Dr. Jill Walshaw

Bio

I work in the area of early modern (17^th and 18^th century) France, up to and including the French Revolution (1789-1799). I’m fascinated by the way ordinary people came into conflict with state prerogatives. For example, in my first book, A Show of Hands for the Republic, I traced rural public opinion from the mid-18^th century through the French Revolution, and explored when and why the expression of political thought was construed as verbal sedition by the authorities. My second book project similarly examines the notion of treason (or lèse-majesté in the Old Regime) by examining the practice and prosecution of counterfeiting money, which – since defendants were accused of having illegally reproduced the king’s image and having at the same time usurped the royal prerogative to mint coins – was classified as a version of an attack on the king himself, warranting severe penalties. In my research I use a wide variety of archival materials, including ministerial and administrative correspondence, contemporary works of jurisprudence, and the papers of local police and municipal governments, but the bulk of my work focuses on criminal court cases. I have visited many of the 90-odd Departmental Archives in France as well as various archives and libraries in Paris. My home base, though, will always be the Midi-Pyrénées region of the south-west, near Toulouse.

Courses

Selected publications