 11 (1972), 26-63.
2. Representative works include: Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution (New
York, 1938), Lyford Edwards, The Natural History of Revolution (New York, 1965),
Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, Vol. III (New York 1937-41), Henri
See, Evolution et revolutions (Paris, 1929), and Rex D. Hopper, 'The Revolutionary
Process,"Social Forces 28 (1950), 270-279.
3. Internal War: Problems and Approaches, ed. Harry Eckstein (Princeton, 1964),
164 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
wish unqualified success to all who seek to elucidate the human condition, we
are hardly sanguine about the possibilities of discovering interesting, important,
and reliable uniformities even over the class of all "revolutions," let alone of
"internal wars." Perhaps a sub-category, such as "modernizing revolutions,"
has some chance of defining a category for which reliable and theoretically
significant generalizations can be discovered, but our real interest here is not
in attacking the strategies of others, but in clarifying our own. While the
comparative study of revolutions in an effort to generalize about them has
dominated the "sociology of revolution," and we too are sociologists studying
revolutions, we are not engaged in that quest (however worthwhile), and we
do not evaluate the relevance of hypotheses, in our own work on the French
Revolution, on the basis of their applicability to, say, the Russian, American,
English, or Mexican revolutions.
Still other scholars have been intrigued by the extraordinary men who come
to the fore as leaders, and the ordinary men who participate as followers
either in revolutionary movements or in riots or other transient events. They
have, consequently, studied the processes of recruitment into various political
groups, associations, and crowds, and their social composition.4 Others are
interested in the political in-fighting that emerges when a society's usual
restraints on the means employed in political conflicts do not apply. These last
produce studies of military coups, foreign involvement, and party strategy
with a view to determining which actor (or actors) wins in a revolutionary
situation. Such studies may be of importance in themselves, and some are
even designed, as are ours, to throw light on the social forces operative in
revolutionary situations. But their research strategies, if not their objectives,
are sharply different from the one which we are suggesting.
and "On the Etiology of Internal Wars," History and Theory 4 (1965), 133-163. Ray-
mond Tanter, "Dimensions of Conflict Behavior within and between Nations, 1958-
1960," Journal of Conflict Resolution 10 (1966), 41-64, and "Dimensions of Conflict
Behavior within Nations, 1955-1960: Turmoil and Internal War" in Papers, Peace
Research Society, Vol. III (1965), 159-183. R. J. Rummel, "Dimensions of Conflict
Behavior within and between Nations," General Systems Yearbook, Vol. VIII (1963),
1-50, and "Dimensions of Conflict Behavior within Nations, 1946-1959," Journal of
Conflict Resolution 10 (1966), 65-73. Gratitude is expressed to John Max, for stimulat-
ing ideas on the theory of revolution, and a careful critical reading of this paper.
4. While each of the following works goes considerably beyond studies of recruit-
ment, the analysis of the social composition of crowds and groups is nevertheless
central to their method. George Rude, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford,
1959); Albert Soboul, Les Sans-Culottesparisiens en l'an II (Paris, n.d.); Crane Brinton,
The Jacobins: An Essay in the New History (New York, 1930). Of course, many others
could be cited.
5. Here we would include the vast literature on revolutionary strategy and tactics,
such as the well-known work of Lenin and Che Guevera, as well as such scholarly
studies as Robert R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the
French Revolution (Princeton, 1941) and large parts of the work of Soboul, cited above.
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 165
Our efforts are not directly concerned with what happens once a revolution
has begun, but rather in the definition of the features of a "revolutionary situa-
tion." At least since the work of Marx and Tocqueville, this has been a central
focus for many of the efforts to develop "theories of revolution." Although
there are more or less close ties among these various subject matters, this quest
should not be confused with the search for a natural history of revolutionary
processes, studies of the recruitment of revolutionary participants, or the
strategy and tactics of revolutionary action. While the events of August 4,
August 10, or the 9th of Thermidor are of the greatest significance for diag-
nosing the quality of the Revolution, we - like Tocqueville - in our quest
for its sources in the social structure must invest more of our time and effort
in the analysis of the social structure of the Old Regime.
