“In 1789 nobles were the kingdom's Jews.” So quipped Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret in his classic study of the French nobility of the Eighteenth Century. At first glance, the comparison seems merely fanciful. The nobility, in theory at least, existed at the very apex of society, whereas Jews were widely seen as at the bottom. The nobility was defined by its preeminent claim to honor, a quality of which the Jews were thought bereft. The nobility's prestige was based on its presumed martial expertise. Jews in early modern Europe had largely been excluded from the military duties which gentile commentators (John Toland notwithstanding) thought them incapable of performing. The nobility's power was built on its predominant and in principle exclusively rightful ownership of land. Jews, in contrast, were excluded almost entirely from land ownership. By law, the nobility could not engage directly in commerce. Jews, as we have seen, were often legally confined to the practice of trade. All of these distinctions would seem to render the two groups polar opposites. And yet in a sense they resembled each other profoundly: both were despised minorities which, in the eyes of many, constituted a self-enclosed international network, a foreign element that lived parasitically off the labor of the vast majority and that contributed nothing to society at large.

In the period 1789–1816, the noble-Jew analogy produced a fascinating set of associations.