Appendix Criminality, rootlessness, and "foreign" building laborers: A "dangerous" class? - Springer Link
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Appendix
Criminality, rootlessness, and “foreign” building laborers:
A “dangerous” class?
A myth about construction workers in Paris involved their conspicuous role as
a “laboring class, dangerous class” in the Parisians’ imaginaire, that they were
invading hoards of “foreigners” (speaking incomprehensible patois and dressed
in regional clothing) who represented a threatening form of social chaos. This
was a widely repeated trope in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and,
of course, it was the subject of a widely discussed book by Louis Chevalier, first
published in 1958, which focused on the particular prejudice against the maçons
de la Creuse.1 But was the “rootless” workforce of the Parisian building trades,
composed as it was of unskilled laborers, a historical menace to the security of
ordinary Parisians?
A complex interplay of legal, material, and economic factors led to a coher-
ent policing of the ancien régime building trades. The supposed criminality of
provincial builders in Paris is not borne out in a study of a little over 200
arrested masons, carpenters, and roofers out of a total sample of over 3,000
individuals sentenced in the period, 1773–1789 (before the creation of the
Department, the Creuse), in the Parisian police jurisdiction of the Châtelet.
The results suggest that the Parisian construction site was far from a fes-
tering thieves’ den. In matters of ordinary crime – for this legal authority
treated mostly property crimes and minor assaults – the Parisian builders were
proportionately an average social group. The percentage of builders’ to all
individuals sentenced (6 percent) coincides almost exactly with their represen-
tation within the overall population of Paris. The feeble extent of the builders’
implication in Parisian crime is also consistent with Arlette Farge’s smaller sam-
pling of thieves of foodstuffs, in which just under one in ten such thefts
were committed by building tradesmen.2 In sum, the percentage of “criminal”
builders appears to correlate with their proportional relationship to the overall
population.3
The “dangerous class” thesis is profoundly debatable for the nineteenth cen-
tury; but it certainly may not be projected back to the eighteenth century. An
analysis of building tradesmen’s crimes show that few Parisians were victims as
they mostly concern escalating thefts of workplace tools and building materi-
als. And more than half of the suspects of worksite crimes were accused of the
theft of valuable lead roof slats. This can be partially attributed to a black market
in stolen lead that thrived at the end of the eighteenth century. The ubiqui-
tous eyewitnesses of all things Parisian at the end of the ancien régime, Mercier
and Hardy, comment on the presence of merchants dealing in these and other
building materials on the streets of Paris.4
More generally, the statistics on arrested builders in Paris explodes the cor-
relation of the mythic “foreign element” and criminality. “Provincial” here
260Appendix 261
Table A.1 Professional Analysis of Arrested Builders, 1773–1789
1773 1776 1779 1782 1785 1788 1789 TOTALS
ARRESTED
PARISIANS
Other Individuals 482 407 596 478 476 351 344 3,134
Under Arrest
Builders Under 25 24 31 38 24 28 31 201
Arrest
GEOGRAPHIC
ORIGINS OF
ARRESTED
BUILDERS
Born in Paris 3 8 12 3 5 3 5 39
Born in the 22 16 19 35 19 29 26 166
Provinces
CHARGED CRIMES
OF ARRESTED
BUILDERS
Thefts of tools or 5 1 6 13 9 11 9 54
materials
Ordinary thefts or 18 21 24 24 15 16 22 140
possession of
false money
Assaults or Murders 2 2 1 1 0 1 0 7
Source: A.N. Y 10526-30: “Registres de la Chambre Criminelle,” Le Châtelet
as elsewhere must remain an ill-defined label, referring narrowly to the self-
description of the accused as being a “native” of a certain province, without
indicating when the person immigrated, whether in Paris to stay, or just pass-
ing through. Crime statistics in fact reflect that provincial builders in Paris were
arrested in direct proportion to their numbers in the Capital.5 In sum, the build-
ing trades were generally synonymous with migration, yet provincial labor did
not appear to bring increased criminality to the capital city. Paris at the end of
the eighteenth century was not facing inundation by migrant criminals using
the cover of the bustling building site and the anonymity of the capital to com-
mit criminal acts. The tightly bound networks of migrant colonies, coupled with
trade solidarities, may have effectively checked the temptation of theft even
among impoverished day laborers. Also the corporate order, despite the guilds’
bad press toward the end of the ancien régime, was in fact an effective mechanism
for policing the labor force. Perhaps only social prejudice, the perception of Paris
inundated, created the myth of a Parisian population suffering from rampant
“insecurity.”6
The historical reconstruction of the building trades, through narrative, theo-
retical, and statistical sources, discloses a clean break between the perception of
privileged Parisians and the reality of their encounters with builders. The building
process was perceived as dangerously corrupt to the core; yet, the integrity of the262 Appendix
Table A.2 Chambre Criminelle: Arrested Builders and Others, 1773–1789
596
482 476
478
407
344
351
25 24 31 38 24 28 31
1773 1776 1779 1782 1785 1788 1789
Others under arrest Builders under arrest
Source: A.N. Y 10526-30: “Registres de la Chambre Criminelle,” le Châtelet
Table A.3 Parisian versus Provincial Origins of Arrested Builders, 1773–1789
35
29
26
22
19 19
16
12
8
5 5
3 3 3
1773 1776 1779 1782 1785 1788 1789
Year
Born in Paris Born in the provinces
Source: A.N. Y 10526-30: “Registres de la Chambre Criminelle,” le Châtelet
corporate order in matters concerning criminality seemed to be largely intact, as
evidenced especially by the mediocre levels of arrests on the sites around Paris.
