The Atlas of Local Jurisdictions of Ancien Régime France

Victor Gay (1, 2) , Paula Gobbi (3, 4) , Marc Goñi (5, 4)

1 IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
2 TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics
3 ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
4 CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research
5 UiB - University of Bergen

This article describes the construction and content of an atlas of local jurisdictions of Ancien Régime France: bailliages. Bailliages were at the center of the Ancien Régime's jurisdictional apparatus: they administered the ordinary royal justice, delimited the area of influence of different customary laws, and served as electoral constituencies for the Estates General of 1614 and 1789. Based on Armand Brette's Atlas des Bailliages et Juridictions Assimilées published in 1904, we develop a historical geographic information system that contains shapefiles and associated data files of bailliage courts at the time of the convocation of the Estates General of 1789.

Keywords: Administrative boundary; Historical geographic information systems; Jurisdiction; Bailliage; Institution; Ancien Régime; France

Domains: History; Geography

Victor Gay, Paula Gobbi, Marc Goñi. The Atlas of Local Jurisdictions of Ancien Régime France. 2023. ⟨hal-04285825v1⟩