Civil Status and Identification in Nineteenth-Century France: A Matter of State Control?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul-André Rosental
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Birth Certificates ◽  
State Control ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Economic Relationships ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
Civil Status ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
European Standards

Civil status, and particularly birth certificates, rather than identity papers, are the legal basis of identification in France. Its nineteenth-century history presents a complex picture, which cannot be reduced to a process of increasing state control. Far from implementing ambitious registration projects, French liberal administration left information scattered and scarce as compared to European standards. It had to find a balance between the need to provide open information in order to minimize uncertainty in social and economic relationships, and the protection of personal and family honour and reputation. Citizens' agency and consent have been determinant in this process, whose traces are still visible in contemporary France.

The State versus the People

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Rendle
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
State Control ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
The People ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
The Military

This book provides the first detailed account of the role of revolutionary justice in the early Soviet state. Law has often been dismissed by historians as either unimportant after the October Revolution amid the violence and chaos of civil war or even, in the absence of written codes and independent judges, little more than another means of violence. This is particularly true of the most revolutionary aspect of the new justice system, revolutionary tribunals—courts inspired by the French Revolution and established to target counter-revolutionary enemies. This book paints a more complex picture. The Bolsheviks invested a great deal of effort and scarce resources into building an extensive system of tribunals that spread across the country, including into the military and the transport network. At their peak, hundreds of tribunals heard hundreds of thousands of cases every year. Not all ended in harsh sentences: some were dismissed through lack of evidence; others given a wide range of sentences; others still suspended sentences; and instances of early release and amnesty were common. This book, therefore, argues that law played a distinct and multifaceted role for the Bolsheviks. Tribunals stood at the intersection between law and violence, offering various advantages to the Bolsheviks, not least strengthening state control, providing a more effective means of educating the population on counter-revolution, and enabling a more flexible approach to the state’s enemies. All of this adds to our understanding of the early Soviet state and, ultimately, of how the Bolsheviks held on to power.

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