Thus, unfounded perceptions and not criminality accentuated the fear, social
hatred, and opprobrium heaped upon building workers, as often remarked uponAppendix 263
Table A.4 Nature of Builders’ Crimes, 1773–1789
24 24
22
21
18
16
15
13
11
9 9
6
5
2 2
1 1 1 1
0 0
1773 1776 1779 1782 1785 1788 1789
Year
Thefts of tools or materials
Ordinary thefts or possession of false money
Assaults or Murders
Source: A.N. Y 10526-30: “Registres de la Chambre Criminelle,” le Châtelet
by the archetypical maçon de la Creuse, Martin Nadaud, in his memoirs. Simply
put, Parisians’ suspicion of newcomers and rejection of the laborers’ patois and
provincial ways may have fed a myth that placed many on the margins of society.
The reality, was they comprise a diverse, closely controlled, and relatively well-
paid group of workers in the capital city during the last quarter of the eighteenth
century.7Notes
Introduction
1. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (NY, 1979), 139.
(Quotation by the Maréchal de Saxe, Réveries, 1756.)
2. Pierre Vinçard, Les Ouvriers de Paris (Paris, 1850), 15. A republican labor mili-
tant, Vinçard, only rarely displayed such social prejudices in his rendering of
the French working class – a sign of the extent of the bad press on building
workers.
3. Bertrand Bissuel, Clara Georges, “Un an après, récits de retour à la vie,” Le
Monde, 08 Avril 2006.
4. Colin Jones, Paris. The Biography of a City (NY and Toronto, 2004), 252.
5. For a comprehensive connoisseurs’ treatment of Parisian history: Jacques
Hillairet, Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris, 2 vols. (Paris, 2004, edition
first published in 1963). An outstanding example of a structural approach:
Françoise Boudon, André Chastel, Hélène Ciyzy, and Françoise Hamon, Sys-
tème de l’architecture urbaine. Le quartier des Halles à Paris, 2 vols. (Paris,
1967).
6. An example of a micro-history of building: Gérard Béaur, L’immobilier et la
revolution: marché de la pierre et mutations urbaines: 1770–1810 (Paris, 1994).
A longer tradition exists on masons’ migrations from the center of France;
see further below. Capturing the folkloric aspects of this migration is a rich
and vast literature starting with, Louis Bandy de Nalèche, Les Maçons de la
Creuse (Paris, 1859). On the legal history of builders: Robert Carvais, “La
force du droit: Contribution à la définition de l’entrepreneur parisien du
bâtiment au XVIIIe siècle,” Histoire, économie et société 2 (1995), 163–189;
and Idem., “Le statut juridique de l’entrepreneur du bâtiment dans la France
moderne,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger 74 (1996), 221–252. For
a definition and powerful critique of the “linguistic turn”: Miguel Cabrera,
“Linguistic Turn or Return to Subjectivism? In Search of an Alternative to
Social History,” Social History 26 (2001), 60–71.
7. A reference to and elaboration upon Jean-Pierre Hirsch, Les deux rêves du
commerce. Entreprise et institution dans la région lilloise (1780–1860) (Paris,
1991).
8. Hilton Root thus condemns as a historical constant, the “French govern-
ment’s redistributional (sic) capability”: The Fountain of Privilege: Political
Foundations of Markets in Old Regime France and England (Berkeley, 1994), 22,
23, 37.
