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Old-Regime Governors: Bureaucratic and Patrimonial Attributes*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

John A. Armstrong
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin

Extract

Recent concern with the process of modernization has heightened interest in the origins of bureaucracy in societies which have succeeded in modernizing. Relatively little attention, however, has been directed to territorial governing elites as an element of bureaucratic development. In what sense did governors in premodern societies resemble modern bureaucratic officials? Did the resemblances increase as the societies approached the modern period; or (as Marion J. Levy suggests) did the bureaucratic elements tend to degrade in the particularistic environment?

Type
Bureaucracy and Patrimonialism
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1972

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References

1 Modernization and the Structure of Societies (Princeton, 1966), pp. 116 ff. The reader will note that of the five criteria presented below the first, second, and fifth are definitely particularistic, i.e., anti-universalistic, while the third and fourth are ambiguous.Google Scholar

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3 The Political System of Empires (Glencoe, III., 1963). I must emphasize that in elaborating my criteria I have in effect isolated portions of Eisenstadt's very broad development theory. While I think my criteria are compatible with his general theory, I do not pretend to consider it as a whole.Google Scholar

4 Weber, III, 1028.

5 Eisenstadt, pp. 159 ff., 280, 353.

6 Levy, pp. 116 ff.

7 Weber, III, 1401.

8 Ibid., III, 1108.

9 Eisenstadt, , op. cit., pp. 143, 159 ff, 195–6. The nature of the ‘legal–rational’ ideology is extremely significant. Here my sole concern is with socialization as a factor in bureaucratic regression toward patrimonial officialdom. Hence it seems justifiable to reduce the very complex relationship of socialization to bureaucratic development (which I plan to treat at length later) fo the skeleton dimensions of minimization of formal entrance requirements and open versus closed schools.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., pp. 172 ff.

11 Ibid., pp. 150, 153; cf. especially Schumpeter, Joseph, ‘Die sozialen Klassen im ethnisch homogenen Milieu’, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 57 (1927), 49 ff.,Google Scholar who argues that patrimonialization of offices followed the analogy of feudal leadership, where the original act of conquest did not have to be repeated.

12 Eisenstadt, , op. cit. pp. 179 ff.Google Scholar

13 It should be recalled that Weber and others who elaborated the study of bureaucracy (Otto Hintze, Gustav Schmoller, Eckart Kehr) drew most heavily on Prussian bureaucratic experience.

14 The statement is attributed by the Marquis d&Argenson to John Law: see Marchand, J., Un Intendant sous Louis XIV: Etude sur l'administration de Lebret en Provence (1687–1704) (Paris, 1889), p. 45.Google Scholar For general analyses of the formal authority and actual power of the intendants see especially Grader, Vivian R., The Royal Provincial Intendants (Ithaca, 1968);Google ScholarArdashev, Pavel, Provintsial'naia Administratsiia vo Frantsii v Poseldniuiu Poru Starago Poriadka, 1774–1789 (vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1900, vol. II, Kiev 1906)Google Scholar (condensed French trans., Les Intendants de Province sous Louis XVI, Paris, 1909);Google ScholarBordes, Maurice, ‘Les Intendants de Louis XV’, Revue historique, 223 (1960), pp. 4562;Google Scholar and Pages, Georges, La Monarchic d'Ancien Rigime en France (Paris, 1928).Google Scholar

15 For convenience' sake I shall use gubernator to refer to Russian chief territorial administrators at or above the guberniia level (i.e., including governor generals, viceroys, etc.), while reserving the term ‘governor’ for the office of chief territorial administrator as a general category of political administration. Similarly, the French province will be designated généralité, the Russian, guberniia.

