Provincial France Research Articles

Daniel Heimmermann.Work, Regulation, and Identity in Provincial France: The Bordeaux Leather Trades, 1740–1815.

Daniel Heimmermann.<i>Work, Regulation, and Identity in Provincial France: The Bordeaux Leather Trades, 1740–1815</i>.

George Sand and Music Ethnography in Nineteenth-Century France

In Les Visions de la nuit dans les campagnes (1851–1853), George Sand responded to the French government’s newly announced project of collecting the ‘popular’ or folk songs of France, with a critique of their methods of collection as perfunctory. Sand was adamant not only about a more rigorous approach to amassing the nation’s folk songs but also about the inclusion of the music with the lyrics, and her concise, insightful critique of archival methods came after nearly two decades of her own occupation with rendering music in her fiction and, more immediately, a decade focused on folk music in many of what are known as her ‘rustic’ novels. In particular, I bring to the fore in this article discussions in Sand’s expansive novel Consuelo; La Comtesse de Rudolstadt (1842–1844) which both insist upon the historical, cultural and personal significance of the preservation of folk music and navigate the tensions of preserving an art form that is fundamentally non-static and ephemeral, in order to articulate the value Sand places on musical sensibility, memory and heritage. I argue that Les Visions de la nuit dans les campagnes stands along with Sand’s fiction as an ardent defense against the loss of the musical heritage of provincial France in the hands of the state’s archivists. This article thus situates George Sand’s investment in the cultural production from the Berry region within the early history of nineteenth-century music ethnography in France, while maintaining Sand’s own understanding of her cultural production as poetic rather than scientific.

Economy, Trade and Irish Merchants at Home and Abroad, 1600–1988, by L.M. Cullen

In a writing career that began in the 1950s, Louis Cullen has established himself as the pre-eminent historian of the Irish economy during the past five centuries. From the earliest explorations, his work has been characterised by a formidable knowledge of the sources, a willingness to question orthodoxies, and to pose awkward questions. His multifarious studies are characterised by unusual sensitivity to the variations within Ireland arising from ecology and patterns of settlement. As well as focusing on the particular and local, he has been keen to compare Irish experiences with those in Britain and continental Europe. These comparisons, far from being superficial window-dressing, are sustained by a remarkable familiarity with primary evidence relating to Scotland, England and provincial France. In addition, he understands economic theories. The publishers have gathered together in the present book miscellaneous papers which have either been published in scattered and sometimes inaccessible collections, or not published at all. Inevitably, some of the pieces address matters that Cullen has dealt with more expansively in his books, starting with Anglo-Irish Trade, 1660–1800 (1968; rev. ante, lxxxv [1970], 613–14), or in his most celebrated papers, such as ‘Irish History Without the Potato’ (Past and Present, also 1968). Written over a period of more than half a century, they have not been updated for this collection, so inconsistencies and repetitions do occur. Light editing of the texts has drawbacks; proof-reading is occasionally lax. However, any such blemishes are more than offset by the convenience and richness of the collection. Its range and stimulus excite only admiration. Some articles tackle large and contentious issues, such as the size of Ireland’s population and its rate of growth, the impact of government policies on Irish economic performance, and the causes and effects of the mid-nineteenth-century famine.

Enacting Brittany: Tourism and Culture in Provincial France, 1871–1939, by Patrick Young

Enacting Brittany: Tourism and Culture in Provincial France, 1871–1939, by Patrick Young

Patrick Young, Enacting Brittany: Tourism and Culture in Provincial France, 1871–1939

Patrick Young, <i>Enacting Brittany: Tourism and Culture in Provincial France, 1871–1939</i>

Enacting Brittany: Tourism and Culture in Provincial France, 1871-1939

Enacting Brittany: Tourism and Culture in Provincial France, 1871-1939

The Instrument That Never Was: Inventing, Manufacturing, and Branding Réaumur's Thermometer During the Enlightenment

