Modernités de l'Ancien Régime, 1750-1789

the long version

The last decades of the Ancien Régime have often been described as powerless and the slow agony of a society incapable of reform. However, if you look closely, demographic behavior changed significantly, revealing significant changes in attitudes. Meanwhile, dynamism and modernity characterized major sectors of the economy and social life. Agriculture was slowly in a thousand points, the industrialized countries and the general maritime trade reached its peak. A significant proportion of the nobility or clergy, actually seemed imbued with the Enlightenment and was involved elsewhere in the modernization of the economy and the dissemination of new ideas. But if the Revolution introduced a clear break, no one can deny that it is also necessary to emphasize the continuities and undeniable legacy collected. Many innovations that revolutionary governments resume later on their own were, in fact, designed and prepared in the last period of the Ancien Régime. The Revolution, from 1789 to 1791, experienced by many actors of the time as a kind of fulfillment, often carried out projects that the monarchy had attempted or dreamed, which is not the least of paradoxes.