16 Got'e, Iurii, Istoriia Oblastnogo Upravleniia v Rossii ot Petra I do Ekateriny II, vol. I (Moscow, 1913), p. 234.Google Scholar Though it deals only with the beginning of my period, this work and its second volume (Moscow, 1941) is by far the best treatment of territorial administration in Russia. Cf. Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole, The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians (New York, 1894), II, 89,Google Scholar who calls the early nineteenth-century gubernator a ‘miniature autocrat’, and Sacke, Georg, ‘Adel und Bürgertum in der Regierungszeit Katharinas II. von Russland’, Revue beige de philohgie et d'histoire, 17 (1938), pp. 815–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

After my study was written, the excellent treatment by Pintner, Walter M., ‘The Social Characteristics of the Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Bureaucracy’, Slavic Review, 29 (1970), pp. 429–43, appeared. I shall discuss some of the relations between Pintner's data and mine in a forthcoming article comparing the Tsarist and the Soviet administrative elites.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Weber, III, 1087.

18 The classic French analysis of Richelieu's role in giving the intendants a territorial base is Hanotaux, Gabriel, Origines de l'institution des intendants des provinces (Paris, 1884), pp. 121 ff.Google Scholar Cf. Caillet, J., De l'administration en France sous le ministère du Cardinal de Richelieu (Thèse, Faculté de Lettres, Paris, 1857), who points out that before Richelieu governors regarded their posts as their property (p. 29), while the new intendance for the first time became a fixed post filled at the king's pleasure (p. 38). Peter's role in transforming the Russian administration (leaving aside for the moment whether it should be called ‘bureaucratization’) is too generally accepted to need documentation.Google Scholar

19 Pages, (op. cit., pp. 159, 187)Google Scholar considers that it was Colbert's instructing intendants (after 1661) which transformed the monarchy. Phillipe Sagnac writes that it was not until the eighteenth-century that ‘a more numerous administrative personnel’ was formed, but considers the reestablishment and regularization of the intendants an essential preliminary. Louis XIV et son administration’, Revue d'histoire politique et constitutionelle, 3 (1939), pp. 27, 36.Google Scholar While Godard, Charles, Les Pouvoirs des intendants sous Louis XIV, particulièrement dans les pays d'elections de 1661 à 1715 (Thèse, Faculté de Lettres, Paris, 1901), p. 442,Google Scholar regards his period as the starting point of modern bureaucracy. Similarly, for Russia, Marc Raeff considers Michael Speransky's work (at the beginning of the nineteenth century) more important for establishing bureaucracy than Catherine's; see "The Russian Autocracy and Its Officials', Harvard Slavic Studies, 4 (1957), p. 80;Google Scholar while a recent Soviet writer regards 1760 as the beginning of ‘chinovnik bureaucracy’ which lasted until the Revolution; see Demidova, N. F., ‘Biurokratizatsiia Gosudarstvennogo Absoliutizma v XVII–XVIII vv.’ Absoliutizm v Rossii (XVII–XVIII vv.) (Moscow, 1964), p. 209. From my point of view, the important thing is that the beginning of my periods of examination represent a definite development from the immediately preceding periods.Google Scholar

20 Where feasible (Table F 3) the incomplete data from the 1640–60 period have been given. Obviously, background data for the period prior to 1661 on officials who became intendants in 1661 or later have been collected and presented. A similar procedure has been followed for the 1740–62 period in Russia.

21 Russkii Biograficheskii Slovar', 25 vols. (Moscow 18961898). A considerable number of the alphabetically arranged volumes were never completed.Google Scholar

22 Blau, Peter M. and Duncan, Otis D., The American Occupational Structure (New York, 1967), p. 15.Google Scholar

23 See Appendix.

24 Blau, and Duncan, , op. cit., p. 17.Google Scholar

25 See Appendix.

26 Ardashev, , Les Intendants, pp. 21 ff.Google Scholar

27 Sagnac, , op. cit., pp. 31, 35.Google Scholar

28 Grader, , op. cit., p. 115.Google Scholar

29 As Franklin Ford explains, Louis XIV deliberately kept status (for nobles) apart from power (for bureaucrats), Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 7.Google Scholar