In contrast to the perspectives described above, the basic subject matter of
our studies is not revolution, but society - a case study of a trajectory in the
life of a particular society. Because the issue of statistics vs. case studies is a
perennial methodological debate in sociology (and because historians are
beginning to be infected by the disease), we feel it necessary to indicate some
methodological grounds for an interest in a single case.
The French Revolution of 1789 was a unique event; but understanding it,
we contend, is of importance if one assumes that there are principles of the
organization, the integration, and the operation of societies which may manifest
themselves more clearly in some historical circumstances than in others. In
revolutions, we suggest, one finds writ large the processes of social change,
which are so much more difficult to discern in slow and gradual historical
drifts. Revolution is of interest also because we expect to find the conditions
of stability, that is, of the integration and operation of social structures, more
apparent in extremis. It is a point too often neglected that one cannot under-
stand stability without understanding change. One can no more study the
determinants of persistence without studying its opposite than test hypotheses
about heat without examining both cold and hot objects.6 Hence, insofar as
"functional" sociology is concerned with the study of persistence and integra-
tion, the study of revolutions must be at the center of its attention; it is not
an odd, if interesting, sideshow.
Thus through the intensive examination of a single case one hopes to ob-
serve manifestations of the operation of general processes. There is, of course,
Although hardly the only data gathered, the most important single resource
we have generated is a content analysis of the celebrated cahiers de doliences
of 1789. These remarkable documents, as is well known, were produced in
the course of the convocation of the Estates General. The election of 1789
allowed a very wide suffrage and saw the representation, to one degree or
another, of virtually the entire kingdom and most of the significant social
groupings of the old regime. Properly to appreciate the potentialities of these
documents, one must know something about the central features of the
election.9
conditions under which it does not occur. What can be tested are theories about those
aspects of incest that do vary, such as which relatives are forbidden to marry. See, e.g.,
G. P. Murdock, Social Strictcure(New York, 1949), Chapter 10.
9. For a more detailed general description than given below see Beatrice F. Hyslop,
A Guide to the General Cahiers of 1789 (New York, 1933). This seems a good place
to express our gratitude for the very generous assistance of Hyslop during the period
when this project was being organized.
168 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
The electoral district used for the previous Estates General, in 1614, had
been the bailliage, a judicial unit defining the territorial jurisdiction of a lower-
level royal court. It was adopted, with modifications here and there, as the
basis of the elections of 1789. The Estates General was a gathering of dele-
gates from the three estates of the realm. As had been done in the past, each
estate - clergy, nobility, and Third Estate (a residual category which included
most of the population) - followed its own electoral procedure, so organized
as to maximize the possibility of everyone's taking part in some kind of face-
to-face assembly where his voice might be heard. While the convocation
varied a great deal from region to region, there was a basic regulation and a
modal procedure which we shall describe here. In the case of the numerous
Third Estate, this obviously required a sequence of indirect elections. Each
bailliage contained towns and rural parishes. Within each of the rural parishes
a meeting of all the eligible members of the Third Estate (males at least
twenty-five years of age) was held, to elect delegates to a bailliage assembly.
Decisions were made by voice vote in public assembly. In the towns there was
a similar meeting of each guild or corporation, as well as a meeting of those
not organized into corporate bodies. These meetings elected deputies to a
town meeting, which in turn elected representatives to the bailliage assembly,
where they met with the rural delegates. Sometimes this bailliage assembly
elected delegates to the Estates General at Versailles. In other cases there
might be still another step in which delegates from several bailliages met
together to choose representatives. Now every one of these assemblies -
parish, guild, town, bailliage, or group of several bailliages - was a delibera-
tive as well as an electoral body. That is, it not only picked representatives,
but also drew up a cahier de doleances, a record of grievances, suggestions,
complaints, and proposals. The nobility and the clergy followed their own
procedures, which were not as complex as those of the Third Estate (because
the two privileged orders were far less numerous) but which also involved the
drafting of cahiers in addition to electing deputies.
The range of institutions and practices of eighteenth-century France treated
in the cahiers is vast. Education, the organization of the government, civil and
criminal law, the seignorial regime, the military, agriculture, and the relations
of the French Church with Rome - these are just some of the aspects of
French society discussed in these documents. Concerning these institutions and
practices one finds an enormous variety of demands. That there is such a large
number of documents,10that they cover virtually all of France, geographically
The standard source authoritatively describing the incredible complexity of the con-
vocation regulations, with the relevant documentation, is Armand Brette, Receuil de
documents relatifs 2 la convocation des etats generaux de 1789 (Four vols. and Atlas,
Paris, 1894-1915).
