Continuity vs. mutation in the Napoleonic State under the Bourbons' Restoration, 1814-1830

The return of the Bourbons in 1814, despite the accompanying aggressive program of the extreme right-wing, intended to break the centralized state apparatus, considered to be the very source of "revolutionary danger", by no means involved a reduction in the power on an administration that has been poorly purged. Ultra-realism quickly showed itself unable to stabilize the economy and the society by means of a historic compromise that was nonetheless quickly organized by a technocracy composed of an combination of the old pre-1789 France offices and those of the revolutionary and imperial times. Under the lessons of Turgot and Colbert, the State became guardian and supervisor of a type of economic and social liberalism that provided French industrialization with new vigour. It also fostered and the creation of a protected national market. This modernising identity of the State managed to evolve. It overcame the right-oriented turn of politics promoted by Villele. In order to meet the challenges of the French modernization process from 1828, the State decided to mirror the "English methods", thus making the rigidity of the Napoleonic administration evolve.