The Stonemasons of Creuse in Nineteenth-century Paris


Book Description

The stonemasons were well-known for their skills, and their seasonal migration from central France, but especially for their role in rebellion. This book places the masons' story within the larger history of nineteenth-century Paris. The coverage spans the long nineteenth century, starting before 1789 and ending near 1914.




Constructing Paris in the Age of Revolution


Book Description

Examining the social and political history of workers and entrepreneurs engaged in constructing the French capital from 1763-1815, this book argues that Paris construction was a core sector in which 'archaic' and 'innovative' practices were symbiotically used by guilds, the state, and enterprises to launch the commercial revolution in France.




Paris in Modern Times


Book Description

Drawing upon a vast body of historical scholarship, Casey Harison's Paris in Modern Times provides the first detailed academic history of Paris in the modern age. Chronologically surveying Paris's history from the Old Regime of the late-18th century through to the present day, this book explores the social, economic, political and cultural developments that come together to tell the story of this iconic city. Each chapter has an introduction and illuminating 'sidebars' that touch upon the ways in which Parisian history has intersected with wider changes in France and beyond. The text, which also includes a wealth of images, maps, and a further reading section, takes the opportunity to place Paris and its history in a broader French, Atlantic and global historical context in order to cover an essential aspect of what has been such an important city the world over. Paris in Modern Times is vital reading for anyone seeking to know more about the history of Paris or the history of France since the French Revolution.




Strangers and Neighbours


Book Description

In this book, Hayhoe paints a picture of a surprisingly mobile and dynamic Burgundian rural population.




The Personality of Paris


Book Description

What was the personality of 19th-century Paris? To answer that question, this book eschews the conventional narrative and chronological route taken by most histories of Paris. Instead, it thematically analyses the complex personality traits of Paris from the onset of the Revolution of 1789 to the beginning of the Great War. Starting with the topographical and cultural legacies that late 18th-century Paris inherited from its foundation in pre-Roman and Roman times and from its medieval infancy and early-modern adolescence, The Personality of Paris unpacks the social and material complexity of the 19th-century city. It considers the role of immigration in the making of Parisians and in the city's growth from half a million in 1801 to almost three million in 1911. It examines the making of its distinctive landscape through the construction of monuments and architectural icons, through its massive re-modelling by Napoléon III and Baron Haussmann, through its five world exhibitions, through its emphasis on food, fashion and leisure, and through the ways in which Parisians sought rural release from urban pressure. Finally, the book considers the self-harm done to the person of 19th-century Paris by revolutions and wars and the damage inflicted on it by 20th-century hubristic politicians and architects.




Dividing Paris


Book Description

"Dividing Paris: Urban Renewal and Social Inequality, 1852-1870 offers a new look at the ambitious urban changes that transformed the city of Paris during the Second Empire, when Paris became a template for urban renewal in many large cities in Europe, North, and South America. Esther da Costa Meyer looks at the social and historical of context of these urban changes--what Napoleon III, his prefect Georges-Eugene Haussman, and their team of engineers planned, as well as how the diverse and deeply stratified public responded to them. Along with broad streets and boulevards intended to enable crowds and merchandise to circulate and, also, impede the chances of popular insurgency, Haussman's project of urban renewal called for ample water supply, sewerage, and public parks and gardens. These changes radically altered the old, tightly-knit weave of the medieval city, serving the needs of the industrial bourgeoisie while forcing the urban poor to the outskirts. Dividing Paris is the first architectural history of the city that takes into account the larger part of the urban territory annexed in 1860, a ring of settlements and villages which became increasingly class-specific. Instead of relating the story of Haussmanization as a top-down administrative effort, as Haussman's critics and admirers have both tended to do, it draws on primary sources, especially newspapers and memoirs, to investigate the degree to which Parisians' experiences of modernity were class and gender-specific and to ask what strategies working class men and women in particular used to cope with and in some cases resist the changing world around them. At the same time, da Costa Meyer resists the familiar narrative of Paris as "capital of the 19th century" that has endured, at least since Walter Benjamin's famous essay, as euro-centric and misleading insofar as it fails to situate Paris's urban developments in a broader global context or to acknowledge the extent to which Haussmanization was itself implicated in the broader imperial project on which France was embarked at the time"--




A Cultural History of Work in the Age of Empire


Book Description

Winner of the 2020 PROSE Award for Multivolume Reference/Humanities The period 1800–1920 was one in which work processes were dramatically transformed by mechanization, factory system, the abolition of the guilds, the integration of national markets and expansion into overseas colonies. While some continued to work in trades that were similar to those of their parents and grandparents, increasing numbers of workers found their workplace and work processes changed, often in ways that were beyond their control. Workers employed a variety of means to protest these changes, from machine-breaking to strikes to migration. This period saw the rise of the labor union and the working-class political party. It was also a time during which ideas about work changed dramatically. Work came to be seen as a source of pride, progress and even liberation, and workers garnered increased interest from writers and artists. This volume explores the multi-faceted experience of workers during the Age of Empire. A Cultural History of Work in the Age of Empire presents an overview of the period with essays on economies, representations of work, workplaces, work cultures, technology, mobility, society, politics and leisure.




The Pariahs of Yesterday


Book Description

This work looks at the surge of Bretons who left their homes in Western France in the latter half of the 19th century to live and work in Paris. Portrayed as backward, ignorant peasants they found no welcome until after WWII. Moch positions her work within immigration theory, connecting migration studies to theories about state projects of assimilation and about cultures of inclusion and exclusion.




The History of Labour Intermediation


Book Description

Searching for a job has been an everyday affair in both modern and past societies, and employment a concern for both individuals and institutions. The case studies in this volume investigate job search and placement practices in European countries, Australia, and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors explore how looking for work becomes a means by which participants (individuals, placement agents, trade unions, municipalities, administrations, state authorities, and schools) articulated specific interests, perspectives, and agendas. Taking an exploratory approach, the chapters illustrate different approaches to the history of employment and job searching, ranging from organizational and regulatory histories to the analysis of practices and autobiographical accounts. In the process, they uncover the interrelations of search practices and attempts to arrange placement services.




Reproductive Citizens


Book Description

In the familiar tale of mass migration to France from 1880 onward, we know very little about the hundreds of thousands of women who formed a critical part of those migration waves. In Reproductive Citizens, Nimisha Barton argues that their relative absence in the historical record hints at a larger and more problematic oversight—the role of sex and gender in shaping the experiences of migrants to France before the Second World War. Barton's compelling history of social citizenship demonstrates how, through the routine application of social policies, state and social actors worked separately toward a shared goal: repopulating France with immigrant families. Filled with voices gleaned from census reports, municipal statistics, naturalization dossiers, court cases, police files, and social worker registers, Reproductive Citizens shows how France welcomed foreign-born men and women—mobilizing naturalization, family law, social policy, and welfare assistance to ensure they would procreate, bearing French-assimilated children. Immigrants often embraced these policies because they, too, stood to gain from pensions, family allowances, unemployment benefits, and French nationality. By striking this bargain, they were also guaranteed safety and stability on a tumultuous continent. Barton concludes that, in return for generous social provisions and refuge in dark times, immigrants joined the French nation through marriage and reproduction, breadwinning and child-rearing—in short, through families and family-making—which made them more French than even formal citizenship status could.