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Jean Nicolas’ Survey of Revolts in France (1661–1789)

The historical material gathered by the ANR project ObARDI includes a survey of revolts in France over the period 1661–1789 developed by Jean Nicolas starting in the early 1980s. To disseminate this survey and facilitate its reuse, this article discusses its origins and the context of its production.

This article has four objectives: present Jean Nicolas and the initial objectives of his survey, discuss the roll-out of the survey, its main main results, and its underlying material—now preserved and available to researchers.

The Project of a Historian

In 1973–1974, Jean Nicolas published an article about “popular emotions” (revolts) in eighteenth-century Savoie—a province he had studied during his dissertation—in two issues of the Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française (1973/4 and 1974/1). Therein, he highlighted how this was only the first step of a broader survey that would encompass all of France. At the time, Jean Nicolas was a lecturer of modern history at the University of Paris VII, focusing on sixteenth to eighteenth-century France. He would remain there throughout his career, until his retirement in 1994. His protestant origins and Marxist beliefs led this specialist in social history to focus on popular resistance over the period 1661–1789—he even mentions how this was an “existential and intellectual” choice.

Indeed, whereas most in the 1970s thought that the time of popular revolts had ceased by the mid-seventeenth century, he considered conflictual situations to be an engine of history and aimed at demonstrating that they played an important role during that period. Jean Nicolas thereby attempted to provide a “conflictual and creative coherence” to popular actions of these times. In particular, he thought to highlight how the people acted with rationality and that their actions during episodes of conflict produced genuine novelty from a political perspective: that the people constituted an actor reflexive of its own history, and of History.

He was the central actor of this project since its infancy. However, the concrete design of the survey was a collective endeavor, as Jean Nicolas consulted with many “modernist” historians in 1982–1983 in order to define the survey’s frame and tools, including Yves-Marie Bercé, Denis Richet, and Hugues Neveux. The main stakes and perimeters of the study were defined then. Concretely, these modernist historians collectively designed a very thorough grid with the objective of keeping a precise record of each “event” identified. The idea was to proceed massively, in a cumulative fashion, by recording all the signs of “popular emotions” over the period 1661–1789. Each event was to have its own card and to be integrated within a sophisticated typology (anti-fiscal riot, riots against various agents of the State, of a municipality, of the Catholic Church, etc.).

A Collective Ambition

After this preparatory phase, the survey was launched in 1983. To gather the relevant information, Jean Nicolas, then located in Paris, turned to his peers: professors of modern history in provincial universities throughout the territory. He offered them to participate to the survey, either directly, or by mobilizing their graduate students. Thanks to them, Jean Nicolas ambitioned to cover the entire French territory by empirically articulating three territorial dimensions: the “provincial” geography of Ancien Régime France, the distribution of university hubs, and a genuine “départementalization” of the survey, as départemental archives were the most valuable source of historical material for the survey. The chosen approach required a common commitment toward a quantitative, time-series approach of social events, and to the principle of a classification of social actors into “macro” groups, that is, social classes or socio-professional categories—although both methodological approaches were questioned at the time.

The first records produced by various investigators were received by Jean Nicolas in 1983: as initially envisioned, the sources analyzed displayed genuine diversity. A conference organized by Jean Nicolas in May 1984 on the theme “Popular movements and social conscience” then represented an important step in popularizing the survey. Published in 1985, its proceedings were quite widely disseminated. During the same year, Jean Nicolas started processing the records, which started piling-up. He was the true conductor of this whole enterprise: he mailed packs of empty grids to investigators, picked them back when filled, then processed them. All the records went through his hands: he numbered them, corrected them, and completed them if needed. He carefully kept all the material that progressively accumulated. He also became more and more of an investigator himself, filling the gaps due to the weakness of the information he gradually gathered as the survey extended—it was initially supposed to end in 1985.

As a matter of fact, funding for this survey was slim. Jean Nicolas could, at times, benefit from the support of the mission for the Bicentennial of the Revolution of 1789 and from the Programmed Thematic Action (PTA) “Genesis of the modern State” launched by the CNRS in 1983. But, as often the case with this type of research, the data collection effort was not backed by an institution: except for rare exceptions, it relied on the volunteer efforts of researchers, sometimes graduate students.