10. Opinions differ as to the total number of cahiers produced. Edme Champion in
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 169
and socially, is remarkable enough. What is more remarkable still about the
cahiers, and gives them their special interest to students of social change, is
that the French Revolution is the only major revolution at the beginning of
which the entire nation, in effect, gathered in public assemblies and recorded
its grievances, aspirations, and demands for change. Since nothing would
appear as patently significant in the study of a revolution as the range, in-
tensity, and distribution of grievances among groups in the population, the
cahiers de doleances are absolutely unique in importance as a documentary
source.
Moreover, the cahiers have particular virtues (if some widely-discussed
vices) as a tool for the study of public opinion. Many historians have criticized
them for a wide variety of alleged shortcomings as public opinion data. For
example, certain individuals are supposed to have been too influential, and
others (like the Duke of Orleans) deliberately circulated "model cahiers"
which were too closely imitated by some of the actual cahiers. Moreover, the
collective nature of the assemblies makes it difficult to know, it has too often
been argued, just whose opinions are expressed in these documents. We feel
that much of this criticism is misplaced.-' The modem opinion poll gives one a
study of the opinions held by a sample of unrelated individuals. The relation
of this collation of individual opinions to any form of political action is
La France d'apres les cahiers de 1789 (Paris, 1897), 21, suggests that there were
more than fifty thousand. Beatrice Hyslop, a more recent authority, guesses "more than
twenty-five thousand," A Guide to the General Cahiers, ix-x. Albert Soboul offers sixty
thousand in Precis d'histoire de la revolution franfaise (Paris, 1962), 103-104. The
estimate of the total number of cahiers actually written is an extremely hazardous task.
In the first place, there were roughly forty thousand rural communes; but in many in-
stances the "parish"in the convocation sense encompassed a number of such districts.
The number of preliminary cahiers of clergy, while undoubtedly enormous, is totally
unknown, for these documents have rarely been studied, reprinted, or even catalogued.
The other cahiers are too few in comparison with these to drastically affect the total.
We are engaged in further studies of the number of parishes in each bailliage which
did probably meet and draw up a document.
11. Let us consider, for example, the charge that the cahiers reveal little about the
views of assemblies that drafted them because they contain material copied from other
cahiers, or from propaganda designed specifically to influence them. But a comparison
of the bona fide cahiers with such electoral propagandamaterials reveals that choice was
exercised in selecting among available models; that frequently only a few articles were
copied; that models were rarely if ever copied in toto; that even when totally copied,
new demands were usually added. (See, for example, the revealing analysis by Paul
Bois, Cahiers de doleances du tiers etat de la senechaussee de Chateau-du-Loirpour les
Etats generaux de 1789 [Gap, 1960], ChapterIV.) In short, everything suggests deliberate
selection. And why not select a more articulate, expressive, and forceful statement of
one's own genuinely held demands? Numerous other charges and objections have been
raised against the cahiers, discussion of which must be reserved for another place.
More detail may be found in John Markoff, "Who Wants Bureaucracy?French Public
Opinion in 1789" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins, 1972) and Sasha
Weitman, "Bureaucracy,Democracy, and the French Revolution" (unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, Washington University, Saint Louis, 1968).
170 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
12. There are countless minor and countable major variations from the standard
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 171
and their complaints range from the intricate nuances of the system of indirect
taxation all the way to frustration produced by the loud church bells in the
next parish. They represent a set of collective representations that sociology
ought not ignore. Moreover, they have been, surprisingly, largely unexploited.
