Conceiving the Old Regime

Abstract

Abstract Between 1666 and 1789, France's Old Regime government used the king's legislative authority to promote marriage and prolific reproduction. This book studies the royal pronatalist law masterminded by Jean‐Baptiste Colbert and follows its implementation in France and New France to show that royal intervention in the realm of family and sexuality was an integral part of the process of state formation in Europe. Even before the establishment of modern demography, political writers recognized that cultivating the kingdom's human resources was essential to building the state's military and economic power. And, they argued, the hierarchical and gendered order of the traditional, monogamous conjugal household was the bedrock of a stable social and political order. For these reasons, the French royal government altered it laws to favor early marriage and to reward men who fathered large families of ten or more legitimate children. The royal government's action signaled that human fertility was no longer a matter of divine control, but a recognized and even legitimate matter for human – and thus political—intervention.

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