Summary At the beginning of the 1730s René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur published two long memoirs on a new type of thermometer equipped with a specially calibrated scale — known ever since as the Réaumur scale. It became one of the most common ‘standardized’ thermometers in Europe until the late nineteenth century. What made this thermometer so successful? What was it specifically? I will first argue that the real Réaumur thermometer as an instrument was a fiction, a ghost — an idealized instrument. On paper, it was theoretically flawless. In reality, the standardized Réaumur thermometer was most likely never achieved. This article shows that its success was essentially due to a recontextualisation from theoretical natural philosophy — Réaumur's principle of uniformity — to: 1) the context of artisanal knowledge and practices and 2) the context of making and reporting in the Mémoires de l'Académie royale des sciences actual measurements done in the field (in Paris at the Observatory, in Provincial France, in the Colonies, and in the rest of Europe). Réaumur's thermometer was essentially a theoretical method to which was associated a particular scale. It was the instrument's reification for market consumption and fieldwork that gave this specific type of thermometer materiality and authority. Although most Réaumur thermometers ever made were strikingly different from one another, over time the thermomètre de Réaumur designation became a brand, a seal of approval born from customary artisanal practices and cultural habitudes.

Furnishing the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can Tell Us about the European and American Past , and: Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (review)

Reviewed by: Furnishing the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can Tell Us about the European and American Past, and: Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England Barrett Kalter (bio) Dena Goodman and Kathryn Norberg, eds. Furnishing the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can Tell Us about the European and American Past. New York and London: Routledge, 2007. x+246pp. US$69.95. ISBN 978-0-415-94953-8. Amanda Vickery . Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. xviii+382pp. US$45. ISBN 978-0-300-15453-5. The twelve strong essays collected in Furnishing the Eighteenth Century illuminate the circuits of production and consumption that moved furniture and decorative objects from city to countryside, back and forth across the Atlantic, as well as the social pressures that imbued those objects with significance. The first of four thematically organized sections maps the global itinerary of materials and styles. Madeleine Dobie's terrific essay studies the use of luxury woods from French colonies in the West Indies to construct furniture in an Orientalist style. She argues that the exotic guise of the furniture concealed from metropolitan consumers the slave economy that supplied them. Chaela Pastore discusses the vogue for mahogany; though the wood grew in Saint Domingue, Creoles who bought mahogany furniture were criticized for mimicking the elites in France who wanted to monopolize this luxury as a token of national and racial purity. David Porter's chapter returns to the topic of Orientalism by way of a treatise on aesthetics by William Hogarth. Chinoiserie exemplified the features that Hogarth claimed had universal appeal (for example, novelty, asymmetry, and femininity), yet the style repelled him. Porter shows that the Chinese style was often satirized as a source of female pleasure that displaced men; its connotations thus undermined the heterosexual dynamic implicit in Hogarth's theory of beauty. While Pastore and Porter examine efforts to regulate fashion, the second set of essays profile people who carried fashions across [End Page 427] geographical and social boundaries. Natacha Coquery reconstructs the business of a Parisian upholsterer whose trade in second-hand goods broadened access to high-end fashions. With the help of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vermont woodworker James Wilson produced the first globes for sale in the new Republic. David Jaffee records Wilson's achievement as an instance of "Village Enlightenment," whereby cosmopolitan knowledge was introduced to the provinces by commerce (81). Jaffee complicates the centre-periphery model of diffusion, though, by showing how American artisans often adapted English styles to local tastes and thereby signalled their nation's independence. Kathryn Norberg analyzes the ways in which courtesans appropriated features from aristocratic interiors in order to create the novel and seductive environments in which they plied their trade. The third section of the volume continues this investigation of the domestic interior with Donna Bohanan's discussion of noble houses in provincial France. The decoration of these homes closely resembled those in Paris and Versailles, a consequence, Bohanan argues, of a change in laws that deepened the division between old and new aristocracy by taxing the latter more heavily. Goaded by this check to their aspirations, parvenus in the provinces embraced the elite style emanating from the court and city to assert the authenticity of their rank. Anyone who has ploughed straight through the museum galleries devoted to ceramic dinnerware, bored by so much sameness, should definitely read Mimi Hellman's compelling semiotic analysis of the matched set. Hellman argues that seriality would have been alluring prior to industrialization, given the difficulty of manufacturing apparently identical objects by hand. The matched set was priced beyond the reach of most consumers, but for those who could afford them, their multiplicity provided a pleasing sense of continuity and order. The meuble, a matched set of furniture, could unite a group of people while signalling differences in status among them, depending on the type of chair one sat on and its position in the room. Mary Salzman suggests that a pair of eighteenth-century paintings taught people to interpret interiors in just this way. Noting a standard reading of the objects in Jean-François de Troy's The Garter and The Declaration...