To be sure, historians have invested a great amount of energy in publishing
these fascinating materials, in reading them for insights into the Old Regime,
in quoting them as illustrative material, and in closely analyzing them in
regional and local studies. But the questions that appear most exciting to us
have hardly been asked before. How did the complaints of the French people
in 1789 vary across the map of France? What aspects of the social, economic,
and political structure of eighteenth-century France are associated with dif-
ferent sorts of demands? With what kinds of events during the revolution are
different kinds of demands correlated? An appropriate research technique for
such questions is, first, to subject the cahiers to content analysis, and then to
perform multivariate statistical analyses. Only such methods, fully utilizing
available electronic data-processing technology, can allow for the detailed
examination of such a huge mass of material for the entire nation. While a
number of imaginative and skillful efforts have recently been published by
others, the full potential of these data for social science has hardly been
approached.13
procedure, which pose interesting problems of comparability and headaches for the man
who designs a sample. The parish of Garrebourg in the bailliage of Sarrebourg et
Phalsbourg, for example, drew up two distinct cahiers. When we find some such
deviation from the norm in a parish, the explanation is usually unknown to us, whereas
the variant proceduresused at higher levels in the electoral process may have researched
histories. For example, Third Estate of the city of Metz petitioned for direct
representation at the Estates General, being unsatisfied, as were a number of other
cities, with representation through the bailliage to which it had been assigned. The
petition was granted;but as it was now on the verge of the opening of the Estates, the
city was convoked by neighborhoods, rather than by corporations, to save time. A town
cahier to be sent to Versailles was then drawn up. Some corporations, however, pro-
tested. They claimed they had been insufficientlyrepresented by this aberrant procedure.
The Estates General considered the issue and on July 11, 1789 declared the election
null and void and ordered new elections. These new elections, which did not take place
until the fall, far later than the overwhelming majority of elections, produced a second
cashier. (See the article by Lesprand, "Election du depute direct et cahier du tiers
etat de la ville de Metz en 1789," Anniuaire de la societet d'histoire et d'archeologie
lorraine [1903].) There is no end to such oddities.
13. A number of recent studies by Paul Bois, Charles Tilly, and Philip Dawson
demonstrate theoretically meaningful covariation of cahier contents and social indicators
in a local or professionally circumscribedcontext. Complementing the studies described
here, national-level content analyses are under way at the University of North Carolina,
by George V. Taylor, and at the Centre de Recherches Historiques of the Sixth Section
of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, under the direction of Frangois Furet.
Plans have been made to incorporate, ultimately, the last-mentioned work (which is
proceeding by methods quite consistent with our own) and our codes into a single data
file. We are grateful to Tilly, Dawson, Taylor, and Furet for their many forms of
assistance in this work.
172 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
14. Computer programs have been developed to provide the analyst with complete
Boolean freedom, in either retrieving grievances or constructing scale scores.
174 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
15. The measurement of the inter-coder reliability presents severe problems with this
kind of code, and we have found the standard techniques to be inapplicable, but we
have evidence that agreement between coders is high. Moreover, analyses already carried
out have yielded meaningful results. See Gilbert Shapiro and Philip Dawson, "Social
Mobility and Political Radicalism: The Case of the French Revolution," Dimensions of
Quantitative Research in History, ed. Robert Fogel (Princeton, 1972), and Markoff,
"Who Wants Bureaucracy?"
There are a number of complexities in these documents that prevent the method just
described from yielding anything approaching complete success. Especially troublesome
is the possibility that grievances may be coupled semantically. In such a demand as,
"Either expel the Jews from the Kingdom, or treat them just like other Frenchmen,"
the interdependenceof the two parts of this statement needs to be taken into account.
We cannot explore fully such issues here. And it must be other scholars, and not
ourselves, who pass final judgment on our success or failure, based on the substantive
studies which we are now beginning to complete and a far more detailed statement of
our content analytic techniques and their associated problems which is currently being
prepared.
176 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
V. EXTERNAL DATA
We have come to call "external" all data other than content codes character-
izing the cahiers themselves. These data bear either upon regional variations
16. A small number of general cahiers were not coded due to special circumstances.
For example, the cahier of the Third Estate of Nemours is so long as to be prohibitively
costly to code. The cahier of Dauphine was drawn up by the provincial Estates of
Dauphine, a procedure differing greatly from that by which the vast majority of
documents were produced. For details see Markoff, "Who Wants Bureaucracy?",
Appendix.
17. To construct the sample, we began with all those bailliages covered in the official
series, published under the auspices of the French Ministry of Education by the Com-
misson de Recherches et Publication des Documents Inedits sur l'Histoire Economique
de la Revolution Frangaise. To these we added the volumes put out by a number of
departmental committees which followed reasonably similar criteria of editing, and are
thus comparable. From this list of bailliages, we excluded all those having fewer than
ten published parish cahiers, leaving a total of 47 bailliages in our sample. We are grate-
ful to Marc Bouloiseau for his advice and aid in collecting information essential to
sampling decisions.
