Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution

List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations and a Note on Translations xi Chapter 1: Introduction: "One of the Most Interesting Pairs of Breeches Recorded in Modern History" 1 Chapter 2: An Ingenious Emblem 57 New Year's Gifts and an Eighteenth-Century French Joke 57 Fashion's Empire: The Moral Foundations of Salon Society 77 A "Poor Devil": The Short, Unhappy Life of Nicolas-Joseph-Laurent Gilbert 101 Mercier and Rousseau: Vitalist and Contractual Conceptions of Political Society 110 Chapter 3: Diogenes and Rousseau: Music, Morality, and Society 134 Diogenes and the Ambiguities of Cynic Philosophy 134 Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Politics of Public Opinion 147 Rousseau and His Cynic Critics 164 John Brown and the Progress of Civilisation 178 "That Subtle Diogenes": Immanuel Kant and Rousseau's Dilemmas 195 Chapter 4: Property, Equality, and the Passions in Eighteenth-Century French Thought 202 Reform, Revolution, and the Problem of State Power 202 Property and the Limits of State Power 221 Physiocracy, Reform, and the Fruits of the Tree of Life 248 John Law's Legacy and the Aftermath of Physiocracy 260 Dominique-Joseph Garat, the Modern Idea of Happiness, and the Dilemmas of Reform 273 Chapter 5: The Entitlements of Merit 283 Visions of Patriotism 283 The Army and Its Problems in the Eighteenth Century 288 Constitutional Government, Taxation, and Equality 296 Political Liberty, Public Finance, and Public Worship 305 Etienne Claviere, Law's System, and French Liberty 315 Feuillants and Brissotins 324 Antoine-Joseph Gorsas and the Politics of Revolutionary Satire 338 Chapter 6: Conclusion: Democracy and Terror 362 Politics and History in Jacobin Thought 362 Rousseau and Revolution 367 Mably, Rousseau, and Robespierre 372 Epilogue 407 Bibliography 425 Index 475

Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King's College, University of Cambridge. His books include "Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution" (Princeton); "Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades; and The Hatters of Eighteenth-Century France".

"A pathbreaking account of the emergence of the concept of republican citizenship in the eighteenth century, Michael Sonenscher's Sans-Culottes is also one of the most ambitious, original, and satisfying accounts of the eighteenth-century resonance of Rousseau's arguments regarding human nature, culture, and politics that I have encountered."--E. J. Hundert, professor emeritus of history, University of British Columbia