… French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 362-381. Despite the Ancien Régime ’s ban on voluntary associations that lacked official authorisation, several such ‘clubs’ and ‘ sociétés ’ appeared in eighteenth-century France, especially during the regime’s latter decades. Among the earliest unauthorised associations were the Freemasons. Their underground lodges took root in Paris in the late 1720s, but by the end of the … of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 granted the freedom of expression, it said nothing about the freedom of association . Paradoxically, revolutionary policies towards associations were initially restrictive. Clubs required …