FREDERIC BASTIAT, FORGOTTEN LIBERAL: SPOKESMAN FOR AN IDEOLOGY IN CRISIS (FRANCE; FREE TRADE)

This study is a reevaluation of the significance of the work and career of Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850). Bastiat has long been regarded by historians as the leading free trade advocate in mid-nineteenth-century France. His contemporaries, however, viewed him as far more than simply a spokesman for an unpopular economic position; defenders of the laboring classes saw him as an important and influential opponent. During the Second Republic's bitter social conflicts, Bastiat was a key defender of the bourgeois liberal ideology. He waged a major, prolonged polemical battle with Proudhon, the primary spokesman for the working classes, as well as aggressively challenging Considerant, Blanc, and other socialists. Both Marx and Flaubert viewed Bastiat as a leading defender of the bourgeois liberal position.;Second, his publications, speeches, and letters are examined to demonstrate that he was more than just a free trade champion. He was, in fact, a principal spokesman for the bourgeois liberal ideology that dominated the July Monarchy and successfully defended itself during the upheavals of the Second Republic. It was this aspect of Bastiat's work, subsequently overlooked by historians, that drew the attention of his contemporaries.;The third focus of this dissertation explores how the bourgeois liberal ideology was defended by using Bastiat as a case study. His positions, attitudes, and assumptions reveal a great deal about the functioning of bourgeois liberalism specifically and of ideologies in general.;By treating these three themes in an integrated fashion, it is demonstrated that the previous neglect of Bastiat as a major spokesman for the dominant ideology of this period of French history has been unwarranted. In the process, many aspects of the formulation and functioning of that ideology, and of ideologies in general, are examined.;This dissertation has a triple focus. First, it examines his life and career as a provincial notable from the rural southwest. By tracing his career as a wealthy, leisured landowner who first sought local and the departement offices, and who was eventually elected to the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, Bastiat emerges as a prototypical notable of his class and region.