An Individual Enterprise

The survey nevertheless progressed and, starting 1988, was reused in various publications by Jean Nicolas and other historians. By the end of 1989, 5,125 rebellions had been recorded. By then however, the initial collective dynamics has dissipated. Though a few investigators continued to assist Jean Nicolas, prospective efforts fell more and more onto him alone. The survey kept going until 1999. In its five last years, it had become almost exclusively the work of Jean Nicolas, then retired. In the end, his general contribution was paramount as he produced alone no less than 61% of the 8,528 event cards of the survey.

This progressive individualization of the survey found its apex with the publication of the book La Rébellion française [The French Rebellion] in 2002. It was entirely written by Jean Nicolas and published under his sole name. One could see this as a limitation of Jean Nicolas’ initial endeavor, but it seems more accurate to say that it was the constant and tenacious investment of one person that enabled the survey to be completed. Jean Nicolas himself recognized that he was not able to exploit all the richness of the records of the survey in his book. Twenty years after its beginning, the overall project nevertheless led to a seminal contribution—something that has not always been the case with this type of massive data collection effort.

A Seminal Historical Contribution

Along the lines of the survey, the book focuses on popular violence, without considering mobilizations in which the people would only be a marginal force, instrumented from above. It highlights overall actions that have as their object the “challenge of direct authorities and powers,” with the diversity of popular refusal forms as its central theme—that is, the resistance that the oppressed oppose to initiatives from powerful authorities that act against justice and their rights. In an unusual way, Jean Nicolas tried to cast a very tight net on rebellious episodes.

Far from only considering large revolts gathering hundreds, if not thousands, Jean Nicolas set a very low threshold: with this shift in scale, any action by at least four individuals was recorded—provided these individuals were not family members—even if the unrest was very brief. Another originality concerns the space under scrutiny.  The territory of study corresponds to the current space of metropolitan France, including Corsica—the province of Savoie, the initial territory the project, was still a foreign territory by 1789. Still, the colonial world is left out: Jean Nicolas thought of integrating it—in particular to study resistance against slavery—but given practical hurdles, he judged that it was out of reach at the time.

Thanks to this process, and based on a clear Marxist approach, Jean Nicolas was able to promote a social, popular, and conflictual history in which deep movements included the people, and even, were generated by the people. This approach differs from most historical approaches to the eighteenth century then, where change, not to say progress, was essentially seen as carried by dominant categories: the bourgeoisie, but also the nobility and the clergy. The “Jean Nicolas survey” represents the unprecedented contribution of uncovering a popular conflictuality that had been essentially ignored by historians. It led historians to re-evaluate their views on the eighteenth century, which was until then considered as an overall “calm” period, except for a few brief conflictual outbreaks.

An Exceptional Historical Material

The results of this vast survey were not exhausted by Jean Nicolas’ book. Furthermore, as always in history, the material gathered is likely to raise questions that were not anticipated by those who assembled it.

By chance, this material has been preserved. Forty boxes host the original cards of the survey. They were given by Jean Nicolas to the university Rennes 2 in 2015, thanks to the actions of Gauthier Aubert. They are now preserved at the François Lebrun library. These “heavy” cards—each one represents four pages of data—include rich information amenable to quantitative analysis, and which is far from having been exhausted by the analysis in La Rébellion française. Furthermore, important qualitative elements on each event were also recorded, which highlights the willingness of Jean Nicolas and his team to cast a wide net in terms of information collection. There is also a lot to glean here…

Fonds Jean Nicolas, All Rights Reserved Bibliothèque François Lebrun, Université Rennes 2

Besides these 8,528 cards ready for analysis, one can also find in these forty boxes a number of duplicate cards, or cards that were withdrew by Jean Nicolas after an assessment of the output of his various collaborators: these cards could enable to better understand the rationale of the study per his creator.

And this is not all: the funds deposited at Rennes 2 also contains an important documentation about the practical roll-out of the survey—the follow-up notebook of Jean Nicolas, letters with his collaborators, etc. This rich complementary material can serve as a basis of a “survey of the survey” beyond the descriptive elements presented here.

This will surely be the occasion of another article on this blog!

Translation by Victor Gay



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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Philippe Hamon (3 décembre 2021). Jean Nicolas’ Survey of Revolts in France (1661–1789). ObARDI's Workshop. Consulté le 26 avril 2025 à l’adresse https://obardieng.hypotheses.org/73


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