1) 'Liberty before liberalism': the emancipation of the communes in urban histories in eighteenth-century France

Some historians pretend that there was no middle-class consciousness in Prerevolutionary France. Sarah Maza relies on the paucity of historical discourses glorifying the bourgeoisie to argue that their existence as a social class during the ancien régime is a myth. She notes that historical accounts of the period focus on the debates between the “Germanists” and the “Romanists” who argue over the role of the nobility. Certainly, Mably and abbé Duclos denounce feudalism and comment on the emer...