30 Godard, , op. cit., p. 445,Google Scholar believes that Louis XIV practically assured hereditary transmission by failing to found an administrative school. As Yvonne Bezard writes, Colbert practised a ‘fortunate nepotism’, Fonctionnaires maritimes et coloniaux sous Louis XIV: les Bégon (Paris, 1932), p. 7.Google Scholar Cf. Sagnac, , op. cit., p. 36, on the importance of family tradition for securing devotion to service among the subordinate officials of the giniralitis.Google Scholar

31 Ardashev, , Les Intendants, p. 65;Google Scholar cf. Egret, Jean, Le Parlement de Dauphiné et les affaires publiques dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Grenoble, 1942), I, 19.Google Scholar

32 Brückner, A., Die Europäisierung Russlands (Gotha, 1888), p. 248.Google Scholar

33 Dmitriev, F., ‘Speranskii i Ego Gosudarstvennaia Deiatel'nost’, Russkii Arkhiv, 1868, 10, p. 1637.Google Scholar

34 Grech, N. I., Zapiski o Moei Zhizni (St. Petersburg, 1886), p. 186.Google Scholar

35 Lentin, A., ed. and trans., Prince M. M. Shcherbatov: On the Corruption of Morals in Russia (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 302–10.Google Scholar By ‘noble origin’ Lentin means members of families enjoying legal status as nobles, including members of foreign nobilities, even when the title was very recent. Frequently, recently ennobled heads of families were far more prestigious, wealthy, and powerful than members of the pre–Patrine (boiar) nobility, and were consequently in a position to further their sons' official careers more effectively. Of course, all of the sons had attained legal status as nobles by rising in service rank before becoming gubernators, even though they were not of noble origin. It is also essential to recognize (as discussed later) the distinction between the ‘landowning nobility’ and the ‘higher bureaucracy’. All officials in the latter were legally nobles by rank, and many owned estates. Conversely, many (though far from all) landowning nobles had served as Imperial officials. Where conflict of interests arose, it was between officials on active service delegated (e.g., as gubernators) to supervise local affairs, and landowning nobles residing in the locality.

36 Ibid., p. 78.

36 Dmitriev, , op. cit., p. 1939;Google ScholarRaeff, , Michael Speransky, Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772–1839 (The Hague, 1957), p. 64.Google Scholar

37 Vucinich, Alexander, Science in Russian Culture: A History to 1860 (Stanford, 1963), pp. 242 ff.Google Scholar

39 Leroy-Beaulieu, II, 92.

40 Egret, I, 19–20. See especially, Ducros, L., La Société français au dix-huitième siècle (Paris, 1922), p. 144.Google Scholar A contemporary critic, the Comte de Boulainville, État de France, I (London, 1727), writes of the ‘sloth of the schools of Paris’ where the future administrators are ‘not set in a taste for work by their upbringing’ (p. xvi).Google Scholar

41 Ardashev, , Les Intendants, p. 53;Google ScholarGrader, , op. cit., p. 60. Miss Grader understandably does not regard the decline in median age during the eighteenth century as significant; but when this decline is related to the notably higher seventeenth-century age level, it seems to be part of a significant trend.Google Scholar

42 Grader, , op. cit., pp. 208 ff.;Google ScholarFréville, Henri, L'Intendance de Bretagne (1689–1790), 2 vols. (Rennes, 1953), II;Google ScholarLheritier, Michel, L'Intendant Tourny (1695–1760), 2 vols. (Paris, 1920), II, 519 ff.Google Scholar

43 Aynard, Joseph, La Bourgeoisie française: essai de psychologie sociale (Paris 1934), p. 306.Google Scholar

44 Hans, Nicholas, History of Russian Educational Policy (1701–1917) (New York, 1964), pp. 235–6;Google ScholarRashin, A. G., ‘Gramotnost' i Narodnoe Obrazovanie v Rossii v X IX i Nachale X X v.’, Istoricheskie Zapiski, 1951, 37, p. 72.Google Scholar

45 See especially Vucinich, , op. cit., pp. 132–4. Study abroad was a fourth possibility utilized by a considerable proportion of the important Baltic German nobility, but beyond the horizon of most Russian nobles. In the early nineteenth century, study in an Orthodox seminary was not an unusual background for an administrator, but only rarely led to high office.Google Scholar

46 Kobeko, Dmitrii, Imperatorskii Tsarskosel'skii Litsei (St. Petersburg, 1911), pp. 78.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., pp. 39,48. Many of the boys had already spent several years in the attached preparatory boarding school (p. 197).

