De Bodin a Rousseau. Derecho y política de la ciudadanía en la Francia del Antiguo Régimen

Abstract

From Bodin to Rousseau. The Law and Politics of Citizenship in Ancien Régime France

This article outlines the theory and practice of "citizenship" from the formation of an absolutist model in the work of the sixteenth-century jurisconsult Jean Bodin until the begin ning of the "citizenship revolution" of the mid-eighteenth century. It focuses on the so-called droit d'aubaine, the French king's night to seize the property of a foreigner who died in the kingdom without native heirs. It considers how this regal prerogative over successoral capa cities in civil law became a tool in the construction of the French absolutist monarchy through the seventeenth century, and how it became part of the post-absolutist model of citi zenship after 1760s. The unmaking of an absolute citizen took shape not only in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, especially the Contrat sociale (1762), but also in the sphere of international private law and the mutual and reciprocal abolitions of the droit d'aubaine bet ween France and the European powers during the last decades of the eighteenth century.