Julian Swann analyzes the organization, membership and powers of the Estates General of Burgundy during the classic period of absolute monarchy. Swann explores the activities of their administration and their struggles for power with rival institutions as well as their relationships with the crown and with the Burgundian people. His study reveals much about the government of Louis XIV, the history of Burgundy and the wider political history of eighteenth-century France, including the origins of the French Revolution.

Julian Swann is Lecturer in Early Modern European History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Politics and the Parlements of Paris under Louis XV, 1754-1774 (1995).

List of illustrations; List of figures; List of appendices; List of map; Preface; List of abbreviations; Map: the duchy of Burgundy in the eighteenth century; 1. Historians, absolute monarchy and the provincial estates; 2. Ancien régime Burgundy; 3. The Estates General of Burgundy; 4. Nosseigneurs les élus and the officers of the Estates; 5. The provincial administration: authority and enforcement; 6. 'It's raining taxes': paying for the Sun King, 1661-1715; 7. Provincial administration in an age of iron, 1661-1715; 8. The limits of absolutism: crown, governor and the Estates in the eighteenth century; 9. Provincial rivalries: the Estates and the Parlement of Dijon in the eighteenth century; 10. Tax, borrow and lend: crown, Estates and finance, 1715-89; 11. An enlightened administration?; 12. The coming of the French revolution in Burgundy, 1787-9; Conclusion; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.