A populationist controversy in eighteenth-century France: polygamy

This article is an analysis of the controversy in eighteenth-century France over a proposed legalizing, for populationist reasons, of 'simultaneous' polygamy. The subject had been discussed in the polemics of chiefly Protestant inspiration at the end of the previous century (Leyser, Bayle), but it was essentially after 1721, the year of publication of the so-called 'populationist' letters in Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, that the idea of having two or more wives began to be widely discussed. The arguments in favour of marrying several women combined populationist concerns and a 'rights of man' discourse. Arbuthnot's discovery of the sex ratio in 1712 reduced the enthusiasm of some authors (Premontval, Cerfvol, Laugier) for an unequal distribution of women, whereas for other authors (Rantzow, Pilati di Tassulo), the demographic and even commercial advantages that polygamy was claimed to offer took priority over all else. Divorce (serial polygamy) was eventually legalized at the time of the Revolution, but simultaneous polygamy, in which one male enjoys an advantage at the expense of others, an idea associated since Montesquieu with despotism and in clear contradiction with the principle of equality, was rejected.