18. This is not quite the same as saying that 83% of electoral districts are repre-
sented. The reader will appreciate that the complexities of the electoral procedure do
not permit a single figure to represent "proportion of assemblies whose documents are
included in our sample." That the three orders had the option of drawing up cahiers
in common, that special rules created some circumscriptions for the Third Estate that
did not exist for the Nobility (e.g., the town of Valenciennes), that an order that
participated in the drafting of a joint document might also produce one on its own (as
in Amont-a-Vesoul) - all these are considerations which make it futile to attempt to
summarize this problem with a single number. It is clear, nevertheless, that the degree
of representationin our sample is high, however reckoned.
178 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
One difficult problem in the use of this material could generally be avoided
in studies of post-revolutionary societies, but is virtually impossible to avoid
here. Unfortunately, almost none of our data are broken down regionally
by bailliages, as are the cahiers. Most available data series are presented for
other administrative divisions of France: generalites, dioceses, cities, departe-
ments, provinces22 and the jurisdictions of various kinds of mixed admin-
istrative-judicial bodies (e.g., the greniers a sel), or subdivisions of any of
the above. The boundaries of these units generally do not coincide with each
other, and even less with those of the bailliage. Nor are these boundaries
completely stable. The division of France into generalites underwent several
changes in the course of the eighteenth century. The map of departments
similarly underwent changes: thus the department of Rhone-et-Loire was
divided in two to weaken the influence of its rebellious principal city, Lyon,
while 1808 marked a change in the boundaries of several other departments.
Some technique for assigning to one type of geographical unit approximate
scores based on data series which we have recorded for another type of unit is
clearly required if we are to be able to correlate our different data series. For
example, if we wish to study the relationship between some indicator of rev-
olutionary behavior, such as the incidence of the Terror, and cahier contents,
such as noble conservatism, we face the difficulty that the former are pre-
sented to us by department, while the latter are available only by bailliage.
We require a procedure which will transform either the departmental data
to the bailliage level, or the bailliage data to the department level.
We have encountered two different, cross-cutting complications in our
search for a solution to this difficulty. First, data in the form of proportions
must be handled quite differently from absolute figures. Second, some vari-
ables seem appropriately transformed on the basis of the proportion of
population shared between two ecological units, while others seem more
smaller units with identical names abound. Lists of data for generalitis may identify
themselves as data for provinces. Borders changed. Some authors give cumulative figures
for the province of Normandie rather than separate figures for the three generalizes
of which it was composed (Caen, Alengon, Rouen). In all such cases we have developed
either special procedures for coding data, or for the later computer-processingof data
which reduce the various lists of different sources to a reasonable common ground.
22. The province is an elusive area within which local customary law applied. In
spite of the historians' consensus that there were no fixed, or even readily approximable
boundaries to the provinces, one finds quantitative statistics from the Old Regime pre-
sented in this way. There is, for example, a little known source of regional variations
in the number of nobles and it is by province (Bonvallet-Desbrosses, Richesses et
ressources de la France: Pour server de suite aux m6yens de simplifier la perception
et la comptabilite des deniers royaux [Lille, 1789]). This is somewhat analogous to
presenting data on the number of women in "New England" or on the "west coast."
It is far from obvious to the reader just which states are included in the categories.
First priorities go to approximating, as best we can, the map intended by the author.
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 181
appropriately transformed on the basis of the shared area. Thus we have
developed four different transformation procedures.
In order to perform appropriate transformations, it was necessary to se-
lect the most accurate and reliable maps depicting the borders of eighteenth-
century regional units.23 With map transparencies and a ruled grid, we
measured the total area of each geographic unit and of its areas of overlap
with others. Cities were attributed to larger units by consulting a variety of
geographical dictionaries, maps, and other sources. This information is used
by a set of computer subroutines that may be applied to transform any data
series to a different kind of area unit. We have also tested these procedures,
by studying data which we have recorded independently for different units.
