Chapter 5 turns to attempts by French missionaries and envoys to convert the ruler of the most powerful state in Southeast Asia, King Narai of Ayutthaya, in the 1680s. It first lays out the setting into which these proselytisers arrived, playing particularly close attention to the elevation of the king in both divinised and righteous modes and his relationship with the sangha. It then shows how the commercial and administrative functioning of the kingdom pulled in sources of outside strength, which promoted the relevance of religious diplomacy. In the 1680s, a Greek adventurer, Constantine Phaulkon, became the most powerful officer at court, and he fashioned an image to the French of a ruler ripe for conversion, giving rise to a series of embassies received in Versailles and Ayutthaya. The French sought to enhance their prestige through the use of astronomical–astrological science and had a chance at a healing miracle in the 1660s. If this failed the French could take comfort from the fact that Narai was somewhat restless within his ceremonialised role, had tense relations with the Buddhist monkhood, was a cosmopolitan attracted to French culture, and was concerned to maintain the good will of Louis XIV. Some even portrayed him (mistakenly) as moving towards deism.

This chapter sets out the problem of disorder faced by Louis XIV and assesses the success and failure of his attempts to deal with it. The law, at least, was not the hammer of royal absolutism. The law continued to privilege reconciliation and arbitration over punishment. Under Louis XIV there were significant attempts to rationalise the system but negotiated justice prevailed until 1789. The high rates of violence that characterised France between 1560 and 1660 do not mean that France was a lawless society. The chapter argues that some of the problems that had beset France in the mid-seventeenth century reappeared around 1700. This was followed after 1725 by the remarkable efflorescence of French civil society. It concludes by suggesting that this social equilibrium was not overthrown by Revolution in 1789, but that the Ancien Régime system of social control was already under strain by the 1780s and that rocketing levels of interpersonal violence were indicative of the ways in which the political and constitutional crisis were impacting everyday social relations.

Three years of legal studies and other experiences in Bordeaux and then Paris under the name of Secondat de Montesquieu, in Louis XIV’s twilight years. His pursuit of intellectual interests: literature, theatre, Asia; the kindling of a new spirit.

Molière worked within the context of a powerful literary establishment, with complex systems of rewards and punishments. Sources of financial support were essential for an author and generally sought from patronage or from the church; institutional prestige might be conferred by election to the Académie Française. Patronage, always potentially unreliable, became increasingly dominated by the King and court and entailed considerable obligations, while the church could prove a formidable enemy. Such sources of patronage and prestige were complemented by a dynamic literary scene, in which reputations could be made or lost: through the salons, both the relatively more social and the more specifically scholarly; and through the critics, with again some writing for a more popular readership and some drawn from among the learned scholars. For a dramatist, popular success was a crucial factor. Molière encountered repeated difficulties, from the withdrawal of patronage, the hostility of the church, and attacks by critics and jealous rivals. He surmounted these with extraordinary success, through a unique combination of factors: great popular success in Paris, the breadth of his appeal, the support of the King and court, the admiration of powerful critical voices and, not least, the influential approval of distinguished scholarly commentators.

The court assembled around the prince consisted of his family and ministers, but also attracted all those who might need to seek royal authority for their own affairs. Molière was one of the King’s officers and was well acquainted with this milieu, which took form throughout the seventeenth century. During the first decades of his reign in particular, Louis XIV used entertainment to keep the members of his entourage in place by offering them opportunities to meet and experience his power in a pleasant way. The Parisian theatre troupes were regularly invited to appear before the King and Molière displayed a notable talent not only in presenting his own plays but also in combining within a single spectacle – the comedy-ballets, which were the highlights of these usually composite entertainments, and which were particularly well-suited to their context – spoken drama with music, meals, balls, and even fireworks. Devised to suit the individual circumstances, theatre could thereby offer a welcome moment of relaxation, particularly during the carnival period – a true breathing space in this environment where all was constrained according to the power relations in operation.

In 1709, Samuel Bernard, the richest man in Europe, failed to pay his debts. His insolvency precipitated a small financial crisis at the Lyon faire, which was the main payments settlement mechanism that connected credit networks in northern Italy, Switzerland, eastern France, and the Netherlands. Bernard’s creditors were ruined, but he received immunity from prosecution and soon recovered his credit. This failure was a particularly dramatic instance of impunity in financial capitalism before the Financial Revolution created corporate forms, liquid capital markets, and constraints on sovereign violations of property rights. Bernard’s failure, and the many other crises of the same time, shows the parameters of impunity as a function of sovereign power. In 1709, as before, impunity was personalized: the prerogative of sovereign authority, granted individually on an ad hoc or arbitrary basis. Sovereigns governed finance through institutions like the chambre de justice of 1716, which was a special court for prosecuting all of the Crown’s creditors. The institutional changes of the Financial Revolution meant that by the time of the 1720 crisis, impunity was instead a characteristic of systemically important managers of capital operating in international markets with limited regulation, oversight, and enforcement.

This chapter analyzes the efforts of Louis XIV and his successors to create a colonial empire in North America. Through settlement, military might, and Indigenous alliances, France laid claim to territories reaching from Newfoundland and the Gulf of St Lawrence to the Great Plains and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to outlining the causes and consequences of these imperial designs, this chapter focuses on the demographic, economic, political, social, and cultural features of the settler colonies established by France, and the relationships that developed between natives and newcomers, especially in the “middle ground” of the fur trade/military frontier in the interior of the continent. Both the War of the League of Augsburg (1689-97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13) spread to the colonies, creating havoc for settlers and Indigenous allies alike. By the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the French ceded Newfoundland, Acadie, and Rupert’s Land to Britain but France remained ascendant elsewhere and founded Louisbourg to serve as a major base for the fisheries, as a flourishing entrepôt for North Atlantic trade, and as a vehicle for contesting British claims to North America.

In Memorandum on the Debts of State (1715) Montesquieu explains how to curb France’s debt crisis stemming principally from Louis XIV’s war-mongering. Rather than recommending declaration of bankruptcy, he proposes a gradual reduction of the debt by means of a partial repudiation. The greater the proportion of an individual’s overall wealth invested in the crown’s debt, the less the reduction would be, since such individuals would have fewer other investments. Montesquieu was confident his debt reduction plan would succeed and predicted the king would be able to reduce taxes. In his Considerations on the Wealth of Spain (1727–1728) he explains that the main reason for the collapse of Spain as a powerhouse in modern Europe was that the Spanish became the victims of inflation. The more bullion brought to Spain’s shores, the less valuable it became since more and more specie chased roughly the same amount of goods.