9. Charles Rearick and Rosemary Wakeman, “Introduction, Paris Revisited,”
French Historical Studies, vol. 27, no. 1 (Winter 2004), 1–8 (Special issue:
“New Perspectives on Modern Paris.”). Karen Bowie, ed., La modernité
avant Haussmann: Formes de l’espace urbain à Paris, 1801–1853 (Paris, 2001);
Nicholas Papayanis, Planning Paris Before Haussmann (Baltimore & London,
264Notes to Pages 7–8 265
2004). Victoria Thompson, “Telling ‘Spatial Stories’: Urban Space and
Bourgeois Identity in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris,” Journal of Modern His-
tory, 75 (2003), 590–633. Pierre Casselle, “Les travaux de la Commission des
embellissements de Paris en 1853: pouvait-on transformer la capitale sans
Haussmann?” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 155 (1997), 645–689.
10. François Dosse, L’Histoire en miettes. Des annales à la nouvelle histoire (Paris,
1987). On the wider debate regarding the excessive specialization of histori-
ans: Roger Chartier, Au bord de la falaise: l’histoire entre certitudes et inquiétude
(Paris, 1998). And Gérard Noiriel, Sur la “crise” de l’histoire (Paris, 2005).
11. Casey Harison, “An Organization of Labor: Laissez-Faire and Marchandage in
the Paris Building Trades Through 1848,” French Historical Studies, 20 (1997),
357–80.
12. On plebeian radicalism: E. P. Thompson, “Eighteenth-Century English Soci-
ety: Class Struggle Without Class?” Journal of Social History (May 1978), 133–
165. See also: Peter King, “Edward Thompson’s Contribution to Eighteenth-
Century Studies: The Patrician-Plebeian Model Re-examined,” Social History,
21 (1996), 215–228.
13. For a critical overview, and rebuttal, of these methodological trends: Michael
Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France
(Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne, 2000), 311–323.
14. William Sewell, Work and Revolution in France. The Language of Labor from
the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge & NY, 1980). Michael Sonenscher, Work
and Wages. Natural Law, Politics, and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades
(Cambridge & NY, 1989). David Garrioch, Neighbourhood and Community in
Paris, 1740–1790 (Cambridge and New York, 1986). Steven Kaplan, La fin des
corporations (Paris, 2001).
15. Two classic works will have to suffice to summarize the vast literature on
Haussmannisation: François Loyer, Paris Nineteenth Century: Architecture and
Urbanism (NY, 1988) and Jeanne Gaillard, Paris, la ville, 1852–70: L’Urbanisme
parisien à l’heure de Haussmann (Lille-Paris, 1976). A recent study on the
nineteenth-century history of the migrant stonemasons of Paris has been
published too recently for the purposes of this book: Casey Harison, The
Stonemasons of Creuse in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Newark, 2008).
16. David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris (NY, 2003). Patrice
Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World (Cambridge, 2002). David Harvey, Paris:
Capital of Modernity (London, 2003), and Colin Jones, Paris, op. cit., take rad-
ically different approaches to the capital’s past and present. In their unique
ways, these rich, synthetic studies call attention to the continued – and
growing – popular, scholarly, and student interest in the history of Paris.
17. Gérard Noiriel, “Monde et mouvement ouvriers dans le bâtiment: bilan
et perspectives historiographiques,” in Histoire des métiers du bâtiment aux
XIXe et XXe siècles, Jean-François Crola and André Guillerme (eds.) (Paris,
1991), 113–130, especially 124. Also: Gabriel Désert, “Aperçus sur l’industrie
française du Bâtiment au XIX Siècle,” in Le bâtiment, enquête d’histoire
économique, 14e-19e siècles. I: Maisons rurales et urbaines dans la France
traditionnelle, Jean-Pierre Bardet, et al. (eds.) (Paris, 2002), 3–119.
18. Richard Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and
Social Study (Baltimore, 1980) and Elizabeth McKellar, The Birth of Modern266 Notes to Pages 8–14
London. The Development and Design of the City 1660–1720 (Manchester and
New York, 1999).
19. Rearick and Wakeman, “Introduction, Paris Revisited, 1–8.”
20. Hilary Ballon, The Paris of Henri IV: Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge,
Mass., 1991).
21. Istvan Hont, The Jealousy of Trade. International Competition and the Nation-
State in Historical Perspective. (Cambridge, MA, 2005). For the expression,
“doux commerce”: Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political
Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, 1977).
