Gendered Behavior in Subsistence Riots: The French Flour War of 1775

Abstract

The special significance of women's participation in pre-industrial subsistence riots has generated increased attention in recent years. But we still have little precise information on what forms women's participation took; moreover, we still know next to nothing about either the relation of women's roles and motives to those of men, or the implications of gender-specific forms of protest for the riots themselves. Knowing these points would contribute to our understanding of the dynamic of early-modem society in general and of popular protest specifically, for although historians have sometimes ignored or minimized the significance of gender roles in pre-industrial popular movements, the rioters and authorities themselves emphatically did not. This paper, therefore, constructs a collective profile of female and male rioters and analyzes gender-specific forms of participation and theaters of action for a series of riots known as the guerre des farines or Flour War that erupted in the Parisian basin in the Spring of 1775. It compares female and male behavior to assess the logic that underpinned their roles. This analysis of gender-specific behavior generates evidence, otherwise obscured, to support the hypothesis that the Flour War, while taking the traditional form of the subsistence riot and focusing on traditional issues, also manifested behavior and encompassed grievances that were propelled by profound changes underway in French society, changes accelerating uneven economic and social development, renegotiating local political relations, and reshaping constructions of gender.' The Flour War incorporated an unprecedented degree of violence in the countryside, in addition to the predictable upheaval in market towns and cities. Within this expanded crucible, reactions intensified as men appeared in significant numbers, sometimes constituting a large majority. This unexpected development excited an intense reaction among victims and authorities alike,2 for prior to the Flour War, subsistence riots were predominantly female terrain.3 That so many men swelled the protesting ranks in 1775 and played prominent roles suggests a changing outlook, and indeed the explanation for this male behavior lies in a deteriorating male status4 among the menu peuple that subjected them to concerns similar to those of their wives, sisters, mothers and daughters. Men were prepared to face massive repression from authorities who saw them as politically more dangerous than women even as their precarious material and social conditions drove them to embrace traditional female responses to a subsistence crisis. When they acted in great numbers and in specific spheres, however, men further charged the movement with political significance in the eyes of the Ancien Regime state.