Les États de Provence en 1788 et 1789: représentants et représentés dans une province française à la veille de la Révolution

SUMMARY

In this article Monique Cubells has examined the special case of the Estates of Provence, which had been suspended in 1639, but restored in their original form in 1787. The structure of the Estates is analysed to show how none of the three Estates was representative of its Order, since all the deputies sat by virtue of status or function and none were directly elected to the Estates. There was the further feature that the Estates of Provence voted by head, not by Order, a position that was fiercely defended in Provence by the same people who would bitterly resist it when applied to the Estates General of 1789. In Provence, the arrangement meant that the Clergy and the Nobility easily outvoted the Third Estate, in addition to which several members of the Third Estate were nobles. Thus the Estates of Provence were not, and had never been representative even of the ruling elites, much less of the wider society. The article then examines the growing public debate in Provence after 1787 in which pamphlets and public meetings demanded changes to introduce the principle of representation, based on natural right, reason and justice. But when Louis XVI decreed a uniform electoral system for the Estates General of 1789, the issue of representation in Provence faded into the background. The abolition of the Estates of Provence, in consequence of the vote of 4 August 1789 then aroused only minor protests.