Quantitative Studies of The French Revolution

QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
GILBERT SHAPIRO, JOHN MARKOFF, and SASHA R. WEITMAN
I. INTRODUCTION: ORIENTATION AND RATIONALE

Revolutions have fascinated moralists, political theorists, and historians for
centuries. Since 1789, the prevalence of revolution and, perhaps more impor-
tant, the threat of revolution have been pervasive forces in contemporary
society. Social scientists and other students of the human condition have
launched inquiries with an extremely wide diversity of objectives and methods;
and we feel it necessary, in order to delineate our own approach, to dis-
tinguish among the variety of activities commonly collected under the titles
of "comparative revolution" or the "sociology of revolution."'
Some writers have attempted to discern, beneath the violence and chaos of
revolutions and the diversity of revolutionary experiences, a more or less
uniform pattern of development, advancing a "natural history" of revolution.
Such studies concentrate on the course of events in revolutions once they have
begun, rather than, for example, on the patterns of recruitment of leaders and
followers into revolutionary movements, or the conditions of social structure
before revolutions break out, or the consequences of revolutionary episodes for
the history of society. Such work is invariably and necessarily comparative.
In the "natural history" approach, revolution is regarded as a species, of
which the French, the Russian, and the American might be selected specimens.
The object about which generalizations are desired is the class of all revolu-
tions, whose common taxonomically defining elements are sought.2
Other theories and comparative efforts go beyond such attempts to generalize
over the class of all revolutions, in order to seek common elements in such
broader categories as "internal war" or "conflicts within nations."3 While we
1. The most adequate surveys of this field of study and its problems are Chalmers
Johnson, Revolutionary Change (Boston, 1966), Revolution and the Social System
(Stanford, 1964), Lawrence Stone, "Theories of Revolution," World Politics 18 (1966),
159-176, and Isaac Kramnick, "Reflections on Revolution: Definition and Explanation
in Recent Scholarship,"History and Theory 11 (1972), 26-63.
2. Representative works include: Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution (New
York, 1938), Lyford Edwards, The Natural History of Revolution (New York, 1965),
Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, Vol. III (New York 1937-41), Henri
See, Evolution et revolutions (Paris, 1929), and Rex D. Hopper, 'The Revolutionary
Process,"Social Forces 28 (1950), 270-279.
3. Internal War: Problems and Approaches, ed. Harry Eckstein (Princeton, 1964),
164 SHAPIRO, MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
wish unqualified success to all who seek to elucidate the human condition, we
are hardly sanguine about the possibilities of discovering interesting, important,
and reliable uniformities even over the class of all "revolutions," let alone of
"internal wars." Perhaps a sub-category, such as "modernizing revolutions,"
has some chance of defining a category for which reliable and theoretically
significant generalizations can be discovered, but our real interest here is not
in attacking the strategies of others, but in clarifying our own. While the
comparative study of revolutions in an effort to generalize about them has
dominated the "sociology of revolution," and we too are sociologists studying
revolutions, we are not engaged in that quest (however worthwhile), and we
do not evaluate the relevance of hypotheses, in our own work on the French
Revolution, on the basis of their applicability to, say, the Russian, American,
English, or Mexican revolutions.
Still other scholars have been intrigued by the extraordinary men who come
to the fore as leaders, and the ordinary men who participate as followers
either in revolutionary movements or in riots or other transient events. They
have, consequently, studied the processes of recruitment into various political
groups, associations, and crowds, and their social composition.4 Others are
interested in the political in-fighting that emerges when a society's usual
restraints on the means employed in political conflicts do not apply. These last
produce studies of military coups, foreign involvement, and party strategy
with a view to determining which actor (or actors) wins in a revolutionary
situation. Such studies may be of importance in themselves, and some are
even designed, as are ours, to throw light on the social forces operative in
revolutionary situations. But their research strategies, if not their objectives,
are sharply different from the one which we are suggesting.
and "On the Etiology of Internal Wars," History and Theory 4 (1965), 133-163. Ray-
mond Tanter, "Dimensions of Conflict Behavior within and between Nations, 1958-
1960," Journal of Conflict Resolution 10 (1966), 41-64, and "Dimensions of Conflict
Behavior within Nations, 1955-1960: Turmoil and Internal War" in Papers, Peace
Research Society, Vol. III (1965), 159-183. R. J. Rummel, "Dimensions of Conflict
Behavior within and between Nations," General Systems Yearbook, Vol. VIII (1963),
1-50, and "Dimensions of Conflict Behavior within Nations, 1946-1959," Journal of
Conflict Resolution 10 (1966), 65-73. Gratitude is expressed to John Max, for stimulat-
ing ideas on the theory of revolution, and a careful critical reading of this paper.
4. While each of the following works goes considerably beyond studies of recruit-
ment, the analysis of the social composition of crowds and groups is nevertheless
central to their method. George Rude, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford,
1959); Albert Soboul, Les Sans-Culottesparisiens en l'an II (Paris, n.d.); Crane Brinton,
The Jacobins: An Essay in the New History (New York, 1930). Of course, many others
could be cited.
5. Here we would include the vast literature on revolutionary strategy and tactics,
such as the well-known work of Lenin and Che Guevera, as well as such scholarly
studies as Robert R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the
French Revolution (Princeton, 1941) and large parts of the work of Soboul, cited above.
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 165
Our efforts are not directly concerned with what happens once a revolution
has begun, but rather in the definition of the features of a "revolutionary situa-
tion." At least since the work of Marx and Tocqueville, this has been a central
focus for many of the efforts to develop "theories of revolution." Although
there are more or less close ties among these various subject matters, this quest
should not be confused with the search for a natural history of revolutionary
processes, studies of the recruitment of revolutionary participants, or the
strategy and tactics of revolutionary action. While the events of August 4,
August 10, or the 9th of Thermidor are of the greatest significance for diag-
nosing the quality of the Revolution, we - like Tocqueville - in our quest
for its sources in the social structure must invest more of our time and effort
in the analysis of the social structure of the Old Regime.
In contrast to the perspectives described above, the basic subject matter of
our studies is not revolution, but society - a case study of a trajectory in the
life of a particular society. Because the issue of statistics vs. case studies is a
perennial methodological debate in sociology (and because historians are
beginning to be infected by the disease), we feel it necessary to indicate some
methodological grounds for an interest in a single case.
The French Revolution of 1789 was a unique event; but understanding it,
we contend, is of importance if one assumes that there are principles of the
organization, the integration, and the operation of societies which may manifest
themselves more clearly in some historical circumstances than in others. In
revolutions, we suggest, one finds writ large the processes of social change,
which are so much more difficult to discern in slow and gradual historical
drifts. Revolution is of interest also because we expect to find the conditions
of stability, that is, of the integration and operation of social structures, more
apparent in extremis. It is a point too often neglected that one cannot under-
stand stability without understanding change. One can no more study the
determinants of persistence without studying its opposite than test hypotheses
about heat without examining both cold and hot objects.6 Hence, insofar as
"functional" sociology is concerned with the study of persistence and integra-
tion, the study of revolutions must be at the center of its attention; it is not
an odd, if interesting, sideshow.
Thus through the intensive examination of a single case one hopes to ob-
serve manifestations of the operation of general processes. There is, of course,
6. Interestingly, comparative studies of revolution commit a similar, if, in a sense,

an opposite error: they ignore the study of stability. In seeking the uniformities in
revolutionary situations, they rarely examine nonrevolutionary situations. Hence,
Brinton confesses that between successive editions of The Anatomy of Revolution, the
"alienationof the intellectuals"could not properly be regarded as a clear-cut distinguish-
ing sign of a society on the verge of revolution, as he had argued in the earlier version,
because it was a general characteristic of all modern societies. (See preface, revised
edition [New York, 1965], vi.)
always a question of the limits of the generalizability of results, a problem