48 Ibid., pp. 11, 477.

49 Raeff, Marc, ‘Home, School and Service in t h e Life of the 18th Century Nobleman’, Slavonic Review, 40 (1962), pp. 301, 305.Google Scholar Cf. Prince Scherbatov's wholly consistent complaint that state service broke up kinship ties (Lentin, , op. cit., p. 88).Google Scholar

50 Dupont-Ferrier, Gustave, La Vie quotidienne d'un collège parisien pendant plus de trois cent cinquant ans: du Collège de Clermont au Lycie Louis-le-Grand (1563–1920) (Paris, 1921), pp. 59, 64.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., p. 236.

52 ibid., p. 245.

53 Ardashev, , Les Intendants, uses the quoted phrase twice, pp. 408, 416.Google Scholar

54 Gruder, , op. cit., pp. 72 ff.Google Scholar

55 Godard, , op. cit., p. 445.Google Scholar

56 For a memoir evaluation of t he persistent influence of Colbert and his successors see deMeilhan, Sénac, Du Gouvernement, des moeurs et des conditions en France avant la Révolution (Hamburg, 1795), p. 3;Google Scholar see also Lheritier, II, 50, on the importance of the maîtres' association with great administrators; and Gruder, , op. cit., p. 90, on the belief of contemporaries that intendants needed to be experienced both in courts and council.Google Scholar

57 Confidence in this small ‘sample’ is enhanced by the fact that the virtually invariant means agree closely with Gruder's medians (34 for 1710–12, 33 for 1749–51, 34 for 1774–6), op. cit., p. 89.Google Scholar

58 Subtracting medians does not, of course, necessarily produce median intervening periods. If, however, one does perform this operation on Gruder's data, the results (6, 8, 9) vary approximately as do my averages.

59 Got'e, I, 140, 208.

60 Demidova, , op. cit., p. 212;Google ScholarRaeff, , ‘The Russian Autocracy’, p. 80; and the biographical sketch (p. 166) of Adrian Moiseevich Gribovskii, Vospominaniia i Dnevniki (n.p., n.d.).Google Scholar

61 Blum, Karl L., Ein Russischer Staatsmann: Des Grafen Jakob Johann Sievers Denkwürdigkeiten zur Geschichte Russlands, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 18571858), II, 433.Google Scholar

62 Leroy–Beaulieu, II, 94.

63 Got'e, 1,227; Pavlov-Sil'vanskii, Nikolai, Gosudarevy Sluzhilye Liudi (2nd ed., St. Petersburg, 1909), p. 240.Google Scholar

64 Dukes, Paul, Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility (Cambridge, 1967), p. 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 Ibid., p. 238.

66 This is one of the few Russian statistics which I can check independently: Got'e, I, 140, writes that in 1760 gubernators were largely of military background; Blum, I, 151, indicates more precisely that 17 of the 23 governors appointed (1763) by Catherine II were military men.

67 Demidova, , op. cit., p. 238.Google Scholar

68 Reinhard, Marcel, ‘Elite et noblesse dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle’, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, III (1956), 7; Egret, II, 29.Google Scholar

69 Lheritier, I, 4 ff.

70 Ardashev, , Les Intendants, p. 79.Google Scholar

71 It is true, however, that a given governorship did not necessarily mark the end of a gubernator's career outside the territorial administration for (in contrast to the intendant) he often served in a quite different official capacity in between governorships.