22. Catherine Larrère. L’invention de l’économie au XVIIIe siècle. Du droit naturel à
la physiocratie (Paris, 1992).
23. Kwass, Privilege and the Politics, 61–65.
24. Voltaire, “Des embellissements de Paris” (1749), Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire,
Ulla Kölving, et al. (eds.) (Genève, Banbury, and Oxford, 1968–), vol. 31B,
199–233.
25. Ralph Kingston, “The Bricks and Mortar of Revolutionary Administration,”
French History, vol. 20, no. 4 (December 2006), 405–423.
26. Cissie Fairchilds, “The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods in
Eighteenth-Century Paris,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, Roy Porter
and John Brewer (eds.) (New York & London, 1993), 228–248. Michael
Sonenscher, The Hatters of Eighteenth-Century France (Berkeley, 1987).
27. Cited in Jean-François Cabestan, La conquête du plain-pied. L’immeuble à Paris
au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2004), 28.
28. Fairchilds, “The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods.”
29. Annik Pardailhé-Galabrun, La naissance de l’intime. 3,000 foyers parisiens,
XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1988), 195–196.
30. The August 1766 ordinance is discussed in Chapter 2. Philip T. Hoffman,
Gilles Postel-Vinay, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Des marchés sans prix: une
économie politique du crédit à Paris, 1660–1870 (Paris, 2001), 204–205. Joseph
Félix, “The Economy,” in Old Regime France, William Doyle (ed.), (Oxford,
2001), 25–26.
31. Sonenscher, The Hatters.
32. Stephen Miller, State and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: A Study of
Political Power and Social Revolution in Languedoc (Washington, DC, 2008).
33. Haim Burstin, Une Révolution à l’oeuvre. Le faubourg Saint-Marcel 1789–1794
(Seyssel, 2005), 332.
34. This argument on the development of capitalism is contradicted, most
recently, by the economic historian, Kevin H. O’Rourke, The worldwide
economic impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793–
1815, Journal of Global History, 1 (1), 2006, 123–149. For an older challenge to
the assertion that the French Revolution was synonymous with the origins
of capitalism: George V. Taylor, “Non-capitalist wealth and the origins of the
French Revolution,” American Historical Review, 72 (1966–7), 469–496.
35. For an overview and critique: Nancy L. Green, “The Politics of Exit: Reversing
the Immigration Paradigm,” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 77, no. 2 (June
2005), 263–289.
36. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France,
1870–1914 (Stanford, CA, 1976). See the criticism by: Charles Tilly, “Did theNotes to Pages 14–17 267
Cake of Custom Break?” in Consciousness and Class Experience in 19th and
20th Century Europe, John Merriman (ed.) (New York, 1980).
37. Richard Cobb, Police and the People: Reactions to the French Revolution (London,
1972).
38. Anne Conchon, Le Péage en France au XVIIIe siècle. Les privilèges à l’épreuve de
la réforme (Paris, 2002).
39. Alain Corbin, Archaïsme et modernité en Limousin au XIXe siècle, 1845–1880,
2 vols. (Paris, 1975). Abel Chatelain, Les migrants temporaires en France de
1800 à 1914, Histoire économique et sociale des migrants temporaires des cam-
pagnes françaises au XIX◦ siècle et au début du XX◦ siècle, 2 vols. (Lille, 1976),
781–784.
40. Frédéric Tiberghien, Versailles. Le chantier de Louis XIV, 1662–1715 (Paris,
2002), 123. Annie Moulin, “La Haute Marche, terre d’émigration au XVIIIe
siècle,” Les limousins en quête de leur passé, Bernadette Barrière, et al. (eds.)
(Limoges, 1986), 81–92.
41. A.N. F20 434–5 VIII, Enqûete sur les ouvriers: Creuse, 13 septembre 1808. Annie
Moulin, Les maçons de la Creuse: les origines du mouvement (Clermont-Ferrand,
1994), 18, 70, 298.
42. Martin Nadaud, Léonard, maçon de la Creuse (Paris, 1982), 67–76. The com-
ings and goings of masons have been confused with the travelling rites of
compagnonnages, the journeymen’s brotherhoods. Their rite of passage, the
tour de France, typically lasted seven years and involved sejourning and train-
ing in most major cities. However, the masons were rarely involved in these
compagnonnages and few, in any case, existed for Parisian building trades-
men. I have found no documentation on Parisian compagnonnages, nor have
David Garrioch and Michael Sonenscher: “Compagnonnages, Confraterni-
ties and Associations of Journeymen in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” European
History Quarterly, 16 (1986), 25–45. Cynthia Maria Truant concludes that “in
the nineteenth century carpenters and stonecutters insistently claimed and
were often believed to be the oldest and most important trades in com-
pagnonnages. This trope is common in history and myth.” The Rites of Labor:
Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old and New Regime France (Ithaca, NY,
1994), 290.
