{"id":3732,"date":"2025-12-11T12:44:02","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T12:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3732"},"modified":"2025-12-11T12:44:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T12:44:02","slug":"who-do-i-trust-analysing-local-grievances-at-the-start-of-the-french-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3732","title":{"rendered":"Who do I trust?  Analysing local grievances at the start of the French Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Our own Professor Dave Andress has a new journal article published in the latest issue of Historical Journal, &#8220;The Language of confiance and the French cahiers de dol\u00e9ances of 1789&#8221;, which you can read in full on open access <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/historical-journal\/article\/language-of-confiance-and-the-french-cahiers-de-doleances-of-1789\/7CADF0481D18B49E7A52EA107C270DFD\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>With increasing historiographical attention to the emotional content of French revolutionary politics, the unprecedented nationwide consultation that produced the <em>cahiers de dol\u00e9ances<\/em> of 1789, \u2018registers of grievances\u2019, drawn up by localities to the \u00a0Estates-General convocation, now available as a searchable digitised corpus of four million words, offers a way to explore the hopes, fears, and concerns of thousands of French people who participated in the <em>cahiers<\/em>\u2019 composition.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3733\" style=\"width: 782px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Cahier_des_doleances_demandes_et_representations_de_lordre_du_Tiers-Etat_de_lIsle_de_Corse_1_-_Archives_Nationales_-_B-a-34_dossier_8_piece_4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3733\" class=\"wp-image-3733 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Cahier_des_doleances_demandes_et_representations_de_lordre_du_Tiers-Etat_de_lIsle_de_Corse_1_-_Archives_Nationales_-_B-a-34_dossier_8_piece_4-772x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Cahier des dol\u00e9ances for the Island of Corsica, Archives Nationale, France, 1789\" width=\"772\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Cahier_des_doleances_demandes_et_representations_de_lordre_du_Tiers-Etat_de_lIsle_de_Corse_1_-_Archives_Nationales_-_B-a-34_dossier_8_piece_4-772x1024.jpg 772w, https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Cahier_des_doleances_demandes_et_representations_de_lordre_du_Tiers-Etat_de_lIsle_de_Corse_1_-_Archives_Nationales_-_B-a-34_dossier_8_piece_4-226x300.jpg 226w, https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Cahier_des_doleances_demandes_et_representations_de_lordre_du_Tiers-Etat_de_lIsle_de_Corse_1_-_Archives_Nationales_-_B-a-34_dossier_8_piece_4-768x1018.jpg 768w, https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Cahier_des_doleances_demandes_et_representations_de_lordre_du_Tiers-Etat_de_lIsle_de_Corse_1_-_Archives_Nationales_-_B-a-34_dossier_8_piece_4.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 772px) 100vw, 772px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3733\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Cahier des dol\u00e9ances for the Island of Corsica, Archives Nationale, France, 1789<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The article analyses these documents, which described as \u2018a remarkable corpus of political expression&#8217;, focusing on their use of the concept of \u2018trust\u2019 (<em>confiance),<\/em> to find new evidence on the nature and shape of the political relationships the writers believed they inhabited, and on the extent to which they were enacting agency over the prospect of change. Their trust is shown to be conditional and assertive, a high standard and an exacting expectation. The documents they left behind manifest their desire to have and to keep political agency, and to actively maintain a relationship between their local wishes and the evolution of national structures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our own Professor Dave Andress has a new journal article published in the latest issue of Historical Journal, &#8220;The Language of confiance and the French cahiers de dol\u00e9ances of 1789&#8221;, which you can read in full on open access here. With increasing historiographical attention to the emotional content of French revolutionary politics, the unprecedented nationwide consultation that produced the cahiers de dol\u00e9ances of 1789, \u2018registers of grievances\u2019, drawn up by localities to the \u00a0Estates-General convocation, now available as a searchable digitised corpus of four million words, offers a way to explore the hopes, fears, and concerns of thousands of French people who participated in the cahiers\u2019 composition. &nbsp; The article [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[893,296,895,144,894],"class_list":["post-3732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new_publications","category-research-in-focus","tag-18th-century","tag-french-revolution","tag-popular-politics","tag-regionalism","tag-trust"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3732"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3735,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3732\/revisions\/3735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}