French Absolutism and Agricultural Capitalism: A Comment on Henry Heller’s Essays

Abstract

Abstract This intervention takes up the depiction of agriculture in Henry Heller’s essays on ancien régime France. The argument of this intervention is that rural social relations did not evolve according to a capitalist logic. Rather, given market opportunities, landlords, both noble and bourgeois, sought to enhance their power over the peasantry, extract additional labour from the families of smallholders, and gain profit for the purpose of adding to their political authority.