Please read over the following questions before you do the reading and consider them while you read.
Collins, The State in Early Modern France, 216-67.
1. Identify: Jacques Ménétra, Seven Years War, Secret of the King, Richesses de l'état, Jacques Necker, Compte Rendu au Roi, the Brittany Affair, the Maupeou Revolution, Patriots, Assembly of Notables, the prerevolution, May edicts (1788), Turgot.
2. What can we learn from Jacques Ménétra's Journal about French society in the eighteenth century?
3. What social and economic changes did France undergo between 1750 and 1789?
4. What did the government have to do in order to put its financial house in order?
5. What factors indicate that the French monarchy was in a state of crisis between 1750 and 1789? Name as many as you can.
6. What role did the following play in the collapse of the Old Regime: the Seven Years War, Unigenitus, the philosophes, the parlements?
7. Why did the monarchy's attempts at reform fail?
8. Why does Collins end his book with 17 June 1789? What, in his opinion, explains the collapse of the Old Regime? Do you agree?
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