Memory and Practice: Politics and the Representation of the Past in Eighteenth-Century France

M E M O RY," MICHEL FOUCAULT has argued, "is actually a very important factor in struggle... . If one controls people's memory, one controls their dynamism.... It is vital to have possession of this memory, to control it, administer it, tell it what it must contain."' Recognition of this relationship between memory and political practice was by no means absent in France at the end of the Old Regime. Indeed, it was explained to Louis XVI on his accession-and with disarming simplicity-by one of the crown's most enlightened and innovative ministers, Henri Bertin. "The history and public law of a nation are based on the records," Bertin instructed his sovereign