43. Gérard Noiriel, Le creuset français (Paris, 1988). Françoise Raison-Jourde, La
colonie auvergnate de Paris au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1976), 110, 121–126. Vincent
Milliot, “La surveillance des migrants et des lieux d’accueil à Paris du XVIe
siècle aux années 1830,” in La ville promise – Mobilité et accueil à Paris
(fin XVIIe-début XIXe siècles) (Paris, 2000), Daniel Roche (ed.), 21–76. Jean-
François Dubost and Peter Sahlins, . . . Et si on faisait payer les étrangers? (Paris,
1999). Jean-François Dubost, La France italienne, XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Paris,
1997).
44. Moulin, 449–451.
45. Provincial laborers in Paris were “an army of dirty and wretched workers”
according to Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essai sur architecture (Paris, 1755), 2.
46. Roche, The People of Paris, 24–26. Also, Idem., “Nouveaux Parisiens au XVIIIe
siècle,” Cahiers d’Histoire 24 (1979), 3–20. Louis Henry, and Daniel Courgeau,
“Deux analyses de l’immigration à Paris,” Population (1971), 1075–1092.
Burstin, Le faubourg Saint-Marcel, 316. Garrioch, The Making, 314.268 Notes to Pages 18–24
47. Pierrre-Jacques Derainne, Le Travail, les migrations et les conflits en France:
représentations et attitudes sociales sous la monarchie de Juillet et la seconde
République (Thèse pour le doctorat, Université de Bourgogne, 1999), 2–13.
Genoux, Les mémoires d’un enfant de la Savoie: les carnets d’un colporteur (Paris,
1994). Perdiguier, dit Avignonnais la Vertu, Mémoires d’un compagnon (Paris,
1982). Cf. also: Norbert Truquin, Mémoires et aventures d’un prolétaire à travers
la Révolution (Paris, 1977). An exception to this narrative, for the sheer indi-
vidualism and iconoclasm of its author, is that of the glazier Ménétra: Daniel
Roche, editor, Jacques-Louis Ménétra, Journal de ma vie (Paris, 1982).
48. Nadaud, Léonard, maçon de la Creuse. Nadaud (1815–1898) had an impressive
career as a worker-deputy from the Creuse who supported Louis Blanc in the
Second Republic, later serving as the prefect from the Creuse in 1870–1871,
an office he quit to join the Communards in Paris in 1871: Ibid., Introduc-
tion by Jean-Pierre Rioux, 5–18. Nadaud’s account of work and revolution
has enjoyed a certain status for historians of nineteenth-century France: See,
for example, his extensive use by David Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuild-
ing of Paris (Princeton, 1958) and by William Reddy, Money and Liberty in Mod-
ern Europe: A Critique of Historical Understanding (Cambridge, 1987), 98–101.
49. BNF V 21544, Almanach des bâtiments, 1776. AD XI 16 and BNF 21035, Les
Statuts des maîtres couvreurs. The guild’s title was “La Communauté des cou-
vreurs, plombiers, carreleurs et paveurs.” Cf. discussion in Sonenscher, Work
and Wages, 175 and 208.
50. Fernand Braudel, Les structures du quotidien: le possible et l’impossible (Paris,
1979).
51. Patrick K. O’Brien and Caglar Keyder, Economic Growth in Britain and France,
1780–1914. Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (London, 1978), 119–127.
Jeff Horn, The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolu-
tion, 1750–1830 (Boston, 2006). Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public
Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton,
2007).
52. Camille Richard, Le Comité de salut public et les fabrications de guerre sous la
Terreur (Paris, 1921). Ken Adler, Engineering the Revolution. Arms and Enlighten-
ment in France, 1763–1815 (Princeton, 1997). André Guillerme, La naissance
de l’industrie à Paris. Entre sueurs et vapeurs: 1780–1830 (Paris, 2007), 70–74.
53. See for example: The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity, Ferenc Fehér
(ed.) (Berkeley, 1990).
54. Nicolas Lemas, “Les ‘pages jaunes’ du bâtiment parisien au XVIIIe siècle,”
Histoire urbaine, no. 12, avril 2005, 175–182.