which leads some social scientists to reject the case study altogether. What is
often not realized is that there is always some uncertainty as to precisely what
universe one may generalize to; in a profound sense, all studies are case
studies. It is not the principles of statistics that tell us whether the results of a
study of a probability sample of Americans in 1972 can be reasonably expected
to hold true in 1973.7 It is the task of the case researcher to frame his ques-
tions, and his explanatory concepts, in such a way as to permit similar
questions to be asked of other cases. In this way, case studies are, ideally,
cumulative; and a proper answer to the sociologist who objects that we are
studying "only one" revolutionary situation is that we are not the only
researchers in the world. The usual comparative study of revolutions, by
concentrating on those features in which revolutions resemble one another,
has neglected the distinctive features of particular revolutions. Yet, we believe,
it is partly through studying the distinctive features of the French Revolution
in the context of French society that one can hope to discover sociological
uniformities of a different kind: the principles of social organization, change,
and development.
We have referred to such a project as a case study. But this is so only in
the sense that all particular researches are case studies. Consider a man
studying a social structure, such as the contemporary United States, New
York, or a labor union, conceived statically at one point in time. He may,
with the union, for example, regard his sample size as, say, two thousand or
one, depending on whether, at the moment, he is generalizing to the entire
membership of that union or to the population of unions in general. Identically,
we might be regarded as studying 100,000 grievances, 1200 documents, a few
hundred electoral districts, or one society in revolution.
The quantitative methodology employed is, at bottom, the search for and
the interpretation of systematic covariations; our study, too, is comparative in
that we compare Bretagne and Languedoc. No doubt an audience of historians
would not take us to task for studying only one country. Indeed, some
historians of eighteenth-century France, realizing the degree to which that
country varied from place to place, have wondered at studying as much as one
country. Yet it is precisely such variation that permits the employment of
quantitative techniques of hypothesis testing. One can examine covariation
only where there is something that varies.8 The incredible diversity of eight-
7. For a detailed discussion see Lee J. Cronboch, Goldine C. Gleser, Harinder Nanda,
and Nageswari Rajaratnam, The Dependability of Behavioral Measurements: Theory
of Generalizability for Scores and Profiles (New York, 1972), 358-383.
8. The incest taboo may well have provoked the largest number of explanations of
any social phenomenon and unquestionably the largest number of hare-brainedtheories.
What prevents decisive testing of these explanations- and rejections of most, if not all
- is precisely its universality. Since all known societies have it, one cannot study the
eenth-century France, a society characterized by one nineteenth-century

historian as being unequal in its very inequalities, means that we will, in fact,
compare regions that experienced revolutionary excitement, regions producing
or supporting counter-revolution, and regions where little happened.
Among revolutions, the great French Revolution of 1789 appears to be the
most strategic choice for such a study, not because of any unique historical
role that it plays in world history, but because of the unique richness of
quantitative and quantifiable materials available. We have sought - and are
continuing to seek - to bring together a mine of data with which we may
examine and test a wide variety of hypotheses. We are exploring the use of an
instrument for the study of social change in eighteenth-century France, and so
the theoretical propositions that have been tested, and that may be tested in
the future, range quite widely.
Some of the finest minds of the world of scholarship have devoted them-
selves to the study of the French Revolution. From their works one can cull a
vast number of interrelated, sometimes contradictory, and sometimes comple-
inentary views, a surprising proportion of which may be tested with available
quantitative data. Indeed, we may put this more strongly. The multiplicity of
well-argued explanations of the French Revolution cries out for some new
kind of sifting of evidence. And of course we have our own ideas which we
wish to explore. It is important, then, that the materials we have been as-
sembling be subject to multiple uses, as we shall illustrate in describing our
empirical investigations to date.
II. THE CAHIERS DE DOLJANCES
Although hardly the only data gathered, the most important single resource
we have generated is a content analysis of the celebrated cahiers de doliences
of 1789. These remarkable documents, as is well known, were produced in
the course of the convocation of the Estates General. The election of 1789
allowed a very wide suffrage and saw the representation, to one degree or
another, of virtually the entire kingdom and most of the significant social
groupings of the old regime. Properly to appreciate the potentialities of these
documents, one must know something about the central features of the
election.9
conditions under which it does not occur. What can be tested are theories about those
aspects of incest that do vary, such as which relatives are forbidden to marry. See, e.g.,
G. P. Murdock, Social Strictcure(New York, 1949), Chapter 10.
9. For a more detailed general description than given below see Beatrice F. Hyslop,
A Guide to the General Cahiers of 1789 (New York, 1933). This seems a good place
to express our gratitude for the very generous assistance of Hyslop during the period
when this project was being organized.
The electoral district used for the previous Estates General, in 1614, had
been the bailliage, a judicial unit defining the territorial jurisdiction of a lower-
level royal court. It was adopted, with modifications here and there, as the
basis of the elections of 1789. The Estates General was a gathering of dele-
gates from the three estates of the realm. As had been done in the past, each
estate - clergy, nobility, and Third Estate (a residual category which included
most of the population) - followed its own electoral procedure, so organized
as to maximize the possibility of everyone's taking part in some kind of face-
to-face assembly where his voice might be heard. While the convocation
varied a great deal from region to region, there was a basic regulation and a
modal procedure which we shall describe here. In the case of the numerous
Third Estate, this obviously required a sequence of indirect elections. Each
bailliage contained towns and rural parishes. Within each of the rural parishes
a meeting of all the eligible members of the Third Estate (males at least
twenty-five years of age) was held, to elect delegates to a bailliage assembly.
Decisions were made by voice vote in public assembly. In the towns there was
a similar meeting of each guild or corporation, as well as a meeting of those
not organized into corporate bodies. These meetings elected deputies to a
town meeting, which in turn elected representatives to the bailliage assembly,
where they met with the rural delegates. Sometimes this bailliage assembly
elected delegates to the Estates General at Versailles. In other cases there
might be still another step in which delegates from several bailliages met
together to choose representatives. Now every one of these assemblies -
parish, guild, town, bailliage, or group of several bailliages - was a delibera-
tive as well as an electoral body. That is, it not only picked representatives,
but also drew up a cahier de doleances, a record of grievances, suggestions,
complaints, and proposals. The nobility and the clergy followed their own
procedures, which were not as complex as those of the Third Estate (because
the two privileged orders were far less numerous) but which also involved the
drafting of cahiers in addition to electing deputies.
The range of institutions and practices of eighteenth-century France treated
in the cahiers is vast. Education, the organization of the government, civil and
criminal law, the seignorial regime, the military, agriculture, and the relations
of the French Church with Rome - these are just some of the aspects of
French society discussed in these documents. Concerning these institutions and
practices one finds an enormous variety of demands. That there is such a large
number of documents,10that they cover virtually all of France, geographically
The standard source authoritatively describing the incredible complexity of the con-
vocation regulations, with the relevant documentation, is Armand Brette, Receuil de
documents relatifs 2 la convocation des etats generaux de 1789 (Four vols. and Atlas,
Paris, 1894-1915).
10. Opinions differ as to the total number of cahiers produced. Edme Champion in
and socially, is remarkable enough. What is more remarkable still about the
cahiers, and gives them their special interest to students of social change, is
that the French Revolution is the only major revolution at the beginning of
which the entire nation, in effect, gathered in public assemblies and recorded
its grievances, aspirations, and demands for change. Since nothing would
appear as patently significant in the study of a revolution as the range, in-
tensity, and distribution of grievances among groups in the population, the
cahiers de doleances are absolutely unique in importance as a documentary
source.
Moreover, the cahiers have particular virtues (if some widely-discussed
vices) as a tool for the study of public opinion. Many historians have criticized
them for a wide variety of alleged shortcomings as public opinion data. For
example, certain individuals are supposed to have been too influential, and
others (like the Duke of Orleans) deliberately circulated "model cahiers"
which were too closely imitated by some of the actual cahiers. Moreover, the
collective nature of the assemblies makes it difficult to know, it has too often
been argued, just whose opinions are expressed in these documents. We feel
that much of this criticism is misplaced.-' The modem opinion poll gives one a
study of the opinions held by a sample of unrelated individuals. The relation
of this collation of individual opinions to any form of political action is
La France d'apres les cahiers de 1789 (Paris, 1897), 21, suggests that there were
more than fifty thousand. Beatrice Hyslop, a more recent authority, guesses "more than
twenty-five thousand," A Guide to the General Cahiers, ix-x. Albert Soboul offers sixty
thousand in Precis d'histoire de la revolution franfaise (Paris, 1962), 103-104. The
estimate of the total number of cahiers actually written is an extremely hazardous task.
In the first place, there were roughly forty thousand rural communes; but in many in-
stances the "parish"in the convocation sense encompassed a number of such districts.
The number of preliminary cahiers of clergy, while undoubtedly enormous, is totally
unknown, for these documents have rarely been studied, reprinted, or even catalogued.
The other cahiers are too few in comparison with these to drastically affect the total.
We are engaged in further studies of the number of parishes in each bailliage which
did probably meet and draw up a document.
11. Let us consider, for example, the charge that the cahiers reveal little about the
views of assemblies that drafted them because they contain material copied from other
cahiers, or from propaganda designed specifically to influence them. But a comparison
of the bona fide cahiers with such electoral propagandamaterials reveals that choice was
exercised in selecting among available models; that frequently only a few articles were
copied; that models were rarely if ever copied in toto; that even when totally copied,
new demands were usually added. (See, for example, the revealing analysis by Paul
Bois, Cahiers de doleances du tiers etat de la senechaussee de Chateau-du-Loirpour les
Etats generaux de 1789 [Gap, 1960], ChapterIV.) In short, everything suggests deliberate
selection. And why not select a more articulate, expressive, and forceful statement of
one's own genuinely held demands? Numerous other charges and objections have been
raised against the cahiers, discussion of which must be reserved for another place.
More detail may be found in John Markoff, "Who Wants Bureaucracy?French Public
Opinion in 1789" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins, 1972) and Sasha
Weitman, "Bureaucracy,Democracy, and the French Revolution" (unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, Washington University, Saint Louis, 1968).
entirely problematic. For the purposes of historical sociology, opinion polls

