Word: ancien
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...Africa appears to me parallel in one respect to that of the Philippines, with a government able to impose itself for a relatively long period while the tension builds up and the period may end up in a bloody revolution. After all, it took 146 years for the French ancien regime (say, from 1643--Louis XIV's coming as a King--to 1789) to evolve into the French revolution. I would not call the ancien regime "highly politically stable". Different people have perceived differently during those 146 years, and since...
...this somewhat speculative re-creation of the ancien régime is solidly based on Darnton's mastery of its most obscure documents. He has discovered, for example, that there was a police official who spent the years 1748 to 1753 writing more than 500 still unpublished dossiers covering virtually every writer in Paris. They included all those troublesome philosophes whose skeptical criticisms of the Bourbon monarchy contributed to its downfall, yet this diligent police analyst never used the term philosophes, never considered them as a group, never imagined that any writers could have political importance...
Throughout his New World adventure, however, Lafayette remained curiously immune to the principles he was fighting for. "It had not yet occurred to him that democracy was for export," writes Bernier. The soldier returned to France an enthusiastic supporter of the ancien régime. Yet as the toast of Paris salons, he met some of the new egalitarian thinkers of the day and became a genuine convert to the cause of democracy. His new ideals and his ever growing popularity drew him into the French Revolution, and at 31 he became vice president of the new National Assembly...
...Ancien Regime and the French Revolution...
...VERISIMILITUDE goes even beneath the surface; The Return of Martin Guerre paints not only a physical, but also a psychological portrait of peasant life under the ancien regime. And that image is compelling if only for its marked contrast to the lifestyle of modern moviegoers. Even small-town life can not approach the incestuous intimacy of a village in which most of the inhabitants not only are related, but actually live together under one roof. In such close quarters, there are no secrets. When Martin finds that he is impotent, for example, the rest of Artifat finds out too. Perhaps...