Chapter 1 - The Long Slumber of the Estates General

Summary

The forms of political representation in France before 1789 were nothing like political representation in our modern sense of the term. There were no elected representative bodies at the national level and the provinces had systems that varied greatly. The pays d’états had provincial estates that had some elective elements, but the pays d’élection had no province-wide representative bodies at all. The Catholic Church had its own assembly, but this assembly did not represent the church to the king, as the king was nominally its leader. There were only three political bodies that had any pretension to being “representative” and none functioned in a way that we moderns would recognize as representative government. First and foremost was the king himself. Though he was not elected or accountable in any way to those he represented, he did function as a symbol of France and it was only through the king that there was any unity among the diverse peoples, provinces and corporations that made up the kingdom.