Dispersion et concentration de la draperie sedanaise au XVIIIème siècle : l'entreprise des Poupart de Neuflize

Abstract

Gérard Gayot, "Dispersion and concentration of the Sedan cloth-industry in the XVIIIth century : the Poupart de Neuflize enterprise". In the case of Sedan, the family record-book ot the Poupart de Neuflize family (private archives) and the traditional sources (Archives Nationales F 12) enable us to explain the constitution in eighteenth century France of those areas of mono-industry marked with a heavy concentration of labour force and dominated by trading manufacturers who thus control directly the supply of raw materials, the manufacturing itself, and the sale. The traders' capital, pricked by the demand and by the search for reduced costs, deliberately takes part in the up-stream industrialization process by the setting of spinning and weaving workshops in the suburban zones and in the country. Without any dangerous locking-up of capital, without mechanization, without the creation of derived poles, the traders' capital nevertheless organizes a new industrial space and a new type of social relationship wich will have to be taken into account by the nineteenth century industrializing movement.