are altogether too democratic, since in the realm of political action the opinions
of some are far more influential than those of others. At the same time, polls
are too individualistic, since significant historical action derives less often from
isolated men than from collective interactions. And if this is true of con-
temporary democracies, it is bound to be truer still of the corporate-aristocratic
regime of pre-revolutionary France. The public opinion that historical and
political sociologists ought to be studying is not just a set of attitudes and not
just a set of opinions; what they ought to be studying is the expression of
opinion qua political action. It is opinion that has been articulated through
available institutional channels - such as, in modern society, mass media,
party platforms, petitions, and demonstrations. Given the choice between the
cahiers and a Gallup poll, for the study of public opinion on the eve of the
revolution, we would opt for the cahiers. The endorsement, if not the drafting,
of a cahier was a collective political act, an integral part of the political process.
That those who were more articulate, more persistent, more concerned, more
influential were more likely to get their views into the texts is not a weak point
of the cahiers as a research tool; on the contrary, we regard it as a very great
strength, for our interest is in relating the contents of these documents to
antecedent conditions, subsequent events, and processes of historical change.
The collective nature of these documents also permits an avenue of escape
from the explanations of social phenomena strictly in terms of aggregate psy-
chology to which studies using modem opinion polls are almost necessarily
wedded. If we want to understand the effects of differing levels of social
mobility, as sociologists it is more important to know the political attitudes of
regions of high and low mobility (or of groups within regions) than of
individual persons of high and low mobility. Yet the data on mobility's effects
on attitudes in contemporary sociology are generally of this latter kind. Even
if, say, mobile individuals become conservative, the net historical effect of
mobility still may not reduce the threat of revolution, because the non-mobile
may be resentful. (See the research by Shapiro and Dawson, discussed below.)
The almost total neglect of this distinction in the literature on mobility as a
factor in the French Revolution (aside from the work of Tocqueville), as well
as the more general lack in sociology of data on collective attitudes - despite
the central role of such elements in, for example, the theories of Durkheim -
suggests how important the study of such data as the cahiers may be. It is for
such reasons that we contend that the cahiers would be of interest to sociolo-
gists even if there had been no revolution.
The cahiers de doleances, then, are the results of a reasonably uniform
procedure12 whereby Frenchmen spoke of what bothered them in 1789 -
12. There are countless minor and countable major variations from the standard
and their complaints range from the intricate nuances of the system of indirect
taxation all the way to frustration produced by the loud church bells in the
next parish. They represent a set of collective representations that sociology
ought not ignore. Moreover, they have been, surprisingly, largely unexploited.
To be sure, historians have invested a great amount of energy in publishing
these fascinating materials, in reading them for insights into the Old Regime,
in quoting them as illustrative material, and in closely analyzing them in
regional and local studies. But the questions that appear most exciting to us
have hardly been asked before. How did the complaints of the French people
in 1789 vary across the map of France? What aspects of the social, economic,
and political structure of eighteenth-century France are associated with dif-
ferent sorts of demands? With what kinds of events during the revolution are
different kinds of demands correlated? An appropriate research technique for
such questions is, first, to subject the cahiers to content analysis, and then to
perform multivariate statistical analyses. Only such methods, fully utilizing
available electronic data-processing technology, can allow for the detailed
examination of such a huge mass of material for the entire nation. While a
number of imaginative and skillful efforts have recently been published by
others, the full potential of these data for social science has hardly been
approached.13
procedure, which pose interesting problems of comparability and headaches for the man
who designs a sample. The parish of Garrebourg in the bailliage of Sarrebourg et
Phalsbourg, for example, drew up two distinct cahiers. When we find some such
deviation from the norm in a parish, the explanation is usually unknown to us, whereas
the variant proceduresused at higher levels in the electoral process may have researched
histories. For example, Third Estate of the city of Metz petitioned for direct
representation at the Estates General, being unsatisfied, as were a number of other
cities, with representation through the bailliage to which it had been assigned. The
petition was granted;but as it was now on the verge of the opening of the Estates, the
city was convoked by neighborhoods, rather than by corporations, to save time. A town
cahier to be sent to Versailles was then drawn up. Some corporations, however, pro-
tested. They claimed they had been insufficientlyrepresented by this aberrant procedure.
The Estates General considered the issue and on July 11, 1789 declared the election
null and void and ordered new elections. These new elections, which did not take place
until the fall, far later than the overwhelming majority of elections, produced a second
cashier. (See the article by Lesprand, "Election du depute direct et cahier du tiers
etat de la ville de Metz en 1789," Anniuaire de la societet d'histoire et d'archeologie
lorraine [1903].) There is no end to such oddities.
13. A number of recent studies by Paul Bois, Charles Tilly, and Philip Dawson
demonstrate theoretically meaningful covariation of cahier contents and social indicators
in a local or professionally circumscribedcontext. Complementing the studies described
here, national-level content analyses are under way at the University of North Carolina,
by George V. Taylor, and at the Centre de Recherches Historiques of the Sixth Section
of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, under the direction of Frangois Furet.
Plans have been made to incorporate, ultimately, the last-mentioned work (which is
proceeding by methods quite consistent with our own) and our codes into a single data
file. We are grateful to Tilly, Dawson, Taylor, and Furet for their many forms of
assistance in this work.
III. THE CONTENT ANALYSIS
The procedure of content analysis we have used, to which we have given

the name "Concrete Analytic Coding," attempts to break new ground in a
number of ways. We have, first of all, rejected the idea of entering the full
text of the document into the computer, in order to search for particular
word-combinations listed in a "dictionary." Instead, we have continued to use
human coders in the electronic era as intermediaries between the text and the
machine. In previous applications of code-aided content analysis, the categories
used for the coding are also the categories used for the substantive analysis.
This, applied to the cahiers, would have meant that coders would have
utilized categories such as "Egalitarianism,""Radicalism," "Pro-Bureaucracy,"
as these abstractions reflect our current research interests. The unfortunate
coders would then have had to struggle, not only with the complexity and
muddle of the Old Regime and its terminology, but also with the complexity
and muddle of our concepts and their terminology. First of all, this would
probably have resulted in very poor reliability. But, even more importantly,
the many other rich resources of the cahiers de doleances would go unexplored.
A few studies bounded by our a priori notions of what is interesting would
be produced, but not much more. If our theorizing improved after the coding
- in other words if we learned anything in the course of this enterprise -
we would need to code the cahiers all over again to test our new insights.
Moreover, other researchers, with different substantive and theoretical inter-
ests, might well wish to make use of these data, and would not be able to
use such data.
To avoid this dilemma, we attempt to separate radically the activity of the
coder from the activity of the scientist who will use this material for the study
of eighteenth-century France. By (figuratively) joining the human coder to
a computer we can establish such an appropriate division of labor in a two-
step process. The human coder isolates a grievance in the text, and translates
it into a standard, mnemonic set of symbols which both humans and com-
puters can read. The scientist, on the other hand, through the use of com-
puter programs, subsequently specifies conditions for retrieval and scoring,
and uses his sociological and historical judgment as to what kinds of concrete
grievances are relevant to his various purposes.
The coder's job is to translate, as one translates, say, from French to En-
glish. In this case he translates from French to a highly limited vocabulary,
a syntax and grammar simplified for ease of computer programming. If there
were millions of ways in which to express a particular demand in the original
French, we expect, in the ideal, that there would be only one way of ex-
pressing the same demand in our code. Hence the task of the computer, or
rather of the scientist instructing the computer to find some grievance in the
collection, is rendered possible. Of course there is some distortion and some
loss of' meaning in any translation. But in principle, as little analysis as pos-
sible is built into the codes.
Our code does not indicate the presence of demands for such an abstract
theoretical concept as "bureaucratization." What it does indicate is the pres-
ence of such demands as those for the abolition of venal offices in the judi-
ciary, roughly on the same level of concreteness as the demand appears in
the original document. It is the job of the scientist to call this a demand for
bureaucratization if he so desires. Of course there may indeed be codes whose
meaning is relatively abstract, but these are used only when that abstraction
is in the nature of the original statement, as in "All men are created equal."
In sum, our aim is to avoid placing demands into categories of a higher level
of abstraction than the level of the original formulation. As is always the
case, in scholarship or in life, we cannot pretend that we have accomplished
our aim completely.
This strategy has the twofold advantage of permitting the coders to oper-
ate with relatively reliable low-level categories while, at the same time, a
large body of material - about 100,000 demands - is made available to
many analysts with varied interests, each of whom can group the material
in whatever abstract categories best serve his interests. Such rewards do not
come without corresponding costs. There is a considerable labor to be done
by the analyst, in deciding how to use this material to measure what he is
interested in, for the coders have not done this job for him. Experience in-
dicates that the cost in time, however, is not excessive.14
In the ideal, the set of symbols written by a coder could be translated back
into the original form with little change in the substantive meaning of the
demand. Given the nature of the materials, with their bewildering variety
of demands, complaints, suggestions, recriminations, arguments, and even
statistics, such a task appears formidable. How is one to capture this diversity
in a concrete code? And even more importantly, how can such a concrete
code be made usable by coders who, after all, cannot be expected to mem-
orize thousands of symbols? The solution to this problem was to create a
code that (a) is analytic and (b) has mnemonic properties. The goal was
to have an orderly and rational arrangement of the diverse categories, so
that a coder does not have to remember the precise set of symbols needed
to translate a particular demand, but can quickly find them in a manual,
or even reconstruct them by a process of inference.
The code manual is divided into sections representing major institutional
categories of eighteenth-century France: Government, Economy, Religion,
14. Computer programs have been developed to provide the analyst with complete
Boolean freedom, in either retrieving grievances or constructing scale scores.
the Judiciary, the Stratification System, the Constitution. Each division is