Perception de la gêne environnementale en fonction de différents types d’unités urbaines françaises

This paper follows the analysis of a survey conducted on a broad sample of French urban residents. The aim of this secondary analysis was to identify the different dimensions of the perceived urban annoyances. The objective of this secondary analysies is to compare the perception of urban nuisances by city size and their geographical location within the metropolitan area: downtown Paris/provincial France, inner Paris/Parisian suburbs. Responses from 986 urban residents highlight (1) an effect related to the size of the urban unit since in provincial France, the six larger cities stand out against the others in terms of the greatest intensity of discomfort perceived by the residents; (2) a “capital” effect, since in Paris, in spite of the gigantic scale of the space and the very strong density of population involving hard environmental nuisances, the residents have a positive perception of their city compared to the residents of the other big French cities; (3) a heterogeneity of the responses from the residents of the Parisian suburbs according to their department. The results are discussed on the one hand in the light of the logic of sociospatial segregation of the urban territories, and on the other hand by suggesting that affective-cognitive processes could be mediators between the objective characteristics of the urban nuisances and their subjective perception by the residents.

Dijon in May 1968: Local Politics, the Spectre of Anarchy and the ‘Silent Majority’

This article provides an account of the municipal by-election held in Dijon during May 1968 following the death of its long-time mayor, le chanoine Kir. The chief candidate to replace him was the Gaullist Robert Poujade, secretary-general of the UDVe at national level. Drawing on local sources, including speeches made at the time and reports from the local press, the article analyses the rhetoric of local politics as it shifted ground under the pressure of the national crisis, and explores the experience of May 1968 from a perspective often sidelined in dominant narratives of the events: provincial France and those opposed to the movement rather than those who participated in it.

:Paris, the Provinces, and the French Revolution

The revolution and provincial France centralisation and diversity in the eighteenth century the provinces and the crisis of the Ancien Regime the the spread of popular revolution the promise of devolution the diffusion of revolutionary poitics revolutionary priorities in Paris and the provinces the revolt of the provinces Jacobinism, centralism and terror centre and periphery under the directory Paris and the provinces - the image of the other the Revolution and the growth of regional identity.

Toward an anthropometric history of provincial France, 1780–1920

A sample of 237,782 individual observations was obtained in four areas of France: rural Alsace, urban Alsace, Limousin, and Brie (Ile-de-France). Trends in the biological standard of living of conscripts born in these regions between 1780 and 1920 fit well with the recently estimated trends for other parts of Europe. While heights were relatively low, they did not decline much preceding the Revolution in 1789. During the first half of the 19th Century heights varied considerably both spatially and longitudinally, indicating the contrasting effects of modernization among the four areas. Conscripts from the least productive agricultural area, Limousin, were the shortest. Heights in Alsace remained essentially unchanged during the first half of the 19th Century, but those in Brie increased after 1820 and those in Limousin after 1840. The positive trend became more general after 1870, though Brie alone showed the considerable negative impact of the agricultural depression of the last quarter of the 19th Century. Heights diverged until 1850 and converged thereafter. In Limousin, the annual height of conscripts is positively correlated with the weight of cattle. By the early decades of the 20th Century, a marked, long-term increase in anthropometric growth had occurred in these four regions, as elsewhere in Europe. The regional estimates correspond well to the national trends estimated by Komlos and Weir except that they show the great local variation in height until the turn of the 20th Century.

