My interest in the relationship between the corporate bodies of the old regime and the origins of the French Revolution goes back to my days as a graduate student at the University of Michigan, specifically to a course with David Bien. The class was engrossed (or at least I was) with the problem of how notions of equality might have arisen in a society organized upon the antithetical principles of hierarchy and privilege. One solution, the most common proposed, was some variant of the “egalitarian outsider” theory of history. According to this historiographical scenario, unprivileged groups, chronically thwarted in their attempts at social mobility, rose up, armed themselves with the rhetoric of equality, and finally overthrew their privileged oppressors. As a specialist in ironical twists of history, however, Bien had an additional proposal : perhaps notions of equality were being formulated inside corporate bodies as well as in opposition to them. This I found to be such a preposterous idea that I immediately knew I had stumbled onto the subject of my doctoral research.

Since that time I have pursued various angles of the relationship of privileged corps to an egalitarian revolution, some more successfully than others. My approach has been that of the local study, and within that locality, of case studies of particular corporate institutions endowed with different ranks, powers, and rights. By restricting the study to specific corps, I found that I could investigate in a more detailed fashion the processes impinging upon these institutions, the rhetoric utilized to defend or attack their privileges, and the multiple allegiances generated through simultaneous membership in several of these bodies.