represented by a mnemonic symbol. Government, for instance, is symbolized
by "G." These categories are then divided and subdivided into finer cate-
gories, which, in turn, are represented by their own mnemonic symbols. The
coder zeroes in on the precise code required by a search. To follow through
one possible search: Government is divided into Finances, Taxation, Ad-
ministrative Agencies, the Military, the King, and Regional and Local Gov-
ernment; Taxation is divided into Tax Advantages, New Taxes, Existing
Direct Taxes, Existing Indirect Taxes, Direct Tax Agencies, Indirect Tax
Agencies and Tax Administration; the Existing Direct Taxes are divided
into the Capitation, Vingtiemes, Taille, Impots Accessoires 'a la Taille, Im-
pots Reels, and Imp'ts Personnels; and the Taille is subdivided into Taille
Personnelle, Taille Tarifee, and Taille Reelle. In looking for the code for a
particular institution or practice, the coder flips through the pages of the
code manual, following a branching process, until he locates the precise code
required. For example, a coder encountering a demand concerning the taille
personnelle would code it as G TA DI TP -standing for Government-
Taxation-Direct Taxation-Taille Personnelle. Thus the code manual is ana-
lytically arranged, and the final combination of mnemonic symbols -that
is, the code -stands for a concrete demand. The hierarchically nested set
of categories we have constructed is an indispensable aid in the translation
of the prose of the cahiers into code. Our intention is to avoid delimiting the
structure of analysis, for the analyst is free to interpret the concrete code as
he wishes. In the example given, he need not group the taille personnelle for
his purposes with other governmental functions at all, since the computer is
able to identify such grievances specifically, and not merely as "taxation"
demands. On the other hand, if an investigator is interested in all demands
in the category of taxation, he may wish to utilize our classification of the
concrete taxation demands. If so, he need merely ask for retrieval of those
codes beginning "GTA" regardless of the more detailed specification that
follows.
A distinct set of symbols was created to translate the action specified in
each demand. This action may be quite precise ("Re-establish") or it may
be extremely vague ("Do something about."). As there are about one thou-
sand institutions and about fifty actions for which we have codes, the num-
ber of combinations defining distinct possible codes is enormous. In addition
to "Standard Action Codes," which might occur in any institutional context,
such as "Abolish," "Equalize," "Modify," "Simplify," "Improve," "Elim-
inate Abuses," "Render Responsible," we also allow a large number of "Spe-
cial Action Codes" which are institution-specific. For instance, the demand
"Only members of the Third Estate may be deputies of the Third in the
Estates General" is a frequent and important demand. Since the action de-
manded is specific to the Estates General, we created a special symbol for it.
The flexibility of our coding system is important, and can be illustrated by
the choices open to a student of grievances regarding taxation. He may wish
to retrieve the location of all demands of a defined category, so he can con-
sult their exact wording in the documents themselves, using our codes as an
index. Or he may wish to produce a quantitative score, to study the relation-
ship between a defined class of grievances and some other variables (which
may be other grievance scores, or characteristics of the Old Regime, or the
incidence of revolutionary events, or all of these). In constructing a score,
he may wish to increment the score if a document mentions taxation at all,
or only if it mentions a direct tax, or only if it mentions the vingtieme des
biens fonds (a particular direct tax). Furthermore, he may wish only to add
to the score, or retrieve the location of the grievance, if the demand is ex-
pressly for a reduction of taxation, or for increased efficiency in its admin-
istration, or for a standardization of its rate over France, or if privileges of
exemption are to be abolished, or established, or maintained. Finally, he can
link any such specification with any number of others by the terms "and," "or,"9
and "not": for example, retrieve those demands for either a reduction or an
abolition of either the vingtieme des biens fonds or the capitation.'5
There is one other special feature of our coding procedures that must be
mentioned. It was clear at the outset that our ideal of perfect concreteness
was not going to be realized. Therefore, we built a capacity for self-improve-
ment into our system. Suppose a coder encounters a reference in the text
to a direct tax that is not yet included in our list of direct taxes and for which,
hence, there is no specific symbol. The coder is then instructed to indicate
that the text refers to a "miscellaneous" direct tax. (He writes "G TA DI 0":
15. The measurement of the inter-coder reliability presents severe problems with this
kind of code, and we have found the standard techniques to be inapplicable, but we
have evidence that agreement between coders is high. Moreover, analyses already carried
out have yielded meaningful results. See Gilbert Shapiro and Philip Dawson, "Social
Mobility and Political Radicalism: The Case of the French Revolution," Dimensions of
Quantitative Research in History, ed. Robert Fogel (Princeton, 1972), and Markoff,
"Who Wants Bureaucracy?"
There are a number of complexities in these documents that prevent the method just
described from yielding anything approaching complete success. Especially troublesome
is the possibility that grievances may be coupled semantically. In such a demand as,
"Either expel the Jews from the Kingdom, or treat them just like other Frenchmen,"
the interdependenceof the two parts of this statement needs to be taken into account.
We cannot explore fully such issues here. And it must be other scholars, and not
ourselves, who pass final judgment on our success or failure, based on the substantive
studies which we are now beginning to complete and a far more detailed statement of
our content analytic techniques and their associated problems which is currently being
prepared.
Government, Taxation, Direct, Miscellaneous.) In addition, the coder indi-

cates as precisely as possible the identity of this new item in a space reserved
for "Remarks." If, at some later time, we are not satisfied with the precision
of our code in the Direct Taxes category, we may instruct the computer to
retrieve all instances of miscellaneous direct taxes, so we can read the coder's
remarks and invent new symbols if we so desire. Other coding difficulties are
handled analogously. For example, if a coder does not understand the text,
because of some obscure historical reference, he writes a special code to alert
us to a "historical problem" and then copies that portion of the text in the
space reserved for "Remarks." The flexibility afforded by computer retrievals
continually enables us to improve our coding to the desired level.
Along with the code for the grievance content, we have recorded a set of
symbols to indicate its source. Not just the document, but the page number,
and the location on that page as indicated by a special scale, is entered into
our electronic file. If we or others ever wish to go beyond the coder's remarks,
we can return to the original text for further details with little difficulty. For
example, should one subsequently decide that our classification of demands
dealing with the law of commercial bankruptcies was inadequate for some
research purposes, one could locate these demands in the cahiers quickly,
and recode them in greater detail, thereby avoiding the major expenditure
of time and labor that would be otherwise required to locate the relevant
passages in the text.
This means that an important by-product of our work is the creation of
a highly detailed index to a large number of cahiers. By sorting our electronic
file according to the codes for grievances, and then printing the location in-
formation along with the grievance, we can provide a valuable bibliographic
tool. Even scholars with no interest whatsoever in quantitative research
might well want to be able to locate cahiers containing interesting discussions
of some aspect of French society. If a particular scholar wants, say, to find
those cahiers of the Nobility which contain discussions of the relation of the
French Church to Rome, our index enables him to find at once the precise
textual locations of all demands dealing with this question in the coded docu-
ments.
IV. THE SAMPLE OF DOCUMENTS
Given limited resources and the enormous number of documents produced,

