The ‘bourgeois’, one of heroes in the French social history, appeared on the chart dated 1007 for the first time. At the beginning of the second millenium when the Western Europe was revived they were born as the ‘new men’ whose life had nothing to do with the culture of land. These people, defined as the habitants of a ‘town’, made their ‘fief’ the island of liberties and privileges. Since then the ‘bourgeois’ became a legal status. They were the subjects of rights and obligations which varied according to towns. From the second half of the thirteenth century when urban societies began to be polarized, however, the ‘communes’, or the ‘bourgeois republics’ based on horizontal solidarity and fraternity were transformed into the stage of social struggles. The ‘bourgeois’ tended to be identified with an elite group of urban societies and, therefore, was seen as a category far apart from common ‘habitants et manants’. Faced by the social hatred and popular violences, they saw the patron of their vested rights in ever-growing royal power. Furthermore, as the central power dwarfed the urban autonomy, their vision went beyond the urban level and they turned to the capital city of the kingdom, particularly to the royal court where the chances of wealth, power and honor were concentrated. Many of them succeeded in being ennobled by serving the kings and acquiring domains. Thus the ‘bourgeois’ was associated with a rentier living comfortably in retirement, or a person “living a noble life”, and was occasionally considered a category distinct from the merchant. In a nutshell, the bourgeois who had been born as a ‘new man’ in feudal France in AD 1000 or so, became a ‘new nobleman’ in the Ancien Regime after his successive transformations. A history like this was also that of the continuous self-negation and that of the so-called “treason of French bourgeoisie.”
Le ‘bourgeois’, hero de l’histoire sociale française est apparu sur une charte datee de l’an 1007 pour la premiere fois. Au debut du second millenium où l’Europe occidentale etait en reveil, il etait ne comme un ‘homme nouveau’ dont la vie etait sans rapport avec la culture de terre. Ces hommes definis comme les habitants d’un ‘bourg’ faisaient de leur ‘fief’ une ile de libertes et de privileges. Depuis lors le ‘bourgeois’ devenait un statut legal: ils etaient tenants des droits et des obligations qui variaient selon lieu. Cependant, des la seconde moitie du treizieme siecle où les societes urbaines commençaient a etre divisees en deux mondes, les ‘communes’ ou les ‘republiques bourgeoises’ fondees sur la solidarite horizontale et l’amitie, se transformaient en theâtre des luttes sociaux. Les ‘bourgeois’ tendaient a s’identifier avec un groupe des elites urbaines, et donc etaient consideres comme une categorie eloignee des autres ‘habitants et manants’. Menaces de la haine sociale et des violences populaires, c’etait dans le pouvoir royal grandissant de jour en jour qu’ils voyaient le patron de leur droits acquis. De plus, selon que ce pouvoir central a retreci l’autonomie urbaine, leur vision franchissait le niveau urbain et se dirigeait vers la cite capitale du royaume, le cour royal sur lequel se concentraient les chances de richesse, pouvoir et honneur. Beaucoup d’entre eux reussissaient a etre anoblis par le service autour du roi et l’acquisition des domaines. Donc le ‘bourgeois’ evoquait un rentier vivant a loisir, ou une personne “vivant noblement”, et parfois etait considere comme une categorie distincte du marchand. En somme, le bourgeois qui avait ete ne comme un ‘homo novus’ en France feodale aux environs de l’an mil, devenait, apres ses multiples metamorphoses, un ‘nouveau noble’ dans l’Ancien Regime. Une telle histoire etait aussi celle de la negation continuelle de soi-meme, en d’autres termes, celle de la “trahison de la bourgeoisie française.”