1 Parisian Building at the End of the Ancien Régime: The
Construction Trades, the Pre-Industrial Market, and the
Guild Debate, 1750–1789
1. Louis Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 1, edited by Jean-Claude Bonnet,
Livre 1, chapitre III: “Grandeur démesurée de la Capitale” (Paris, 1994), 32–33.
This chapter is a deeply revised version of an article, “The Construction of
Paris and the Crises of the Ancien Régime: The Police and the People of the
Parisian Building Sites, 1750–1789,” first published in the French HistoricalNotes to Pages 24–27 269
Studies, special issue, “New Perspectives on Modern Paris,” vol. 27, no. 1
(2004), 9–48, edited by Charles Rearick and Rosemary Wakeman.
2. Despite the importance of the ancien régime construction industry to Paris,
there are very few studies on this sector of the economy. From a perspective
on the history of Parisian buildings, see: Youri Carbonnier, Maisons parisi-
ennes des Lumières (Paris, 2006). Also: Gabriel Désert, “Aperçus sur l’industrie
française du bâtiment,” op. cit.
3. Denis Woronoff, Histoire de l’industrie en France du XVIe siècle à nos jours (Paris,
1998, 3rd edition), 23.
4. “Quand le bâtiment va, tout va.” Anthony Vidler, L’Espace des Lumières. Archi-
tecture et philosophie de Ledoux à Fourier (Paris, 1995). Jean-Louis Harouel,
L’embellissement des villes. L’urbanisme français au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1993).
A. Picon, L’invention de l’ingénieur moderne. L’Ecole des ponts et chaussées
1747–1851 (Paris, 1992). Michel Gallet, Demeures parisiennes (Paris, 1964).
Pierre Lavedan, Histoire et urbanisme à Paris (Paris, 1975). The estimate by
Mercier: Tableau Livre 8, chapitre DCXXXVI. Similar estimates of buildings
in Paris: Pierre-Denis Boudriot, “La Maison parisienne sous Louis XV: masse
et poids,” in Cahiers du centre de recherches et d’études sur Paris et l’Ile-de-France,
12 (September 1985), 27–35, 28. Bibliothèque nationale (henceforth B.N.),
Fonds français (henceforth F.F.) 6685, Siméon-Prosper Hardy, Mes Loisirs, ou
Journal d’événemens tels qu’ils parviennent à ma connoissance (1753–1789), vol.
6; “Mardi, 15 novembre, 1785, Etat actuel des travaux publics,” fol. 227.
5. Statistics for Tables A-1–3 are derived from the “Braesch Papers,” in the
Archives nationales (henceforth, “A.N.”) F 30 109–204 and F 30 131–160,
concerning the exchange of livres for the revolutionary currency, the assig-
nats. This source has been unjustly dismissed for evoking an illusionary
Parisian world of work with many more large-scale employers than was actu-
ally the case. But this author agrees with Richard Andrews on the “Braesch
Papers” “utility and genuine social richness”: “Social Structures, Political
Elites and Ideology in Revolutionary Paris, 1792–1794: A Critical Evalua-
tion of Albert Soboul’s Les Sans-culottes parisiens en l’an II,” Journal of Social
History, vol. 19, no. 1 (Fall, 1985), 71–112, 77 and 104. On the debate, see
Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages, 140–141. Also, cf., Albert Soboul, Les
Sans-Culottes parisiens en l’an II (Paris, 1958), 435–436. It is quite true that
only the patrons with a great number of laborers sought out assignats to
pay wages. But this is precisely the point: in the construction sector, the
majority of building entrepreneurs and contractors had large workforces.
Finally, evidence that about 1 in 20 Parisians worked in the building trades
may be confirmed by a comparison between this source of 1790–1791 and
the more highly regarded (because more closely verified by revolutionary
authorities) cartes de sûreté of 1792–1794. In a sampling of 12,000 of these
cards, the demographers A. Blum and J. Houdaille found almost precisely the
same number: 6 percent of the Parisian population were in the construction
trades. More cross-checking in specific neighborhoods confirms the accu-
racy of the archival source for this sector. For the Faubourg Saint-Marcel and
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the “Braesch Papers” indicate that the num-
ber of laborers and masters in this sector is 2,242. The cartes de sûreté two
years later reveal an almost identical number: 2,345. On the cartes de sûreté:
A. Blum and J. Houdaille, “12 000 parisiens en 1793 – Sondage dans les cartes270 Notes to Pages 28–31
de civismes,” Population, 2-1986, 259–302: Haim Burstin, Le faubourg Saint-
Marcel à l’époque révolutionnaire. Structure économique et composition sociale
(Paris, 1983), 321–322: 324. Raymonde Monnier, Le faubourg Saint-Antoine
(1789–1815) (Paris, 1981), 303.