it was, of course, necessary to sample. We wished (a) to obtain as complete
as possible a picture of French public opinion at the beginning of the Revo-
lution; (b) to utilize those classes of cahiers for which we could compute
(and thereby correct) biases in the sample; and (c) to utilize published docu-
ments where possible (for the costs of obtaining and coding manuscripts are
far higher). These three criteria led to a collection consisting of virtually'6
all the extant "general cahiers" of the Nobility and the Third Estate (that is,
those documents produced by the Nobles and commoners at the final stage
of the electoral process, and carried to Versailles) and a sample of 826 parish
documents clustered in 47 bailliages.17 The first two categories constitute
quite a dense sample: they make up 83% of those produced in 1789;18 the
parish sample is far less dense, but our preliminary analysis, summarized
below, indicates that it is only slightly biased. Our study of the characteristics
of sampled bailliages as compared with the characteristics of all of France
yields as a by-product (discussed more thoroughly below) an analysis of the
differential rates of survival of historical documents, and a measure, for this
case, of the bias introduced into historical study from this source. But the
major purpose of this analysis is to correct biases in our sample, for to dis-
cover biases is to discover, at the same time, how to eliminate them through
the assignment of appropriate weights.
V. EXTERNAL DATA
We have come to call "external" all data other than content codes character-
izing the cahiers themselves. These data bear either upon regional variations
16. A small number of general cahiers were not coded due to special circumstances.
For example, the cahier of the Third Estate of Nemours is so long as to be prohibitively
costly to code. The cahier of Dauphine was drawn up by the provincial Estates of
Dauphine, a procedure differing greatly from that by which the vast majority of
documents were produced. For details see Markoff, "Who Wants Bureaucracy?",
Appendix.
17. To construct the sample, we began with all those bailliages covered in the official
series, published under the auspices of the French Ministry of Education by the Com-
misson de Recherches et Publication des Documents Inedits sur l'Histoire Economique
de la Revolution Frangaise. To these we added the volumes put out by a number of
departmental committees which followed reasonably similar criteria of editing, and are
thus comparable. From this list of bailliages, we excluded all those having fewer than
ten published parish cahiers, leaving a total of 47 bailliages in our sample. We are grate-
ful to Marc Bouloiseau for his advice and aid in collecting information essential to
sampling decisions.
18. This is not quite the same as saying that 83% of electoral districts are repre-
sented. The reader will appreciate that the complexities of the electoral procedure do
not permit a single figure to represent "proportion of assemblies whose documents are
included in our sample." That the three orders had the option of drawing up cahiers
in common, that special rules created some circumscriptions for the Third Estate that
did not exist for the Nobility (e.g., the town of Valenciennes), that an order that
participated in the drafting of a joint document might also produce one on its own (as
in Amont-a-Vesoul) - all these are considerations which make it futile to attempt to
summarize this problem with a single number. It is clear, nevertheless, that the degree
of representationin our sample is high, however reckoned.
in conditionsof social, economic, and political structurein the Old Regime,

or upon the distributionof revolutionaryor antirevolutionaryacts of some
sort, duringthe revolutionaryperiod. Three sets of criteriahave guided our
search for externaldata. First and foremost we are interestedin data that
are significant,in light of our purposes.Second, we are interestedonly in
data presentedin the form of regionalbreakdownsfor the whole of France.
While a few individualobservationsmightbe missing (just as data are often
missing for isolated units in almost any statistical study), we would not
record any source which provides data for only one region of the country.
Finally, we have consideredthe sources and methodsof each item critically,
and rejectedsome and accepted others on groundsof quality. It should be
pointed out that in assessingthe quality of a source of data, we do not re-
strict ourselvesto an examinationof the methods, if known, by which the
informationwas gathered.We can also check to see if the data in question
are in plausible agreementwith other relevant data. In the terminologyde-
veloped for the evaluationof the quality of researchinstruments,we would
say that we look into "criterionvalidity"as well as "face validity."'9We do
not necessarilyreject a source of data if we know nothing whatsoeverabout
its methodsof collection.For some crucialvariables,where more respectable
informationis totally lacking, an informed guess of a strategicallysituated
eighteenth-centuryobserver is a good deal better than nothing. Moreover,
our fundamentalmethod of researchstrategy,the search for meaningfulco-
variations,will simply turn up nothing in the face of much random error.
If a data source is systematicallybiased, we can only protect ourselvesand
our readersfrom false findingsthroughthe use of such historicaland socio-
logical insightas we happento possess and comparisonsamong independent
sources.But if data are subjectto randomerror,we will simply have no cor-
relationsto scrutinizeor report. It follows that conclusionsbased on consis-
tent, observedstatisticalrelationshipscan, when such questionabledata are
19. Armand Brette, whose great work on the convocation of 1789 puts all later
workers in his debt, claims that the population figures collected by the central govern-
ment for the purpose of allocating deputies equitably to the bailliages had little relation
to reality, because local officials, polled by the central government for this purpose,
falsified their reports to the point of ludicrousness (a frequent conclusion of Brette
with regard to Old Regime administration). This is to attack the face validity of these
figures: on the face of it they look silly. We have discovered, however, that the num-
ber of deputies assigned to the electoral districts is in excellent agreement with the
distribution of population for France as a whole, which leads us to very different
conclusions than Brette's. In other words, we have verified the criterion validity of the
same data. Of course an individual data point may be wildly inaccurate, but the general
pattern of the series as a whole, its image of regional variation, cannot be. (Put more
technically: correlational methods do not require the exact measurement of individual
data points. They require, more weakly, that the distribution of the observations be a
linear transformation of the "real" values.) See the Introduction to Armand Brette,
Recuell de documents.
involved, be given more credence than conclusions based on the absence of

relationships.
The extraordinary quantity of data of apparently acceptable quality, and
the great many facets of the Old Regime and of revolutionary behavior
rendered measurable thereby, was a pleasant surprise. Some data derive from
the statistics gathered for administrative purposes by the eighteenth-century
royal government itself, notably tax assessments and yields - tax assess-
ments are marvelous data, being simultaneously an important burden and
an indicator of the activity being taxed - population figures, and indicators
of the extent of commercial activity.20 Other data are provided by the de-
tailed monographic research of historians, for example Greer's statistics on
the victims of the terror (classified by social class) and on the emnigres,Louis
de Cardenal's material on the location of clubs populaires, Gustave Bord's
enumeration of the Freemason lodges on the eve of the Revolution, or Jean
Suratteau's detailed studies of voting in the elections of l'an IV. Still other
data, while not quantified, are available in quantifiable form. Brette's research
into the occupations of deputies to the Estates-General was, through the
creation of suitable categories, turned into quantitative data classifying bail-
liages by the occupational characteristics of their delegates. Other data still
come from historical researches and publications carried out by various
French ministries in the nineteenth century for comparative purposes: for
example, the important researches on literacy of men and women over three
centuries that Maggiolo carried out for the Ministry of Education, or the
many data series put out by the Service de Statistique. Sometimes maps con-
stitute important sources of data. A road map of the major eighteenth-century
routes royales, when overlaid with a transparent bailliage outline map, per-
mitted the coding of the length of roads - and the number of intersections
-in each bailliage.
A good deal of this material was found - sometimes sought for and some-
times discovered accidentally - in our reading of the available literature.
Some of our finds we owe to the friendly assistance of several historians;
others were run across during our own archival explorations. In all, we have
assembled literally hundreds of data series for the Old Regime and the Rev-
olution.21
20. Besides information collected routinely, as an integral part of the everyday