The results of these tests were highly encouraging.24
All this material taken together -the content analysis of the cahiers, the
computer programs for manipulating the cahiers data and constructing scales,
the coding manual, the coded external data series on Old Regime social struc-
ture and revolutionary behavior, the proportions used to assign approximate
scores to compare data series gathered by different ecological units, the com-
puter programs enabling one to do all this with relative facility-will con-
stitute a resource for the study of social upheaval, for the study of public
opinion, and for the study of French history that will be made available to
other scholars for their own purposes. As a data archive, and a body of
programs to manipulate that data, this project will, we hope, make a con-
tribution to research, beyond our own explorations of this material. The
preparation of this archive, while not yet complete, is far enough advanced
for us to announce its availability.25 In fact, enough material has been as-
23. For department, bailliage, and generalite lines, we found the maps in Brette
(based upon Cassini) the best available.
24. For example, from department population statistics, approximate population
scores for generalitys were estimated. These were then compared with independent
figures deriving from sources reporting generalite data directly. The approximation
and the "real" data show correlations up to .97. Further information on this test will
be found in Markoff, "Who Wants Bureaucracy?"
25. Tapes, containing the coded cahiers data, the external data series, the programs
required to obtain information (retrieve, score, transform into other ecological units,
etc.) will ultimately be deposited at the Inter-university Consortium for Political
Science Research at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, the
Social Science Information Center of the University of Pittsburgh, and the Centre de
Recherches Historiques in Paris. Ultimately, we hope to join our files with studies of
political upheaval in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France directed by Charles
Tilly, and with the codification of the Statistique generate de France, currently con-
ducted by I.C.P.R. in collaboration with the Centre de Recherches Historiques, to pro-
vide an instrument for the study of social history and political upheaval over two
centuries. The conditions of access and procedures for use of the material will be an-
nounced by these depositories in the light of their respective administrative policies.
182 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
sembled so that some studies have been completed, and we are currently
working on others.
The first set of findings emerge from our efforts to decide upon a "sam-
pling frame" for our study of the parish cahiers: that is to say, a collection
of documents from which we would draw the sample to be coded. While
the study was launched for this particular technical purpose, we feel that
the findings bear interestingly on general historiographic issues as well.
Three populations of parish documents have been evaluated: the collection
of extant and catalogued manuscripts, the collection of published documents,
and the collection of those published in the official series.27
Since national data cannot be found characterizing the parishes of France,
and most publications reflect the convocation procedure in publishing together
the parish cahiers of a particular bailliage, we were almost compelled to
form a sample "clustered" by bailliage. In other words, we have attempted
to characterize each bailliage with regard to the frequency of demands to be
found in the cahiers of the parishes represented at its assembly.
After discovering (or estimating) the total number of parishes authorized
to meet in each bailliage assembly of the Third Estate, we were able to com-
26. The interpen.etrationof our various efforts in the establishment of the archive
of cahiers-codes and external data makes it impossible to attribute any part of this
work to any one of us. But, while we have drawn upon the others' advice and informa-
tion for our individual efforts at data analysis, the substance of the findings reported
must remain the responsibility of the authors individually, in the works cited in foot-
notes 11 and 15 and in articles concerning the sampling procedure and its historio-
graphical lessons and regional variations in eighteenth-century populations which we
hope to publish shortly.
27. Since the nineteenth century, the Commission de l'Histoire Economique et
Sociale de la Revolution Franraise has published dozens of volumes of cahiers in the
series, Collection de documents inedits sur l'historie economique et sociale de la Re-
volution fra7icaise. Because this is at least one mouthful, we have opted to follow
Beatrice Hyslop in referring to this series simply as the "D.I." series. The rules of the
Commission require editors to publish all unpublished documents of a given bailliage,
to publish the text completely, and not summaries or excerpts, and to provide necessary
background information on the convocation procedure, local socioeconomic conditions,
and political events.
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 183
pute the proportion, in each bailliage, of parishes represented in (1) the col-
lection of surviving manuscript documents; (2) the collection of published
documents; and (3) those in the official ("D.I.") series. These proportions,
characterizing the bailliages, could then be correlated with other data derived
from the general cashiersor from external sources to evaluate the extent to
which the rate of survival (or of publication) of cahiers is related to the ex-
pressed sentiments of the higher assemblies or the social character of the
districts.