6. Durand, “Les salaires,” 466–480. Gallet, Demeures parisiennes, 18. Daniel
Roche, The People of Paris. An Essay in Popular Culture in the 18th Cen-
tury (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987; original French version, 1981), 18.
Garrioch, The Making, 48. The term “liberty lobby”: Steven Kaplan, Bread,
Politics, and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV, 2 vols. (The Hague,
1976).
7. James Farr, “On the Shop Floor: Guilds, Artisans, and the European Mar-
ket Economy, 1350–1750,” The Journal of Early Modern History, vol. 1, no.
1 (February 1997), 24–54: 26. On the need to rethink and to synthesize the
classic narratives of the decline of the ancien régime: Kwass, Privilege, 3–24: 13.
The present author agrees with Kwass’ critique of current historical research
that “divorce political culture from social referents of all kinds.” (10).
8. Bien, “Old Regime Origins of Democratic Liberty,” in The French Idea of Free-
dom. The Old Regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789, Dale van Kley
(ed.) (Stanford, 1994), 23–71. Christine Métayer, Au tombeau des secrets. Les
écrivains publics du Paris populaire. Cimetière des Saints-Innocents, XVIe–XVIIIe
siècles (Paris, 2000). Isabelle Backouche, La trace du fleuve. La Seine et Paris
(1750–1850) (Paris, 2000). Vincent Milliot, Les cris de Paris ou le peuple travesti.
Les représentations des petits métiers parisiens (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1995).
Clare Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France,
1675–1791 (Durham, NC, 2001). Philippe Minard, La fortune du Colbertisme.
Etat et industrie dans la France des Lumières (Paris, 1998), 363–372.
9. Colin Jones, “Bourgeois Revolution Revivifed. 1789 and Social Change,” in
The French Revolution. Recent Debates and New Controversies, Gary Kates (ed.)
(London & New York, 1998; article first published in 1990), 157–191: 166.
Liliane Hilaire-Perez, L’invention technique au siècle des Lumières (Paris, 2000),
51–52.
10. For the persistence of an anglophile critique, which offers a comparison of
a dynamic England to the “conservatism, protectionism and stagnation” of
eighteenth-century France, see Hilton Root, The Fountain of Privilege: Political
Foundations of Markets in Old Regime France and England (Berkeley, 1994).
11. Camille Pascal, “Contribution à une histoire économique de la mai-
son parisienne au XVIIIe siècle. Patrimoine, entretien, revenus,” in Paris
et ses campagnes sous l’Ancien Régime. Mélanges offerts à Jean Jacquart,
Michel Blanchard, Jean-Claude Gervé, Nicole Lemaître (eds.) (Paris, 1994),
165–173.
12. This social elite of proprietors consisted of the nobility, the magistrates, or
the royal counselors. In addition, unskilled laborers (gens de métiers sans qual-
ités) made up a surprising 7 percent of the sampling. Statistics derived from
a sampling of 2,113 inventaires après décès: Annik Pardailhé-Galabrun, La
naissance de l’intime. 3,000 foyers parisiens, XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1988),
195–196.
13. Philip T. Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Des marchés
sans prix, une économie politique du crédit à Paris, 1660–1870 (Paris, 2001), 204.
On the faubourgs in 1789: Burstin, Le faubourg Saint-Marcel, 28–59. Monnier,Notes to Pages 32–35 271
Le faubourg Saint-Antoine, 49–88. And Steven Kaplan, “Les corporations, les
faux ouvriers et le faubourg Saint-Antoine,” Annales: ESC 40 (March–April
1988), 253–278.
14. Emile Ducoudray, Raymonde Monnier, et al., Atlas de la Révolution française,
11: Paris (Paris, 2000), 22–23. Pierre-Denis Boudriot, “La Maison à loyers.
