Henri de Boulainvilliers

Anne Gabriel Henri Bernard, marquis de Boulainvilliers , born with Saint-Saire the October 11th 1658 and dead the Paris the January 23rd 1722, is a Historien and Politologue French.

An antinational theorist

Military career until the death of his father occurred in 1697, Boulainvilliers launched out then in the history and was the first to analyze the history of the French institutions. It is regarded as one of the first historians to consider art to control like a science.

Imbu of aristocratic ideas, Boulainvilliers was a burning defender of the feudal system, only, in its eyes, just, legitimate and in conformity with historical reality. It was the principal one representing ideological current of feudal reaction to the 18th century which considered the medieval institutions like a République federative and aristocratic, rather than monarchical. According to its doctrines, the French nobility descended from the frank conquerors established in France to the fall from the Roman Empire and the Tiers state of the Gaulois. The frank lords were, for this reason, independent and free to make justice on their subjects without interference on behalf of the king, simple selected civil magistrate in order to arbitrate the arguments between individuals. All the members of the nobility were thus, like such, on an equal footing with the king, simple primus inter pares .

Boulainvilliers held French monarchy for person in charge of the progressive decline of the privileges of the nobility. He makes go up the beginning of this decline with the Croisades for which many noble would have mortgaged or sold their fees with the plebeian easy ones. By being introduced, on this occasion, in the nobility, those, which it described as “wretched”, corrupted it. Then, the ignorance and the negligence of the lords returning justice forced them to discharge from the legal functions of which they were the legitimate agents on clerks and lawyers, intrinsic dignity with this role making soon as important as those with the name of which they returned justice. Boulainvilliers regarded the new “noblesse de robe” born of this circumstance as a “monstrosity”. There was finally the policy of the monarchy capétienne which it regards as the grave-digger of feudalism. The Capétiens weakened initially the capacity of the French nobility dazzled by the brilliance of the court by adding great strongholds to the royal field. In result, the kings assumed an importance up to that point unknown of them and soon entirely disproportionate. The lords would then have become the servants of those of which they had been the pars. The admission with the rows of the nobility of plebeian bureaucrats who did not have no one there right then that of the Tiers state to the General states, according to him, would have completed to consume the inversion of the nobility.

This reaction against alliance between the absolute monarch and the Tiers state makes of him antinational, when the idea of Nation, founded on the equal rights, was felt as revolutionist.

By posing a so-called original genealogical origin with alleged aristocratic racial specificity, Boulainvilliers was the first to work out a theory of the classes. Although the radically uneven character on which he leans the supposed superiority of the aristocracy rests on “the right of conquest and the need for tender always due to most extremely” and which he speaks always not about races but individuals, “right of most extremely” and not of biological characteristics of group, the racial distinction to which he delivered himself nevertheless opened the way with a thought racialist, even racist. Its works were published in Holland only after its death and prohibited in France.

Boulainvilliers was a prolix author but the paternity of certain works is sometimes more than contestable: “ All that is printed under the name of the count de Boulainvillier did not leave its feather, its works which it readily communicated to his friends were copied in different tems and several before it had improved them… The reputation that it estoit acquired was made put under its name several treaties which it has neither compose nor revûs ” (bibl. of the Senate, ms. 985, II). It carried out the French translation of the Éthique of Spinoza according to the new manuscript preserved at the public library of Lyon.

Voltaire enlisted Boulainvilliers in its own crusade against “the infamous one” by making of him a character of sound Dîner on the Count de Boulainvilliers (1767).

Influences

The influence of Boulainvilliers on the French aristocracy was strong the day before the Revolution. Of Buat-Nançay, in its Origins of the Old Government of France, Germany and Italy published in 1789, included its antinational theses to call some with the creation of a kind of international of the barbarian aristocracy of origin . The Émigré S contributed to the diffusion as of these ideas in Europe, in particular in the German states, since the origins of the French nobility were supposed to be identical to those of the German nobility.

One finds into negative traces of these theses in the lampoon What the Third-State? Sieyès indeed invites there the Tiers with “ to return in the forests of Franconie all the families which preserve the insane claim to come from the race of the conquerors and to have succeeded rights of conquest. ”

It is to the count François Dominique de Reynaud de Montlosier that one owes the inflecting of the ideas of Boulanvilliers towards the Racisme, when, after Valmy, the noble ones not being able more to base their superiority on the conquest, the right of most extremely or the fortune of the weapons , it advanced the idea of a Germanic race higher than the “ new people born slaves, of all the races and all times. ”

This identification of the dominant classes to higher races is found then in the French historians of such as Augustin Thierry, which distinguishes “ Germanic nobility ” and “ Celtic middle-class ”, or Charles de Rémusat, which postulates the Germanic origin of all the European aristocracy. It is finally with Gobineau that it will pour in the Racisme with scientific claim.

Works

Memory for the nobility of France against the dukes and even , 1717
Test on the nobility of France , 1732
François-Xavier To crack, historical Dictionary; or, shortened History of the men who had a name , T. 4, Paris, Houdaille, 1836, p. 225.
Histoire of the old government of France with XIV historical letters on the Parliaments or State-Generals , $the Hague & Amsterdam, at the expense of the company, 1727, 3 volumes.
State of France, in which one sees all that looks at the ecclesiastical government, the soldier, justice, finances, the trade, manufactures, the number of the habitans, & in general all that can make connoitre has bottom this monarchy: extracted the memories draw up by the intendans Kingdom, by order of the King, Louis XIV. L has… London, T.Wood & S. Palmer 1727 - 1728.
History of the old government of France. With XIV historical letters on Parlemens or State-Generals , has $the Hague, Amsterdam, At the expense of the Company, 1727. 3 volumes.
Memories presented to Monseigneur d' Orléans, containing the means of making this kingdom very-powerful, & of increasing considerably the incomes of Roy and the people. has $the Hague & with Amsterdam, At the expense of the Company, 1727. 2 volumes.
Life of Mahomed; with reflections on the religion mahometane, & the habits of the Moslem . London, and is in Amsterdam at P. Humbert, 1730. Amsterdam, François Changuion, 1731.
Refutation of the Errors of Benoit de Spinosa. By Mr. De Fenelon ....., by the P. Lami ...... & by Mr. the Count de Boulainvilliers. With the life of Spinose, Written by Mr. Colerus, Minister for the Church Lutheran of $the Hague; increased by many characteristics drawn from a Handwritten Life from this Philosopher, made by one of his/her Friends. '' Has [[Brussels], At François Foppens, 1731.

Tests on the nobility of France, contenans an essay on its origin & lowering. With historical notes, Critical and Political; A project of Essay on the first French & their Colonies; and a Supplement with the notes by the shape of Dictionary for the Nobility , Amsterdam Rouen, 1732.

Anecdotes curious about the reign of saint Louis, king de France, since 1226 until the year 1270, left handwritten by the Count de Boullainvilliers , 1753.

Letters on old Parlemens de France which one names State-Generals , has London, At T. Wood & S. Palmer, 1753. 3 volumes.

Analysis of the Treaty Théologi-policy of Spinosa, by the count de Boulainvilliers , London, 1767.

Modern edition

philosophical Works , ED. Renee Simon, $the Hague, Nijhoff, 1973 - 1975

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