State-Building and Rural Uprisings in Pre-Revolutionary France

• In Event: Historical Political Economy

Abstract

How does the process of building state strength impact social order? We examine this question in the context of the expansion of transportation and communication routes, a core component of state-building around the world. We examine how the improvement of transportation and communication networks and heavier state presence impacted rural unrest in pre-revolutionary France by pairing original data on the evolution of France’s postal road network over most of the 18th century with the most comprehensive data ever collected on rural rebellion across France during this period. Using a staggered differencein-difference framework centered on parishes, France’s smallest administrative divisions, we find that the introduction of a new postal node in a locale is linked to more rebellion locally. We argue that the main mechanism linking improvements in the transportation network to rebellions is the increased presence and visibility of state agents. New postal nodes are most strongly associated with more rebellions against agents with the coercive capacity to maintain and enforce order: the military, police, and the courts. The state and its agents became a target of popular ire for heavy-handed efforts at forced conscription, stern and sometimes brutal public punishments, and inflexibly enforcing royal acts perceived as unfair. The effects are concentrated among locales closer to centers of state power where state "traffic" and presence was likely higher. And the effects were felt in neighboring areas where least-cost path analysis indicates that travel distance to the nearest postal nodes decreased with the introduction of a nearby node. The findings have implications for the scholarly understanding of the co-evolution of states and violence as well as for the enormous corpus of work on the origins of the French Revolution.

Author

• Michael Albertus, University of Chicago