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SUMMARY:Jacques Necker's Compte rendu au roi (1781) and the Transformation
  of Modern Political Discourse - Professor Jacob Soll\, University of Sout
 hern California
DTSTART:20140609T160000Z
DTEND:20140609T173000Z
UID:TALK52823@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:D'Maris Coffman
DESCRIPTION:Published in more the 40\,000 editions in 1781—and around 10
 0\,000 copies in the following years—Necker's Compte rendu was easily on
 e of the greatest best-sellers\, if the note the greatest\, of its time.  
 Historians of political discourse should take note\, for Necker's treatise
  transformed traditional language of politics.  It used terms such as virt
 ue\, the state and happiness.  But it also was a treatise about state acco
 unts that not only equated balanced books with political virtue\; it provi
 ded the accounts themselves\, thus tying good government with the publicat
 ion of government accounts.  While the use of state accounts in government
  debate had long existed in Britain\, Necker's Compte rendu established th
 e genre\, creating  a vast corpus of comptes rendus in revolutionary Franc
 e\, while inspiring important imitations from Florence to Philadelphia\, t
 hus establishing the use of accounting numbers and balance sheets as centr
 al tools in modern discourses of political virtue.
LOCATION:Sidgwick Hall (or Old Dining Room)\, Newnham College
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