We have already mentioned one finding, regarding the representative char-
acter of the surviving documents. To expand briefly upon this theme, we
have found that, generally speaking, a preliminary analysis shows only rather
small correlations between these proportions and our indices of social struc-
ture, revolutionary behavior, and of content of the general cahiers.28 Appar-
ently, the accidents of history have operated more or less at random and
archivists and editors have not generally permitted similar commitments to
affect the selective retention or selective publication of parish cahiers. Fur-
thermore, the official (D.J.) series shows no greater deviation from national
norms than the other two populations. Its greater conveniences as a sampling
frame-standard criteria of inclusion, modern orthography, integral repro-
duction of documents, extensive background information, elaborate analytical
indexes, and availability -make this an occasion for celebration.
Some of these small correlations however, are of great interest. Among
other findings, we discovered that the bailliages most highly represented in
the three document collections were more highly concerned with participa-
tion in the electoral process: they were more likely to have their cahier
printed, to attach an imperative mandate to it, and to establish committees
of correspondence to sustain relationships between elected delegates and their
constituencies. (We do not know if these correlations are due to a greater
preference of archivists or editors for the preservation or publication of such
cahiers, or to the fact that such activity was more likely to produce multiple
copies of the cahier in 1789, thus decreasing the likelihood of loss.)
Executions during the Terror, and emigrations, are both significantly lower
in those departments heavily represented in the D.I. volumes, which, if Greer's
interpretations are correct, would indicate that they are more pro-revolu-
tionary.29 The D.L. series also seems to be slightly biased in favor of more
28. In the early stages of this research we utilized the content analysis of the general
cahiers made by Beatrice Hyslop for her book French Nationalism in 1789 According
to the General Cahiers (New York, 1934). These data, very generously furnished by
Hyslop, were the basis for the findings mentioned here as well as for Weitman.
29. Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror During the French Revolution: A
Statistical Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1935) and The Incidence of the Emigration
During the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1951).
184 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
rural areas. But none of these correlationsare very high, indicating,we re-
peat, the most basic finding:that all three data collectionspretty adequately
representthe nation in 1789.
importance from among those data for which processing had been completed at the
time of the trial run reported here. Our plans for the future include a more thorough
study along similar lines, using the much larger set of data we have collected.
Our sources for these data were: Population and total taxes: J. Necker, De l'Ad-
ministration des finances de la France (Paris, 1784); P. Gagnol, La Dime ecclesiastique
en France au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1910); Urbanization: Arthur Young, Voyages en
France, ed. Henri See (Paris, 1931); Vingtiemes and Tax Privileges: J. Mavidal and
E. Laurent, Archives parlementaires de 1787 a 1861 (Paris, 1867- ), lere serie,
Vol. XXVI, 513ff; Contributionpatriotique: ibid., Vol. XXIV, 4; Clergy Oath: P. Sagnac,
"Etude statistique sur le clerge constitutionnel et le clergy refractaire,"Revue d'Histoire
Moderne et Contemporaine 8 (1966), 97-115; G. Lefebvre, La Grande peur (Paris,
n.d.); P. Caron, Les Massacres de septembre (Paris, 1935); Greer, Incidence of the
Terror,Incidence of the Emigration.
31. A number of other findings from this study are of interest. (1) The literature
on the revolution seems to be divided between those who see it as a bloc, and those
who see it as a succession of distinct events, each led and participated in by different
segments of the population. Thus far, the data of this study support the latter view.
Relationships between revolutionary behavior variables are extremely few, and small,
only one appearing significant: between the Great Fear and the total of emigration.
(2) We have already outlined the effects of urbanization. Despite the positive corre-
lation between democratic sentiment among the Clergy in the spring of '89 (when the
cahiers were written) and the population of the departments, there is a negative corre-
lation between the Clergy's willingness to take the oath in support of the civil constitu-
tion, and population a few years later. This, like the absence of many significant rela-
tionships among various revolutionary behavior indicators, should warn us against any
oversimplified view of the historical process as a simple two-person game, with per-
manent, easily identified opponents. (3) The Girondins came from more heavily taxed,
186 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
Our subsequent work has borne out this impression of the power of urban-
ization as a significant historical force and as a factor in the events of the
French Revolution. The studies, of which some more detail is indicated be-
low, of Shapiro and Dawson on radicalism in 1789, of Weitman on demo-
cratic sentiment, and of Markoff on the surprising tendency of the cahiers
to demand a more bureaucratic government, are all agreed, despite the diver-
sity of what they seek to explain, that urban growth is a factor of major
importance. The Shapiro and Dawson study, for example, though commencing
as an examination of the widely-held thesis that blocked upward mobility
was a leading cause of bourgeois radicalism in 1789 found, incidentally (but
not insignificantly), that the effects of urbanization had far greater effects on
radicalism than did mobility rates.