Forestry disputes in provincial France during the nineteenth century: the case of the Montagne de Lure

The nineteenth century in France marked the origins of modern forest management. Two important dates mark the advent of the organisation of forestry: first in 1824, the creation of the Forestry School in Nancy, and then in 1827 the adoption of a Forestry Code specifying to what extent forests were to submit to the forestry regime. Throughout the nineteenth century, forestry administration crystallised the resentment of village communities in the Montagne de Lure through the increasingly strict management of activities linked to the forest. During the 1800s almost all foresters, with a few exceptions, claimed they were the ones who knew the truth and represented collective interests against local populations that they judged to be ignorant and not very concerned with the future. The policy of Restoration of Mountain Terrain (RTM) that was put in place in the Montagne de Lure near the end of the nineteenth century marks the outcome of such a process. It reflects the power of the centralised body of forestry engineers over forest management in France and the decline of local communities, weakened by massive rural depopulation and by a succession of economic crises. Forest space therefore crystallises during these decades of dispute between local and central power.

The emergence of modern business enterprise in France, 1800-1930

Prologue Assessing French Economic Development Some Preliminary Considerations Plan of the Book Introduction: Laying the Foundations for Modern Capitalism in France, 1500-1800 Creating France The Rise of Merchant Capitalism The Beginning of Industrial Capitalism Banking and Finance The French Revolution Aftermath of Revolution I. FROM MERCHANT CAPITALISM TO FINANCE CAPITALISM 1. Continuity and Change in Merchant Capitalism, 1800-1840s Retrenchment and Renewal in Provincial France Paris and the Remaking of French Merchant Capitalism 2. The Revolution in Banking and Transportation, 1840-1870s The Banking Revolution The Transportation Revolution 3. The New World of Financial and Commercial Capitalism, 1870s-1900s The Maturation of Banking and Finance Transforming and Transcending the Wholesale Trade The Beginnings of Mass Retailing II. THE FLOWERING OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM, 1800-1900 4. Textile Capitalism Cotton Linen and Jute Woolens Silk 5. The Capitalism of Coal The Birth and Maturation of an Industry, 1700s-1860 The Coal Companies in the Their Prime, 1860-1914 6. The Capitalism of Iron and Steel From the Old to the New Metallurgy, 1800-1860 The Age of Steel Begins, 1860-1880 7. Hardware, Machinery, and Construction The Hardware Industry Transformed The New Metallurgical Manufacturing 8. The Capitalism of Chemicals Heavy Chemicals The New Chemicals 9. The Capitalism of Glass, Paper, and Print Glass Paper and Print 10. Industrial Capitalism and Consumer Goods Flour and Breadstuffs Sugar and Confectionery Soap and Vegetable Oil Clothing and Home Furnishings 11. The New World of Industrial Capitalism Financing Industrial Enterprise Managing Labor Managing the Business Environment III. The Second Industrial Revolution and the Beginnings of Managerial Capitalism, 1880s-1930s 12. Big Steel The Remaking of French Iron and Steel, 1870s-1914 World War I and Its Aftermath 13. The Electrical Industry The Early Years, 1890s-1914 Growth, Maturation, and the Rise of Big Business, 1914-1930 14. The Automobile and Its Allies The Automobile Industry Tire and Rubber Aircraft and Aircraft Engines Petroleum 15. Industrial Chemicals and Materials The Survival and Transformation of Two Established Powers Electrochemicals and Electrometals Industrial Gases Pharmaceuticals and Artificial Fibers Big Cement 16. The New World of Managerial Capitalism Managing the Railroads Managing the Large Industrial Enterprise Conclusion: France on the Verge Notes Index Tables 1. The twenty largest French coal companies, 1865-1869 and 1890-1894 2. France's fifty largest manufacturing firms, 1936 3. The twenty-five largest French iron and steel firms in 1913 4. The twenty-five largest French iron and steel firms in 1930 5. France's largest electrical enterprises in 1929-1930 6. Assets and workforces of the largest American, German, and French electrical manufacturing companies in 1929-1930 7. The thirty largest French industrial firms in 1990