process of administration, a number of important special inquiries were launched by
the controllers-general in the eighteenth century, which provide highly significant in-
formation. See Bertrand Gille, Les Sources statistiques de l'histoire de France: Des
enqu'tes du XVIIe si'cle a 1870 (Paris and Geneva, 1964).
21. Before coding these data sources, it was necessary to establish a master list of
each of the ecological units for which we have data. Extensive difficulties and compli-
cation arose which made necessary considerable investigation into the historical facts.
Many bailliages, for example, were known under more than one name. Cities and
One difficult problem in the use of this material could generally be avoided
in studies of post-revolutionary societies, but is virtually impossible to avoid
here. Unfortunately, almost none of our data are broken down regionally
by bailliages, as are the cahiers. Most available data series are presented for
other administrative divisions of France: generalites, dioceses, cities, departe-
ments, provinces22 and the jurisdictions of various kinds of mixed admin-
istrative-judicial bodies (e.g., the greniers a sel), or subdivisions of any of
the above. The boundaries of these units generally do not coincide with each
other, and even less with those of the bailliage. Nor are these boundaries
completely stable. The division of France into generalites underwent several
changes in the course of the eighteenth century. The map of departments
similarly underwent changes: thus the department of Rhone-et-Loire was
divided in two to weaken the influence of its rebellious principal city, Lyon,
while 1808 marked a change in the boundaries of several other departments.
Some technique for assigning to one type of geographical unit approximate
scores based on data series which we have recorded for another type of unit is
clearly required if we are to be able to correlate our different data series. For
example, if we wish to study the relationship between some indicator of rev-
olutionary behavior, such as the incidence of the Terror, and cahier contents,
such as noble conservatism, we face the difficulty that the former are pre-
sented to us by department, while the latter are available only by bailliage.
We require a procedure which will transform either the departmental data
to the bailliage level, or the bailliage data to the department level.
We have encountered two different, cross-cutting complications in our
search for a solution to this difficulty. First, data in the form of proportions
must be handled quite differently from absolute figures. Second, some vari-
ables seem appropriately transformed on the basis of the proportion of
population shared between two ecological units, while others seem more
smaller units with identical names abound. Lists of data for generalitis may identify
themselves as data for provinces. Borders changed. Some authors give cumulative figures
for the province of Normandie rather than separate figures for the three generalizes
of which it was composed (Caen, Alengon, Rouen). In all such cases we have developed
either special procedures for coding data, or for the later computer-processingof data
which reduce the various lists of different sources to a reasonable common ground.
22. The province is an elusive area within which local customary law applied. In
spite of the historians' consensus that there were no fixed, or even readily approximable
boundaries to the provinces, one finds quantitative statistics from the Old Regime pre-
sented in this way. There is, for example, a little known source of regional variations
in the number of nobles and it is by province (Bonvallet-Desbrosses, Richesses et
ressources de la France: Pour server de suite aux m6yens de simplifier la perception
et la comptabilite des deniers royaux [Lille, 1789]). This is somewhat analogous to
presenting data on the number of women in "New England" or on the "west coast."
It is far from obvious to the reader just which states are included in the categories.
First priorities go to approximating, as best we can, the map intended by the author.
appropriately transformed on the basis of the shared area. Thus we have
developed four different transformation procedures.
In order to perform appropriate transformations, it was necessary to se-
lect the most accurate and reliable maps depicting the borders of eighteenth-
century regional units.23 With map transparencies and a ruled grid, we
measured the total area of each geographic unit and of its areas of overlap
with others. Cities were attributed to larger units by consulting a variety of
geographical dictionaries, maps, and other sources. This information is used
by a set of computer subroutines that may be applied to transform any data
series to a different kind of area unit. We have also tested these procedures,
by studying data which we have recorded independently for different units.
The results of these tests were highly encouraging.24
All this material taken together -the content analysis of the cahiers, the
computer programs for manipulating the cahiers data and constructing scales,
the coding manual, the coded external data series on Old Regime social struc-
ture and revolutionary behavior, the proportions used to assign approximate
scores to compare data series gathered by different ecological units, the com-
puter programs enabling one to do all this with relative facility-will con-
stitute a resource for the study of social upheaval, for the study of public
opinion, and for the study of French history that will be made available to
other scholars for their own purposes. As a data archive, and a body of
programs to manipulate that data, this project will, we hope, make a con-
tribution to research, beyond our own explorations of this material. The
preparation of this archive, while not yet complete, is far enough advanced
for us to announce its availability.25 In fact, enough material has been as-
23. For department, bailliage, and generalite lines, we found the maps in Brette
(based upon Cassini) the best available.
24. For example, from department population statistics, approximate population
scores for generalitys were estimated. These were then compared with independent
figures deriving from sources reporting generalite data directly. The approximation
and the "real" data show correlations up to .97. Further information on this test will
be found in Markoff, "Who Wants Bureaucracy?"
25. Tapes, containing the coded cahiers data, the external data series, the programs
required to obtain information (retrieve, score, transform into other ecological units,
etc.) will ultimately be deposited at the Inter-university Consortium for Political
Science Research at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, the
Social Science Information Center of the University of Pittsburgh, and the Centre de
Recherches Historiques in Paris. Ultimately, we hope to join our files with studies of
political upheaval in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France directed by Charles
Tilly, and with the codification of the Statistique generate de France, currently con-
ducted by I.C.P.R. in collaboration with the Centre de Recherches Historiques, to pro-
vide an instrument for the study of social history and political upheaval over two
centuries. The conditions of access and procedures for use of the material will be an-
nounced by these depositories in the light of their respective administrative policies.
sembled so that some studies have been completed, and we are currently
working on others.
VI. SOME ILLUSTRATIVE STUDIES
Some of our findings seem to be of sufficient general interest to warrant a

summary here, even though more elaborate reports would be required for
a full, systematic presentation of our methods and results.20
1. Representativeness of Document Collections
The first set of findings emerge from our efforts to decide upon a "sam-
pling frame" for our study of the parish cahiers: that is to say, a collection
of documents from which we would draw the sample to be coded. While
the study was launched for this particular technical purpose, we feel that
the findings bear interestingly on general historiographic issues as well.
Three populations of parish documents have been evaluated: the collection
of extant and catalogued manuscripts, the collection of published documents,
and the collection of those published in the official series.27
Since national data cannot be found characterizing the parishes of France,
and most publications reflect the convocation procedure in publishing together
the parish cahiers of a particular bailliage, we were almost compelled to
form a sample "clustered" by bailliage. In other words, we have attempted
to characterize each bailliage with regard to the frequency of demands to be
found in the cahiers of the parishes represented at its assembly.
After discovering (or estimating) the total number of parishes authorized
to meet in each bailliage assembly of the Third Estate, we were able to com-
26. The interpen.etrationof our various efforts in the establishment of the archive
of cahiers-codes and external data makes it impossible to attribute any part of this
work to any one of us. But, while we have drawn upon the others' advice and informa-
tion for our individual efforts at data analysis, the substance of the findings reported
must remain the responsibility of the authors individually, in the works cited in foot-
notes 11 and 15 and in articles concerning the sampling procedure and its historio-
graphical lessons and regional variations in eighteenth-century populations which we
hope to publish shortly.
27. Since the nineteenth century, the Commission de l'Histoire Economique et
Sociale de la Revolution Franraise has published dozens of volumes of cahiers in the
series, Collection de documents inedits sur l'historie economique et sociale de la Re-
volution fra7icaise. Because this is at least one mouthful, we have opted to follow
Beatrice Hyslop in referring to this series simply as the "D.I." series. The rules of the
Commission require editors to publish all unpublished documents of a given bailliage,
to publish the text completely, and not summaries or excerpts, and to provide necessary
background information on the convocation procedure, local socioeconomic conditions,
and political events.
pute the proportion, in each bailliage, of parishes represented in (1) the col-
lection of surviving manuscript documents; (2) the collection of published
documents; and (3) those in the official ("D.I.") series. These proportions,
characterizing the bailliages, could then be correlated with other data derived
from the general cashiersor from external sources to evaluate the extent to
which the rate of survival (or of publication) of cahiers is related to the ex-
pressed sentiments of the higher assemblies or the social character of the
districts.
We have already mentioned one finding, regarding the representative char-
acter of the surviving documents. To expand briefly upon this theme, we
have found that, generally speaking, a preliminary analysis shows only rather
small correlations between these proportions and our indices of social struc-
ture, revolutionary behavior, and of content of the general cahiers.28 Appar-
ently, the accidents of history have operated more or less at random and
archivists and editors have not generally permitted similar commitments to
affect the selective retention or selective publication of parish cahiers. Fur-
thermore, the official (D.J.) series shows no greater deviation from national
norms than the other two populations. Its greater conveniences as a sampling
frame-standard criteria of inclusion, modern orthography, integral repro-
duction of documents, extensive background information, elaborate analytical
indexes, and availability -make this an occasion for celebration.
Some of these small correlations however, are of great interest. Among
other findings, we discovered that the bailliages most highly represented in
the three document collections were more highly concerned with participa-
tion in the electoral process: they were more likely to have their cahier
printed, to attach an imperative mandate to it, and to establish committees
of correspondence to sustain relationships between elected delegates and their
constituencies. (We do not know if these correlations are due to a greater
preference of archivists or editors for the preservation or publication of such
cahiers, or to the fact that such activity was more likely to produce multiple
copies of the cahier in 1789, thus decreasing the likelihood of loss.)
Executions during the Terror, and emigrations, are both significantly lower
in those departments heavily represented in the D.I. volumes, which, if Greer's
interpretations are correct, would indicate that they are more pro-revolu-
tionary.29 The D.L. series also seems to be slightly biased in favor of more
28. In the early stages of this research we utilized the content analysis of the general
cahiers made by Beatrice Hyslop for her book French Nationalism in 1789 According
to the General Cahiers (New York, 1934). These data, very generously furnished by
Hyslop, were the basis for the findings mentioned here as well as for Weitman.
29. Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror During the French Revolution: A
Statistical Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1935) and The Incidence of the Emigration
During the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1951).
rural areas. But none of these correlationsare very high, indicating,we re-
peat, the most basic finding:that all three data collectionspretty adequately
representthe nation in 1789.
2. The Importance of Urbanization

