Before the Deluge
Subtitle: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: February 26, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 428
ISBN-13: 9780691124995
Subjects: European history: c 1750 to c 1900; Political structure & processes; Revolutions & coups; Reference; History; History - General History; History: World; France; Economic Conditions; Europe - France; Public Policy - General; European History; History / France; Political Science and International Relations; Causes; Revolution, 1789-1799
Description: Ever since the French Revolution, Madame de Pompadour's comment, "Apres moi, le deluge" (after me, the deluge), has looked like a callous if accurate prophecy of the political cataclysms that began in 1789. But decades before the Bastille fell, French writers had used the phrase to describe a different kind of selfish recklessness--not toward the flood of revolution but, rather, toward the flood of public debt.