Abstract

This article scrutinizes the nineteenth-century legacy of the old regime’s commercial empire through the ambiguous case of the Monneron brothers. Having gained fortune and recognition in Indian Ocean trade, the brothers sat as deputies in the National Assembly, but by the end of the 1790s their affairs and reputations had been destroyed. Their experiences reveal how the politics of commerce fundamentally changed during the Revolution. But the Monnerons also draw our attention to structural developments in French commercial imperialism that preceded and transcended the Revolution. They helped facilitate French investment in the Indian Ocean in the final decades of the old regime, a ‘spatial fix’ in merchant capital that was carried out in anticipation of crisis in the Atlantic, and that was consolidated around the turn of the century through the introduction of sugar cultivation in the Mascarene islands. By reading the biographies of the Monnerons alongside the life of their capital, this article attempts to acknowledge the undeniable ruptures of revolutionary politics without losing sight of broader developments in the global history of capitalism.

中文翻译：

---

商人资本的生活：弗雷雷斯·蒙纳龙和旧政权帝国的遗产

摘要

本文通过对Monneron兄弟的模棱两可的案例，仔细研究了旧政权商业帝国的19世纪遗产。兄弟俩在印度洋贸易中获得了财富和认可，在国民议会中担任代表，但到1790年代末，他们的事务和声誉被摧毁。他们的经验揭示了大革命期间商业政治的根本变化。但是，Monnerons也提请我们注意革命之前和之后的法国商业帝国主义的结构发展。在旧政权的最后几十年中，它们帮助法国促进了对印度洋的投资，这是对商船资本的“空间修复”，是为了预期大西洋的危机而进行的，在世纪之交，通过在马斯卡林群岛引入食糖种植巩固了这一点。通过阅读Monnerons的传记以及它们的首都生活，本文试图承认革命政治的不可否认的破裂，而又不会忽视全球资本主义历史上更广阔的发展。