Concepts of citizenship in France during the long eighteenth century

Abstract

François Furet famously described the French Revolution as ’the first experiment with democracy’, and modern French citizenship is often seen as having emerged during this period. Universal male suffrage was practised for the first time in 1792 and the Revolution also witnessed debate over such issues as: the rights of citizens; the extension of the franchise to poorer inhabitants and black slaves; and even whether women should be given political rights. Yet, the modern idea of citizenship did not emerge from nowhere in 1789. Rather it was the product of more than a century of debate. This article examines the different understandings of citizenship that were competing for dominance in France during the long eighteenth century: the ancient conception; the Bodinian understanding and the rights-based approach. Not only does it demonstrate the contribution of these approaches (and in particular the last) to revolutionary understandings of citizenship, but it also highlights how the tensions of the eighteenth-century debates, and the ambiguities inherent in the rights-based conception, sparked some of the key controversies of the Revolution.