Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France

​Nicole Bauer is Assistant Professor of European History at the University of Tulsa in the USA. A cultural historian of early modern France, she is particularly interested in pulling threads from different directions to understand and uncover the cultural origins of political and social movements.

"The bibliography, however, leaves the reader in no doubts to Bauer’s firm handles both archival and historiographical material, and the book will be a valuable resource for colleagues and students alike. The result is a well-researched and engaging study that, to exhaust the optical metaphor, takes a wide-angled view on a rich and timely subject." (Nineteenth-Century French Studies, ncfs-journal.org, 2025)

• Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Creatures of Infamy: Lettres de cachet, Family Honor, and the Uses of Secrecy.- Chapter 3: The Fate of Secrets in a Public Sphere: The Comte de Broglie and the Demise of the Secret du Roi.- Chapter 4: Those Who Know Your Secrets: Jesuit Secrecy and the Proto-nationalism of the Jansenists.- Chapter 5: “I Promise Never to Speak to Anyone”: Polices Practices and the Bastille.- Chapter 6: Desire, Dread, and the Grateful Dead: Bastille Cadavers and the Revolutionary Gothic Imaginary.- Chapter 7: The Marat of Versailles: Transparency During and After the Terror.- Chapter 8: Conclusion.