Aulica No 19 - Quelle souveraineté pour la Nation ? 1789-1791
Quelle souveraineté pour la Nation ? 1789-1791 (Publication from the symposium “Quelle souveraineté pour la nation (1789-1790) ?” » held on June 20 and 21, 2022, in the auditorium of the château de Versailles), directed by Hervé Leuwers and Virginie Martin, joint publication Centre de recherche du château de Versailles / Presses universitaires de Rennes (“Histoire” collection, “Aulica. L’Univers de la cour” series), August 2026, 15,5 × 24 cm, 296 pages, index, color workbook, €23 (ISBN: 979-10-413-0816-3).
Abstract
In accounts of the onset of the Revolution, June 17, 1789, marks the transfer of sovereignty from the king to the Nation, through the founding of the National Assembly and its assertion of the right to set the amount of taxes. In reality, however, this transition from one form of sovereignty to another was only gradual; the session of June 17, followed by the Tennis Court Oath three days later, ushered in a period of debate, tension, and the gradual construction of a “new regime.” This book seeks to explore this little-known transition of sovereignty through a twofold shift in perspective. The first shifts focus away from the major stages of the drafting of the 1791 Constitution by the Assembly to examine the concrete modalities of the transition from one sovereignty to another. The second shift concerns the “sovereigns.” Rather than focusing primarily on the deputies at work, the book examines the old and new “sovereigns”: the king and his defenders, who never entirely relinquished royal sovereignty, even as its exercise gradually faded; to the citizens, who expressed, in words and deeds, an expectation of sovereignty that sometimes went far beyond what was accepted by the majority of the Assembly.
Hervé Leuwers is a professor of modern history at the université de Lille.
Virginie Martin is an associate professor of modern history at the université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
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