3. Population Data
For two reasons, we have been led to an extensive analysis of eighteenth-
century French population information. In order to compare ecological units
of different sizes, it would obviously be necessary to remove, and hence first to
measure, the effect of sheer scale. In addition, the pressure of population
increase is widely regarded as one of the important social forces of the
century.
We have collected together over twenty-five estimates of the populations of
regions of France, some arrived at by extremely different means. Our first
analytical objective was to discover if it made a difference, and if so, how
much, whether one estimate or the other was accepted. The results of a
principal-axis factor analysis shows that the various estimates are close linear
functions of one another, and, although they would then provide different
absolute populations for a given region, their variations from region to region
are in effect identical. As a result, we feel comfortable in using any of these
population estimates or, most sensibly, an average of them.
and hence wealthier areas. (4) The emigration was strongest where pre-revolutionary
tax privileges were greatest.
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 187
middle classes. The issue regarding the sources of the French Revolution is
only one instance of a more general, theoretical problem in social dynamics:
the relationship between upward and downward mobility and political radical-
ism or conservatism.
To test these conflicting hypotheses, the opportunities for ennoblement in
the eighteenth century were measured for each bailliage, and this independent
variable was then related to each of four radicalism scores derived from the
coded general cahiers of the Third Estate. (For purposes of comparison, the
analysis was repeated with the cahiers of the nobility.) The scales of radical-
ism in the cahiers were, first of all, the total number of grievances expressed;
second, the number of grievances reflecting demands for equality; third, the
degree of similarity between the contents of the cahier and the Declaration of
August 4; and finally, the similarity of the document to the Declaration of the
Rights of Man.
It is apparent from the results that, regardless of the measure of radicalism
used, the Third Estate in those bailliages with any ennoblement opportunities
was more radical than the Third Estate in bailliages with no such oppor-
tunities. Furthermore, where there were opportunities, there was some slight
tendency for the Third Estate to be more radical where opportunities were
greater. And, finally, no such tendencies appear when we examine the noble
cashiers.Hence it would seem that the hypothesis of Tocqueville is more in
accord with the data than the more popular theses of Dollot and Taine, or
Elinor Barber. This is probably because, as Tocqueville emphasized, the
historical effect of an act of ennoblement upon its audience - those left
behind - is greater than its effect on the presumably grateful, newly-privi-
leged family, if only because there are so many more of the former. But the
important finding of this study which we mentioned above is that opportunity
for ennoblement seems to have had extremely little effect of any sort on
radicalism, especially as compared with the downright enormous effects of
urbanization.
32. This analysis was based on notes far more detailed than the content analysis
published in Hyslop, French Nationalism in 1789.
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 189
We have directed this paper to describing the general aims and methodology
of our investigations into the French Revolution, and have tried to explain
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 191
the strategic interest of this event for sociological theory and the strategic
interest of the unique available data for sociological research. If we have said
nothing by way of apology as sociologists for treading on historians' turf, it is
because it is our turf as well. If we have said little on the sometimes acrimo-
nious debate about quantitative methodology within the historical profession
(a debate into which we have quite inadvertently wandered), it is because we
see little point in more general statements of a programmatic or philosophical
nature. Assertions of the need for cooperation among sociologists and his-
torians have become tiresome (if they ever were anything else). Historians
will scrutinize our results and take what they like and reject what they do not.
Laments about tearing seamless webs are not very helpful, even if sincere.
We hope that we have demonstrated the great potential of the research instru-
ments we have been developing and that - although we do not for an instant
feel that these are the only ways to arrive at knowledge -we can begin
answering questions which have up to now been difficult even to ask.
University of Pittsburgh
and
State University of New York,
Stony Brook