Introduction: Power and patronage -- One: Patrons and clients. General characteristics of patron-client relationships -- Fidelity relationships -- Variability among patrons and clients -- Two: Brokers. General characteristics of brokers -- Variability among brokers -- Three: Clienteles. Clienteles and provincial institutions -- Great noble and administrative clienteles -- Four: Brokers and political integration. Brokers and institutions -- Brokers as troubleshooters -- Brokers and intendants -- Five: Brokerage and the nobility. Sixteenth-century brokers of royal patronage -- Seventeenth-century brokers of royal patronage -- Noble power and brokerage -- Six: Clientelism and the early modern state. Clientelism and conflict -- Clientelism and corruption -- Clientelism and change -- Epilogue: Cientelism and bureaucracy -- Conclusion: Nobles, brokers, and statebuilding -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary
This new study of politics and power in seventeenth-century France argues that the French crown centralized its power nationally by changing the way it delegated its royal patronage in the provinces
Analysis
France Government Patronage, 1600-1700
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-314) and index