72 Gruder, , op. cit., p. 73.Google Scholar

73 Raeff, , ‘Home’, p. 297.Google Scholar

74 Leroy-Beaulieu, II, 64.

75 Got'e, I, 151–3; cf. Demidova, , op. cit., pp. 213, 232.Google Scholar

76 Got'e, I, 208, 221.

77 The assumption behind the construction of Tables R 3 and F 3 is that the most significant independent variable affecting length of terms is the period during which a governor first attained such a post; i.e., his tenure in future posts is attributed to the period in which he first became governor. It would, of course, be possible to make the assumption that the most important variable affecting these subsequent terms was the period (that is, the administrative influences, particularly of the monarch or ministers) in which the term occurred. Proceeding on that assumption (and arbitrarily assigning all terms to the period in which the term as governor began), the following means were calculated:

Gubernators' terms: 1762–1800—4.5; 1801–1825—6.4; 1826–1855—7.4; 1856–1881—5.7

Intendants' terms: 1661–1683—4.8; 1684–1715—6.3; 1716–1773—8.5; 1774–1790—5.7

These means are very close to those given in Tables R 3 and F 3, and other distribution figures (e.g., intendants holding more than eight years' tenure) are also very similar.

78 According to a royal letter of September 1647, the fixed term for an intendant was three years. Esmonin, F., ‘Les Intendants du Dauphiné des origines à la Révolution’, Annales de l'Université de Grenoble, 34 (19221923), p. 52.Google Scholar

79 Got'e, I, 140 ff., Ig7; Demidova, , op. cit., p. 242;Google ScholarArdashev, , Les Intendants, pp. 435 ff.Google Scholar

80 Got'e, I, 236, 260; Raeff, , Michael Speransky, p. 282.Google Scholar

81 See the letter from a subdélégué printed in Ardashev, Pavel, ‘Materialy dlia istorii Provintsial'noi Administratsii vo Frantsii v Posledniuiu Poru Starago Poriadka’, Uchenyia Zapiski Imperatorskago Iwevskago Universiteta, God 11, 1 (1903), p. 95.Google Scholar

82 Ardashev, , Les Intendants, pp. 25 ff., 80, 131;Google ScholarPages, Georges, ‘Essai sur l'evolution des institutions administratives en France du commencement du XVIe siècle à la fin du XVIIIe, Revue d'histoire moderne, 7 (1932), p. 128.Google Scholar

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85 Ricommard, J., ‘Les Subdélégués des intendants jusqu'à leur erection en titre d'office’, Revue d'histoire moderne, 12 (1937), p. 356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86 de Boislisle, A., Les Conseits de roi sous Louis XVI (Paris, 1884), p. 36.Google Scholar

87 There is some variation by period of first–post tenure: means are 1661–83—4.1; 1684–1715—5.0; 1716–73—7.8; 1774–90—3.8. I have been unable to find a plausible explanation for these variations. Gubernators' first terms showed a strikingly similar variation: 1762–1800—4.6; 1801–25—6.5; 1826–55—7.3; 1856–81—5.6.

88 Rotours, J. A. des, ‘Le Dernier Intendant de la généralité d'Alençon’, Bulletin de la sociiti historique et archiologique de l'Orne, 12 (1893), p. 503.Google Scholar

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91 Dakin, Douglas, Turgot and the Anden Régime in France (London 1939), pp. 38 ff.;Google ScholarCoulaudon, Aimé, Chazerat: dernier intendant de la généralité de Riom et Province d'Auvergne (1774–1789) (Thèse, Faculté de Droit, Paris 1932), p. 23.Google Scholar

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93 Gruder, , op. cit., pp. 40–1, 45 ff.Google Scholar

94 Weber, III, 1405.

95 Ardashev, , Les Intendants, p. 77.Google Scholar

96 A sample of 44 guberniies collected by Eric Amburger indicates an average of 7.2 gubernators for the period 1825–53, or an average of 3.9 years, much below my average (1826–55) of 7.4 years. Neither the samples nor the periods are strictly comparable, but Amburger's finding does suggest that my sample omits a considerable number of short–term gubernators. Torke, Hans-Joachim, ‘Das russische Beamtentum in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, XIII (1967), p. 184.Google Scholar