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March 26, 2010 Julia Osman (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) The Arsenal of Revolution: Beginning with the loss of the Seven Years' War in 1763, the French army worked to transform itself from an aristocratic force into one that exhibited traits of a citizen army. The officer corps lagged behind in this period of reform, as a long-standing commitment to noble privilege in the army inhibited any attempts at lasting modifications. Reformers tried to professionalize the officer corps by providing equal opportunities for promotion, emphasizing talent and merit, and discouraging the corrupting influence of wealth, while maintaining the privileges of the noble class. Such reforms proved nearly impossible as competing pressures for a meritorious officer corps stood in complete opposition to the privileges that court nobles expected to maintain. This paper will examine the contradictions working against the emergence of a French citizen army at the end of the Old Regime and the building tensions that eventually made way for a citizen army born of the initiative of citizens and soldiers. Julia Osman is a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill, who is currently finishing a dissertation entitled, "The Citizen Army of Old Regime France." She received her BA from the College of William and Mary in 2004 and her MA from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2006. She has published in French History Journal and Eighteenth-Century Fiction. All of her research to date has combined military history and cultural history methodologies, in an attempt to bring the two fields into more productive dialogue. Co-sponsored by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies |