The Emergence of Civil Society, 1650-1750

The modern thinkers despaired at man and his virtues. In contrast to the ancients, who debated the question of the best regime, modern thinkers concentrated on the search for the least worst society possible: that which would allow men to avoid the devastation wrought by the bloody combina­tion of the search for personal glory and the fanatic love of God.

The belief that men naturally hate each other and that civil society protects us from anarchy formed the basis of the scores of French conduct books, which appeared in over 100 editions in the period 1670-1730. The new civility had utility but no moral value; it guaranteed that social relations were protected from violence by the hygiene of tact. Antoine de Courtin contrasted his code with the false laws of honour, which were based on hatred and pride and only led to ‘feuds, murders and division'. Buffier's 1726 Traite de la societe civile advertised the ‘science of living with other men in civil society in order to procure, as much as we can, our own happiness in concert with the happiness of others'.

Politeness occupies a central place in English folklore. It is considered to be a quintessential!/ English characteristic, a corollary of the late seventeenth­century Commercial Revolution; it conveyed morals and urbane manners, permitted access to power, influence, jobs, wives and markets, and replaced the old honour code. However, the major theorists and popularisers of politeness were French and it was French manners that would supersede the Italian in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The central role attributed to court in the acculturation of manners is misplaced. The initial success of the literature and the style it spawned occurred in the triangle formed by the great commercial centres of Paris, London and Amsterdam. The Commercial Revolution of the late seventeenth century did not of itself reduce violence. In order to understand the cultural change that occurred we need to recall that in the seventeenth century ‘commerce' denoted more than just trade. A common refrain in the literature was the benefits of ‘commerce in the world' which, unlike the code of honour, recognised the virtues of social diversity and the scope for mutual improvement: ‘We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collison.'^[979] Commerce was complemented by society (more commonly referred to as civil society) whose meaning changed in the seventeenth century from the traditional sense of ‘company' into a contract for mutual benefit and survival.

Christian teaching quickly made its reconciliation with politeness. Loving one's neighbour was utopian; its impossibility left many ordinary believers fearing for their salvation. By 1734 it was possible for the author of the Traite du vrai merite de I'homme (twenty editions) to claim that the ‘science of manners is the great Christian science'. The conflict between living in the world and the search for personal salvation was reconciled by the French Jansenist, Pierre Nicole, whose popular Essays on Manners (1671) owed much of their influence in England to the patronage of Locke. Nicole complained that ‘those exterior troubles which divide Kingdoms, often rise from the little care particular persons whereof they are compose'd'. He defined civility as the ‘commerce of self-love, by which one tries to attract the affection of others by showing them affection in turn'.

By the mid eighteenth century violent conflict among the social elite was significantly reduced. The benefits of sociability predicated on commercialised leisure - coffee houses, clubs, assemblies, gardens, theatres - were universally esteemed. Diderot's Encyclopedic claimed in 1765 that ‘civil society is, so to speak, a divinity on earth'. The transformation of European society was predicated on the separation of the civil from the military. During the eight­eenth century all the major European states built standing armies staffed by a professional officer corps. The military academies in Paris, Berlin, Vienna and St Petersburg continued to cultivate the point of honour as the cynosure of gentlemanly conduct. But there is good reason to believe that the creation of a modem officer corps made a substantial contribution to civil society. It offered a structured career and the esprit de corps built around a regiment fostered a loyalty to it rather than to one's kinsmen or patron. Young noble­men were removed to garrisons far from their homes and their kin; their disputes were likewise removed from the requirements of local politics, in which the vindication of honour through violence was an obligation. Outside the web of local social relations into which he was born, honour for the young cadet became a more individual affair, less tied to the family. An honour code that prized service to the nation and the dynasty above individual worth became common currency.

How far civil society penetrated beyond the urban milieu is a matter of debate. In eighteenth-century England the spread of politeness into the coun­tryside and among lower orders is more easily discerned. When Horace Walpole visited King's Lynn in 1754 he was surprised to find ‘the folks, sensible and reasonable, and civilised; their very language is polished since I lived among them'.^[981] France was a more diverse kingdom and the contrasts between the metropolitan elite and the countryside greater. Regional variation was even more striking in Italy. It was during the eighteenth century that the modern division between northern and southern Italy first appeared. The northern elite was quickly pacified. In contrast, southern Italy experienced some of the highest homicide rates recorded in human history.