Mellon Research Fellowship
The Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowships, inaugurated in 2003 by the Foundation, support the research of outstanding scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who, at the time of taking up the fellowship, are retired but remain active and productive contributors in their fields.
2009
Bill Beik, History: The Inner Workings of French Absolutism: Louis XIV in the 1690s
Professor Beik's project, which builds on his previous work, will provide a better understanding of how Europe's most powerful absolute monarch managed to create an effective, semi-bureaucratic government in a traditional society, withou most of the coercive powers enjoyed by modern governments. The Mellon grant has allowed Beik to work in Parisian archivese and visit selected provincial collections to assess the reception of royal decisions by the populations they affected.