Fire-fighting fraternities? The corps de sapeurs-pompiers in Loir-et-Cher during the nineteenth century

Abstract

This paper examines the development and spread, and the structure, function and evolution, of one particular set of fraternal association—the corps de sapeurs-pompiers (fire-fighting brigades) in one French département (Loir-et-Cher) during the nineteenth century. From a mass of unpublished records is reconstructed the historical evolution and the geographical diffusion of brigades. An uneven pattern of brigade development in time and over space is analysed in relation to the stimuli promoting the formation of brigades, to their rules and practices, and to the social tensions and spatial problems of funding and recruitment which affected their evolution. Although the State was involved at the outset in the creation of corps de sapeurs-pompiers, the role of fire brigades as fraternal associations dependent for their existence upon the goodwill of their individual members and upon a sense of solidarity is also demonstrated. Especially within remote rural communes, brigades were established and functioned in at least partial ignorance of the legal framework within which they were officially embedded. Gradually during the nineteenth century the State came to exercise a greater degree of control over fire brigades and their role as voluntary associations was correspondingly reduced. The corps de sapeurs-pompiers were simultaneously fraternal associations and —increasingly during the nineteenth century—part of the extending apparatus of the State.