One major findingthat has imposed itself upon us (often unexpectedly)
in a numberof distinctstudieshas been the importanceof urbanization.The
firstcase was a preliminarystudy,carriedout using Hyslop'scontentanalysis.
For a preliminarylook at the way the cahiersbehave statisticallywe chose
thirty-sixof Hyslop's categorieswhich seem to reflect supportfor or opposi-
tion to democraticreformof the society. Our criterionwas essentiallywhether
the grievancedemandedsome politicalor social equalitiesfor underprivileged
groups,or the eliminationof absolutistrestrictionson freedomof expression
or politicalaction. For example,demandsfor religioustoleration,equalityof
taxation, the abolition of feudal dues, and universal suffrageare included.
In this, our first pass at the problem, we attemptedto operationalizethe
classic conceptionof the French Revolutionas the most dramaticinstanceof
the democraticrevolutionof the eighteenthcentury,expoundedmost recently
and eloquentlyin Robert Palmer'stwo volumes.
Seven variablescharacterizingthe old regimewere analyzed:total popula-
tion; the rate of the dime, or tithe, an involuntarychurch assessmentupon
agriculturalproduce which varied through France; the proportion of the
populationthat is "urban"accordingto ArthurYoung as correctedby Henri
See; the total of all taxes paid by the unit, as estimatedby JacquesNecker;
the vingtiemede biens fonds, a tax on agriculturalwealth widely regarded
as the least unfair of the old regime;the vingtiemed'industrie,a similartax
on artisanand industrialenterprise;and a measureof tax privileges(one of
the major sources of grievancesin the old regime) from the work of the
Comit6de Contributionsof the ConstituentAssembly.
Seven indices of revolutionarybehaviorwere selected for this study: the
contributionpatriotique,an interimvoluntarycontributionbetweenthe period
of the old and the establishmentof the new basis of taxation;the proportion
of clergy who took the oath to supportthe Civil Constitutionof the Clergy
withoutreservations;the GreatFear of the summerof 1789, widespreadout-
breaks of panic sparkedby rumorsof a plot by the aristocracyto set loose
brigandsto murderthe people; the so-calledMassacresof September,slaugh-
ters in the prisonsin 1792, again sparkedby rumorsof conspiracy,following
serious militaryreverses;the total numbersexecuted duringthe Terror;the
numberwho emigrated;and the number of elected delegates designatedby
Sydenhamas "Girondins."30
30. These thirteen variables were selected for their theoretical interest or historical
Various relationships appear between democratic sentiment and old regime
variables. The Clergy seem to have been more democratic in populous de-
partments; the Nobility in more urban areas, and where taxation was heaviest.
Most interesting, perhaps, the Nobility seem to have been more democratic
where they enjoyed the greatest taxation privileges. As for revolutionary be-
havior, the Nobility seem to have been more democratic in those areas where
the Great Fear broke out, a paradox only for those who have not read Tocque-
ville on how the ruling class, in adopting the views of enlightenment, set revo-
lutionary models for the masses, and undermined their conventional faith in
the social structure.
Examining our selection of variables characterizing the old regime, one
stands out as explaining more of the variance in other old regime variables,
and in revolutionary sentiment and behavior, than any other: the proportion
of the population classified as urban by Henri See and Arthur Young. This
was unexpected, despite the warnings we might have heeded from Charles
Tilly and Paul Bois. This urbanization measure is correlated with the total
direct taxation, the vingtieme des biens fonds, the vingtieme d'industrie, and
tax privileges, among the old regime variables; and with the total number
executed in the Terror, the contribution patriotique, and the presence of
Girondin deputies among the revolutionary behavior set.31
importance from among those data for which processing had been completed at the
time of the trial run reported here. Our plans for the future include a more thorough
study along similar lines, using the much larger set of data we have collected.
Our sources for these data were: Population and total taxes: J. Necker, De l'Ad-
ministration des finances de la France (Paris, 1784); P. Gagnol, La Dime ecclesiastique
en France au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1910); Urbanization: Arthur Young, Voyages en
France, ed. Henri See (Paris, 1931); Vingtiemes and Tax Privileges: J. Mavidal and
E. Laurent, Archives parlementaires de 1787 a 1861 (Paris, 1867- ), lere serie,
Vol. XXVI, 513ff; Contributionpatriotique: ibid., Vol. XXIV, 4; Clergy Oath: P. Sagnac,
"Etude statistique sur le clerge constitutionnel et le clergy refractaire,"Revue d'Histoire
Moderne et Contemporaine 8 (1966), 97-115; G. Lefebvre, La Grande peur (Paris,
n.d.); P. Caron, Les Massacres de septembre (Paris, 1935); Greer, Incidence of the
Terror,Incidence of the Emigration.
31. A number of other findings from this study are of interest. (1) The literature
on the revolution seems to be divided between those who see it as a bloc, and those
who see it as a succession of distinct events, each led and participated in by different
segments of the population. Thus far, the data of this study support the latter view.
Relationships between revolutionary behavior variables are extremely few, and small,
only one appearing significant: between the Great Fear and the total of emigration.
(2) We have already outlined the effects of urbanization. Despite the positive corre-
lation between democratic sentiment among the Clergy in the spring of '89 (when the
cahiers were written) and the population of the departments, there is a negative corre-
lation between the Clergy's willingness to take the oath in support of the civil constitu-
tion, and population a few years later. This, like the absence of many significant rela-
tionships among various revolutionary behavior indicators, should warn us against any
oversimplified view of the historical process as a simple two-person game, with per-
manent, easily identified opponents. (3) The Girondins came from more heavily taxed,
Our subsequent work has borne out this impression of the power of urban-
ization as a significant historical force and as a factor in the events of the
French Revolution. The studies, of which some more detail is indicated be-
low, of Shapiro and Dawson on radicalism in 1789, of Weitman on demo-
cratic sentiment, and of Markoff on the surprising tendency of the cahiers
to demand a more bureaucratic government, are all agreed, despite the diver-
sity of what they seek to explain, that urban growth is a factor of major
importance. The Shapiro and Dawson study, for example, though commencing
as an examination of the widely-held thesis that blocked upward mobility
was a leading cause of bourgeois radicalism in 1789 found, incidentally (but
not insignificantly), that the effects of urbanization had far greater effects on
radicalism than did mobility rates.
3. Population Data
For two reasons, we have been led to an extensive analysis of eighteenth-
century French population information. In order to compare ecological units
of different sizes, it would obviously be necessary to remove, and hence first to
measure, the effect of sheer scale. In addition, the pressure of population
increase is widely regarded as one of the important social forces of the
century.
We have collected together over twenty-five estimates of the populations of
regions of France, some arrived at by extremely different means. Our first
analytical objective was to discover if it made a difference, and if so, how
much, whether one estimate or the other was accepted. The results of a
principal-axis factor analysis shows that the various estimates are close linear
functions of one another, and, although they would then provide different
absolute populations for a given region, their variations from region to region
are in effect identical. As a result, we feel comfortable in using any of these
population estimates or, most sensibly, an average of them.
4. The Effects of Ennoblement

In collaboration with Philip Dawson, Shapiro has attempted to use our
material to put to the test the common claim that the bourgeoisie in eighteenth-
century France was led to revolutionary action by the frustration of being
denied access to noble status. The alternative hypothesis was most clearly
expressed a century ago by Tocqueville: that increased opportunities for en-
noblement in the eighteenth century actually increased the radicalism of the
and hence wealthier areas. (4) The emigration was strongest where pre-revolutionary
tax privileges were greatest.
middle classes. The issue regarding the sources of the French Revolution is
only one instance of a more general, theoretical problem in social dynamics:
the relationship between upward and downward mobility and political radical-
ism or conservatism.
To test these conflicting hypotheses, the opportunities for ennoblement in
the eighteenth century were measured for each bailliage, and this independent
variable was then related to each of four radicalism scores derived from the
coded general cahiers of the Third Estate. (For purposes of comparison, the
analysis was repeated with the cahiers of the nobility.) The scales of radical-
ism in the cahiers were, first of all, the total number of grievances expressed;
second, the number of grievances reflecting demands for equality; third, the
degree of similarity between the contents of the cahier and the Declaration of
August 4; and finally, the similarity of the document to the Declaration of the
Rights of Man.
It is apparent from the results that, regardless of the measure of radicalism
used, the Third Estate in those bailliages with any ennoblement opportunities
was more radical than the Third Estate in bailliages with no such oppor-
tunities. Furthermore, where there were opportunities, there was some slight
tendency for the Third Estate to be more radical where opportunities were
greater. And, finally, no such tendencies appear when we examine the noble
cashiers.Hence it would seem that the hypothesis of Tocqueville is more in
accord with the data than the more popular theses of Dollot and Taine, or
Elinor Barber. This is probably because, as Tocqueville emphasized, the
historical effect of an act of ennoblement upon its audience - those left
behind - is greater than its effect on the presumably grateful, newly-privi-
leged family, if only because there are so many more of the former. But the
important finding of this study which we mentioned above is that opportunity
for ennoblement seems to have had extremely little effect of any sort on
radicalism, especially as compared with the downright enormous effects of
urbanization.
5. The Democratization of Public Opinion on the Eve of the Revolution:

