Hannah Morand

Hannah Morand is a PhD student in History and Early Modern Studies at Yale University. Her research examines the intersection of fiscal policies, social resistance, and legal reforms in pre-revolutionary France, with a focus on the Ferme Générale, the Gabelle (salt tax), and their broader socio-political implications. She explores how taxation functioned not only as an economic mechanism but also as a tool of state control, shaping local allegiances, revolutionary consciousness, and colonial governance.

Her interest in the relationship between state power, industry, and urban planning began with her MA thesis at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, where she analysed the symbolic, social, and temporal overlap between eighteenth-century Revolutionary Architecture and the French Revolution. Particular attention was given to Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s pre-revolutionary vision for an ideal industrial city in Franche-Comté. This work has led to her current focus on royal patronage of manufactures and commercial enterprises in the late Ancien Régime, as well as the material and legal structures that underpinned early modern economic regulation.

Her research has been supported by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Canada Graduate Master’s Scholarship and Canada Graduate Doctoral Fellowship). She is currently preparing work on royal patronage of manufactures and eighteenth-century labour for presentation at the World Economic History Congress and the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. She has previously presented her research at Scientiae, Massey College, the Victorian Society of New York, and the Society of Architectural Historians, among other conferences.

Department: History