![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Venality was the French system of sales of public positions called offices. It was a stable and central institution within the French Old Regime. Though widely studied by historians, the topic lacks large-scale quantitative analysis. In this article, we fill this gap by presenting a novel and comprehensive database of 17th-century French offices, which includes more than 15,000 offices and large information about their characteristics, the institution they depended on, and their geographical jurisdiction. We also propose three quantitative examples of how this database could be used. Following the proposed research agenda, our database could be used for quantitative empirical studies and for multidisciplinary work, including history, political sciences, economics and administration.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The Old Regime refers to the period of French history that follows the late Middle Ages until the 1789 Revolution. Its English equivalent is the Early Modern Period.
2 In the rest of the article, we regard institutions as any administration defined by the law of a state (North Citation1991). For instance, in the venality context, judicial institutions include courts set by the state. Venality also shaped the French society through the recognition of a new social group, the office-holders (Nagle Citation2008). This social recognition is more informal.
3 By the time of Colbert’s survey, venality was also widespread in Castille (Andujar Castillo Citation2008; Gomez-Blanco Citation2021a; Marcos Martin Citation2011; Tomas y Valiente Citation1982). It was also present in Spanish Indies (Bertrand Citation1999).
4 It went similarly in Spain (Gómez-Blanco Citation2024). In France, public debt stemming from office sales sharply increased between the end of the 16th century and the 1665 survey (Descimon Citation2006, 178–179). It stabilised throughout the 18th century. Office-related debt was considered legitimate at the time, as suggested by the repayment of offices (instead of simple cancelation) made during the French Revolution (Sargent and Velde Citation1995).
5 Crettez, Musy, and Tallec (Citation2024) study how épices can distort incentives on judicial decisions.
6 See (Mousnier Citation1971) and (Doyle Citation1984, Citation1996) who adopted a social perspective in their studies on offices.
7 Before intendants’ “takeover”, the Trésoriers de France controlled tax collection and thus benefitted from strong local presence with first-hand information (Charmeil Citation1964). After that, they worked hand in hand with intendants: intendants were in charge of distributing and collecting taxes in their généralité, but were assisted by the Trésoriers de France, who thus had access to essential fiscal and administrative resources.
8 These volumes originate from Colbert’s personal library who, like all public servants of the period, retained the documents of his administration. Preparatory works are also available (we do not present them here). All these documents are part of a collection of original manuscripts grouped together in 500 volumes acquired by the Royal Library in 1732. A detailed inventory of this collection was compiled by de la Roncière and Loirette (Citation1920). Delisle (Citation1863) briefly describes the constitution of the collection. See the Appendix for pictures of the survey.
9 See Descimon (Citation2006, 183) for a presentation of the various forms of venality. The 1665 survey also does not count the offices of royal agents, like governors, who directly depended on the king.
10 The price of a notary office depended on the economic activity of the location where it operated. Similarly, the price of a clerk office depended on judicial activity, since he received a percentage of the legal acts prescribed by judges.
11 The price given by the survey is the current price (prix courant). It corresponds either to the price of the last similar office sold on the market, or to an average of the prices of identical offices calculated by the Trésoriers de France.
12 When selling a similar office or splitting one office into several of them, the king may not want to distribute more gages than the initial allocated amount. In this case, he spread the initial amount of gages between old and new office incumbents. The quarter then specifies the percentage of the (initial) gages to be paid to each holder after this new allocation.
13 For Descimon (Citation2006, 210), the 1604 valuation gave the market price of venal offices as of 1598.
14 Dupâquier (Citation1977) considered Saugrain’s population figures for the 17th century reliable.
15 To extend what Bonhoure et al. (Citation2024) did.
16 Efficient markets are markets where prices incorporate all the available (public and private) information about assets’ future values (Fama Citation1970). In other words, in an efficient office market, office prices should be the actualised sum of office future cash flows.
17 As stated by Eustache de Refuge, a member of the Parliament of Paris who was close to the French government, “the fees and other remuneration of the judges and the price of the offices go hand in hand”. Offices were considered standard patrimonial goods that were traded on the market and served “as farms and estates for profit” (Descimon Citation2006, 61). The purchase of an office was an opportunity for “gain of wealth”, a prelude to the “increase of one’s property and home” (Descimon, Citation2011, 308). The link between the income and price of offices was also highlighted during the judicial reform undertaken by Colbert (Doyle Citation2000). Office-holders’ greed was often considered responsible for the length and the high costs of the French trials, even leading to a reform of civil procedures in 1667.
18 See Table 1 for a definition of these variables. As part of his office position, the office-holder paid in advance salt taxes to the king. Salt taxes were calculated on the mandatory salt quantity to be bought by the population. The office-holder was paid back by selling this mandatory quantity to the population and cashing in the resulting tax amounts. If he managed to sell additional salt (in this case, the total quantity was larger than the mandatory quantity), he could keep the difference. This difference constituted his work-based income.
19 One should note that the number of observations is smaller (down to 376) in the last two models, mostly because we lack information about the work-based income (Total salt and Mandatory salt) of many salt-tax offices.