Marx vs. Tocqueville
This research, by Weitman, is addressed to two sets of problems. First, was

the French Revolution a mass phenomenon (as Tocqueville described it) or
a class phenomenon (as Marx believed)? Second, which sector of the Old
Regime - the economy (again, Marx) or the central government (Tocque-
ville) - was primarily responsible for democratizing and revolutionizing
French society?
To confront these two theses, the general cahiers of the three estates were
systematically compared.32 The demands were grouped into the following

categories: demands for equal individual rights; demands concerning estate
privileges, the corporate-aristocratic regime, and the scope of the State; de-
mands for relief measures on behalf of the poor; and demands concerning
the structure and operations of the central government.
Systematic comparison of the cahiers of the nobility and of the Third
Estate reveal that: (1) regarding the extension of equal individual rights to
all, the cahiers of the nobility were, on the whole, as liberal as those of the
Third Estate; e.g., 70 per cent were favorable to equal individual tax liability.
However, the nobles' libertarianism tended to focus on "active liberties"
(i.e., liberties to . . ), while the tendency in the Third Estate was to empha-
size "passive liberties" (i.e., liberties from . . .). (2) Of the three estates, the
nobility appeared, surprisingly, the least attached to its own status privileges.
(3) None of the three orders evinced much attachment to the corporate
structure of the Old Regime. (4) The nobles entertained definite ambitions to
play a distinct political role. (5) Regarding attitudes on the role of the central
government, the nobility was most unambiguously opposed to its expansion
and most favorable to decentralization, whereas the Third Estate expressed
the largest number of demands both favoring and opposing expansion. (6)
Both the nobility and the Third Estate were highly favorable to the imposition
of stringent and extensive controls over the operations of the central govern-
ment. Insofar as they differed, however, the Third Estate was more interested
in bureaucraticmeasures to render the state more efficient, whereas the nobility
was more interested in constitutional measures to bring the central govern-
ment under the rule of law.
In sum, the Tocquevillian conception of public opinion in pre-revolutionary
France as pervaded through and through (i.e., across class lines) by the
irresistible pull of democratic ideas and sentiments appears to be more con-
cordant with these findings than the Marxian thesis. Insofar as the cahiers of
both orders presaged the changes subsequently wrought by the Revolution,
public opinion in general would appear to have been substantially radicalized
prior to the downfall of the old regime.
The Tocquevillian theory attributes this democratization of public opinion to
the profound social and cultural effects of over two hundred years of uneven
bureaucratic expansion by the central government. The cahiers of the nobility
from areas heavily penetrated by the central government (the pays d'e'lec-
tions) were compared with those from relatively autonomous provinces (the
pays d'e'tats). Some of the findings were: (1) Noble public opinion in the
pays d'e'ections was, on the whole, more egalitarian, more statist, more pro-
32. This analysis was based on notes far more detailed than the content analysis
published in Hyslop, French Nationalism in 1789.
bureaucratic, more constitutionalist, and more jealous of its status interests

than was Noble opinion in the pays d'e'tats. (2) A comparison of urban and
rural bailliages shows, however, that "urbanism"had a similarly democratizing
effect on noble public opinion. (3) Differences between the rural nobles of
the pays d'elections and those of the pays d'e'tats were, on the whole, much
more substantial than corresponding differences between the urban nobles
of these two types of regions. (4) Among the urban nobles, those from the
pays d'e'lection were more democratic than those from the pays d'etat. Once
again, the research supports Tocqueville's views.
Secondly, Tocqueville's thesis leads one to expect that the conversion to a
democratic and radical ideology should be less characteristic of those parts of
France which still retained some measure of local autonomy (the pays d'e'tats)
than of those regions more completely administered by the central govern-
ment (the pays d'elections). A comparison of the cahiers of the nobility of
the pays d'etats and the pays d'elections was carried out. Once again, the
results, generally speaking, support Tocqueville.
6. Popular Demands for Bureaucracy
Another of our studies, conducted by Markoff, concerns the social bases

for bureaucracies. The development of bureaucratic government in Western
Europe (in the sense in which that term was used by Weber) has been
accounted for, by Weber and later writers, in several ways. Some scholars
have looked to circumstances thought to render greater rationalization a
necessity: for example, the growth of large and costly standing armies. Other
scholars have seen this process as the outcome of the long struggle between
the Prince and those with independent powers. Still others have looked to the
characteristics of the social environment of government in order to try to
identify those features of social structure and culture which provide fertile
soil for the growth of bureaucracies.
In this light the cahiers de doleances provide ample evidence of an unex-
plored aspect of this subject. In 1789, France witnessed an enormous out-
pouring of popular demands for bureaucracy. Almost all of what Weber
asserted as the defining characteristics of bureaucratic government was de-
manded in large numbers of documents. Indeed, examination of the distribu-
tion of all grievances in the data collection shows that demands for more
bureaucratic government are as prominent as those demands more frequently
said to characterize the French Revolution, such as those for liberty, equality,
and for abolition of seignorial rights. We have, then, at least one important
historical case of widespread popular desire for a more bureaucratic govern-
ment, and an important sociological phenomenon to try to explain.
Markoff argues that first of all, a wide variety of changes had been taking
190 SHAPIRO, 1MARKOFF, AND WEITMAN
place in France which served to increase the interdependence of distant

people. This pattern of transformation included increased road construction,
rising literacy, urban growth, increased population density, expansion of trade,
increased administrative centralization, and (arguably) increased mobility. It
is then advanced that this increased interdependence leads in several ways to
a desire for a more bureaucratic government. The increased importance of
distant decisions, for example, produces a desire for administrators to be
controlled, so that they behave in predictable ways. In addition to those
effects which may be expected of any form of increased interdependence,
there are special effects which may be expected of certain specific aspects of
increased interdependence. Markoff proposes, for instance, following Tocque-
ville, that the increased authority of the central government produced a
cultural climate conducive to still greater administrative centralization by
making it difficult to conceive of any other way to solve problems.
The documents were assigned scores according to the degree to which
components of the multifaceted concept of bureaucracy were demanded.
These included, among others, demands that recruitment and promotion be
based on specialized training, demands opposing the private appropriation of
public functions, demands that decisions be based on formal acts in writing,
and demands for clear-cut hierarchies of authority. Using our collection of
external data, a wide variety of aspects of interdependence was measured.
For example, the geographical distribution of several degrees of literacy
was investigated. The lowest level of literacy was measured by the ability to
sign one's name. Regional variations in the number of Jcoles secondaires and
in the numbers of their pupils supplemented this information. Finally, we
attempted to study the distribution of intellectuals through locating some of
their characteristic institutions: the Freemason lodges, the various learned
academies and societes and the eighteenth-century universities.
Having obtained many measures of interdependence, and of demands for
a more bureaucratic government, the covariation of the two types of data was
examined. Broadly speaking, the data are consonant with the general hy-
pothesis: it is indeed the case that indicators of literacy, for example, are
correlated with bureaucratic demands.
Since both interdependence and bureaucratization are complex phenomena,
further research is underway to determine the relative importance of different
aspects of interdependence, such as literacy, trade, or administrative cen-
tralization, in producing such demands for different aspects of bureaucracy
as the abolition of venal offices and the establishment of a governmental
budget.
VII. CONCLUSION
We have directed this paper to describing the general aims and methodology
of our investigations into the French Revolution, and have tried to explain
the strategic interest of this event for sociological theory and the strategic
interest of the unique available data for sociological research. If we have said
nothing by way of apology as sociologists for treading on historians' turf, it is
because it is our turf as well. If we have said little on the sometimes acrimo-
nious debate about quantitative methodology within the historical profession
(a debate into which we have quite inadvertently wandered), it is because we
see little point in more general statements of a programmatic or philosophical
nature. Assertions of the need for cooperation among sociologists and his-
torians have become tiresome (if they ever were anything else). Historians
will scrutinize our results and take what they like and reject what they do not.
Laments about tearing seamless webs are not very helpful, even if sincere.
We hope that we have demonstrated the great potential of the research instru-
ments we have been developing and that - although we do not for an instant
feel that these are the only ways to arrive at knowledge -we can begin
answering questions which have up to now been difficult even to ask.
University of Pittsburgh
and
State University of New York,
Stony Brook

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QUANTITATIVE STUDIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

GILBERT SHAPIRO, JOHN MARKOFF, and SASHA R. WEITMAN

I. INTRODUCTION: ORIENTATION AND RATIONALE

6. Interestingly, comparative studies of revolution commit a similar, if, in a sense,

always a question of the limits of the generalizability of results, a problem

eenth-century France, a society characterized by one nineteenth-century

II. THE CAHIERS DE DOLJANCES

entirely problematic. For the purposes of historical sociology, opinion polls

III. THE CONTENT ANALYSIS

The procedure of content analysis we have used, to which we have given

the Judiciary, the Stratification System, the Constitution. Each division is

Government, Taxation, Direct, Miscellaneous.) In addition, the coder indi-

IV. THE SAMPLE OF DOCUMENTS

Given limited resources and the enormous number of documents produced,

in conditionsof social, economic, and political structurein the Old Regime,

involved, be given more credence than conclusions based on the absence of

20. Besides information collected routinely, as an integral part of the everyday

VI. SOME ILLUSTRATIVE STUDIES

Some of our findings seem to be of sufficient general interest to warrant a

1. Representativeness of Document Collections

2. The Importance of Urbanization

4. The Effects of Ennoblement

5. The Democratization of Public Opinion on the Eve of the Revolution:

This research, by Weitman, is addressed to two sets of problems. First, was

systematically compared.32 The demands were grouped into the following

bureaucratic, more constitutionalist, and more jealous of its status interests

6. Popular Demands for Bureaucracy

Another of our studies, conducted by Markoff, concerns the social bases

place in France which served to increase the interdependence of distant

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