Bibliographie complète

Subdelegates of the intendancies indirectly served the king of France at the local level. The study of their institution in five intendancies offers an original point of view on the Ancien Regime state and its administration. Subdelegations existed in all the provinces of the kingdom: in those known as pays d’élections, pays d’États or pays d’imposition, as well as in the colonies. Studying them makes it possible to question this typology and especially the centralization of the Kingdom of France. By comparative prosopography, 687 subdelegates in the 159 subdelegations of the intendancies of Caen in Lower Normandy, Fort-Royal in the Lesser Antilles, Lille in Flanders, Quebec in Canada and Rennes in Brittany are studied. This method allows for inter-provincial and transatlantic as well as intra-provincial comparisons and a multiscalar analysis of the royal administration. Subdelegations emerge as institutions of intendancy, in the service of the monarchy and exercised by local notables. Taxation, civil justice or administrative litigation, investigations, surveys and statistics, royal militia and corvée, public contracts, epidemics and assistance, supervision of municipalities, many powers concern them. In practice, they varied between provinces and between subdelegations. Everywhere, magistrates, mayors, marine commissioners or other notables served as subdelegates. Between bureaucracy and patronage, they participated in a limited administrative centralization. Subdelegations mainly generated multiple mediations of royal power, transforming it through provincial variations and local translations.