The Language of <i>confiance</i> and the French <i>cahiers de doléances</i> of 1789

Abstract In the context of increasing historiographical attention to the emotional content of French revolutionary politics, the essentially unprecedented nationwide consultation that produced the cahiers de doléances of 1789, now available as a searchable digitised corpus, offers a route into exploring the hopes, fears, and concerns of thousands of French people who participated directly in the cahiers ’ composition. Mapping their uses of the concept of ‘trust’, and its manifold implications, offers new evidence on the nature and contours of the political relationships they believed they inhabited, and on the extent to which they were enacting agency over the prospect of change. It also provides material to contemplate the implications of the highly centralized, top-down reform processes actually initiated from the summer of 1789 onwards, and the violent complexity of their reception.