Economic Position and Officeholding, 1752-1789

In these communities, officeholding was not monopolized by an oligarchy of wealthy residents.  To the contrary:

• Officeholding was widely shared among male heads of households who routinely rotated through different offices.

In Tart-le-Bas (Table 1), for example, of the 88 men we can identify and who were eligible to serve from 1752 to 1789, three quarters of them held a village office at least once during this period.  In neighboring Tart-le-Haut, of the 141 men so identified, 57 percent held at least one office in these years.

• In sum, annual elections with the high degree of rotation in and out of village offices meant that 45 to 80 percent of the male heads of household held office at least once during the period.

• The principle of rotation also meant that the proportion of men called to office was greater in smaller communities than in larger ones, as we can see by comparing Tables 3 and 4. In the tiny village of Tart l'Abbaye, 80 percent of the 67 identified men held at least one office, whereas in the larger Longecourt, where the same number of offices were apportioned among more than twice as many men (155), 45 percent were called  to a village office at least once during these decades.

• Not surprisingly, the poorest men were very rarely called to office, and the likelihood of holding office one or more times typically increased as one moved up the social ladder.

In Thenissey, for instance, the men whose incomes placed them in the highest tax category were over-represented among those holding office four or more times.  As column totals in Table 5 shows, they made up 20 percent of men all the men classified by tax category, but comprised 40 percent of those who held office four or more times. With the exception of Tart-le-Bas, this pattern held true in the other villages, too. And in all the communities without exception, men with the lowest economic standing were consistently under-represented among those who held office.

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