Creating Chemistry in Provincial France before the Revolution: The Examples of Naney and Metz. Part 2 Metz

Creating Chemistry in Provincial France before the Revolution: The Examples of Naney and Metz. Part 2 Metz

Creating Chemistry in Provincial France before the Revolution: The Examples of Nancy and Metz. Part 2 Metz

The second part of this paper explores the means through which chemistry was established as a public science in Metz. It demonstrates again the important role played by apothecaries and physicians in this process and how they exploited, shaped and were in turn shaped by the growing public audience for science. By the 1780s chemistry was thriving in both cities, it had gained legitimacy across a wide domain and by the end of the decade the new “chemical public” was interested in and being actively informed about the theoretical and experimental developments that were to constitute the Chemical Revolution.

Vivre à Moulins ou en campagne à la fin du XVIIIe Siècle

Claudine Coquard-Durand, Living at Moulins or in the Country in the Late 18th century Because they make up a corpus relating to the daily life of the many inhabitants of provincial France, marginal to revolutionary events in themselves, the records of the justices of the peace provide a wealth of evidence of the problems encountered here and there. The author attempts to give an overview, from loft to cellar and from head to toes, of the customs of the Bourbonnais province, which became the Allier département in 1790. Within this context, she presents a comparison of factors such as the home, lifestyle, eating and dressing habits of provincial folk, differences which depended on whether they lived in, town or country. Far from the Parisian life described with vigour and passion by Daniel Roche, these inhabitants of central France had many identical features, even though life in the western part of Moulins tended to differ from that in the small hill and plateau towns and villages situated between the Sioule and Bouble rivers. This was less a matter of geographical or demographic diversity than the result of differences in social level prevalent in the late 1 8th century.

‘En perme à Nantes’: Jacques Demy and new wave place

As a cinema of place, the new wave is most famous for its loving representations of Paris, but many new wave film-makers, such as Louis Malle, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Demy depicted provincial France. During the 1950s, France experienced rapid modernization and urbanization, but by the end of the decade, France was beginning to revisit the provincial towns and countryside that had been transformed or left behind. In its narratives and form, the new wave registered this dual migration and fond glance back at the provinces as a tension between mobility and dwelling in place, between nostalgia and modernity. A detailed analysis of Jacques Demy's first feature-length film, Lola (1961) illustrates this double movement. Demy himself returned to his hometown of Nantes to film this story of return of departure, which he repeats in revised form in other port cities in his subsequent films, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1966). In its dynamic of restless peregrination, Lola revises traditional regionalism by rejecting fixed origins and identities despite its undeniable attachment to place.

Creating Chemistry in Provincial France before the Revolution: The Examples of Nancy and Metz. Part 1. Nancy

Creating Chemistry in Provincial France before the Revolution: The Examples of Nancy and Metz. Part 1. Nancy

Creating Chemistry in Provincial France before the Revolution: The Examples of Nancy and Metz. Part 1. Nancy

This paper uses case studies of the cities of Nancy and Metz to demonstrate that chemistry was established as a thriving public science in the French provinces in the last decades of the old regime. It shows that physicians and apothecaries were key figures in this development. I argue that a detailed study of how such minor figures as Henry Michel du Tennetar and Pierre François Nicolas in Nancy constructed their public lives and careers can help us to a broader analysis, one that is not exclusively metropolitan, of the social, cultural, economic and political forces that shaped chemistry in France in the period of the Chemical and French Revolutions.