Étude du bâtiment à Paris sous Louis XV,” Histoire, économie et société, vol. 1,
no. 2, 1982, 227–236. For a nineteenth-century comparison of building
materials: Guillaume de Bertier Sauvigny, Nouvelle histoire de Paris. La Restau-
ration, 1815–1830 (Paris, 1977), 75. On the labor practice of marchandage –
“inside contracting” or “piece-mastering” – in the nineteenth century that
also inspired fears of shoddy buildings: Casey Harison, “An Organization of
Labor: Laissez-Faire and Marchandage in the Paris Building Trades Through
1848,” French Historical Studies, vol. 20, no. 3 (1997), 357–380. Youri Car-
bonnier, “Les maisons à ponts parisiens à la fin du XVIIIe siècle: étude d’un
phénomène,” Histoire, économie et société, 17 (1998), 711–724.
15. B.N. Joly de Fleury 1423, Mémoire sur la police des bâtiments (n.d.). B.N. Fonds
Delamare, F.F. 21677, “La Chambre de Maçonnerie,” fols. 33–37, on an
investigation by the Procureur de roi. A.N. A.D. XI Lettres Patentes du Roi,
20 mai 1782.
16. Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale (henceforth, B.A.N.) MS 1229, fol.
34, “Délibérations des Maçons.” This document consists of transcripts and
financial records of the Communauté des maîtres maçons, dating from 1702
to 1762. It is a rarity: most Parisian guild deliberations and records were
destroyed in the Hôtel de Ville fire of 1871.
17. B.A.N. MS 1229, fols. 62–63. Cf., Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages, esp.,
chapter 3, “Journeymen and the Law,” 73–98.
18. Hardy, Mes Loisirs, B.N. F.F. 6685–6687, vols. 6–7, in particular, vol. 6, fols.
171 and 423: 22 Aôut 1785, “Trois accidents affreux.” Mercier, Tableau, 1,
chapitre V, “Les carrières”: 37. Even nowadays, a favorite expression of real-
estate agents on the possibility of buildings collapsing into ancient tunnels
or abandoned quarries: “Paris est un gruyère.”
19. B.A.N. MS 1229, fol. 21 novembre 1763, “Nouveaux statuts et règlements sur
les sindics et adjoints . . . des Maître maçons et entrepreneurs de bâtiments,” fols.
65–94.
20. Alain Thillay, “L’économie du bas au faubourg St-Antoine (1656–1776),” His-
toire, économie et société, 17 (October–December 1998), 677–692: 680. Thillay,
Le faubourg Saint-Antoine et ses “faux ouvriers.” La liberté du travail à Paris aux
XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 2002). Kaplan, “Les corporations, les faux ouvri-
ers et le faubourg Saint-Antoine.” Burstin, Le faubourg Saint-Marcel, 316–319.
Monnier, Le faubourg Saint-Antoine, 300–302. Mercier, Tableau, 1, chapitre.
LXXXV, “Le faubourg Saint-Marcel,” 217–218.
21. P. Couperie and E. Le Roy Ladurie, “Le mouvement des loyers parisiens
de la fin du Moyen Age au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales: ESC, juillet-août 1970,
1002–1023. The precipitous rise in rents was compounded by the wretched
conditions in which a majority of laborers lived in Paris. In a sampling of 62
inventaires après décès of the working poor between 1721 and 1761, 70 per-
cent lived in single rooms and 85 percent of these mal-logés were estimated
to have belongings worth less than 1,000 livres at the time of their death:
Pardailhé-Galabrun, La naissance de l’intime, 237. Durand, “Les salaires.”272 Notes to Pages 36–43
Ernest Labrousse, et al., Histoire économique et sociale de la France, tome II
(1660–1789), 560–561. Daniel Roche, The People, 68–76.
22. Garrioch, “L’habitat urbain à Paris (XVIIIe-début XIXe siècle),” Cahiers
d’histoire, 44 (1999), 573–589: 550. Neighborhood and Community in Paris,
1740–1790 (NY and Cambridge, 1986).
23. Georges Poisson, “Le Paris de Louis XV,” Paris et ses campagnes, 175–185.
24. Mercier, Tableau 1, chapitre CCCXXX, “Les heures du jour,” 873–881: 875.
On the construction of the Church of Sainte-Geneviève and the Panthéon:
Allan Potofsky, “Work and Citizenship: Crafting Images of Revolutionary
Builders, 1789–1791,” in The French Revolution and the Meaning of Citi-
zenship, Renée Waldinger, et al. (ed.) (Westport, 1993), 185–201: 193. On
Panckoucke’s printing shop: Carla Hesse, Publishing and Cultural Politics in
Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1810 (Berkeley, 1991), 68 and 171. On the royal
glassworks factory and Reveillon: George Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revo-
lution (Oxford, 1959), 34. On the Gobelins: Burstin, Le faubourg, 224–225. Cf.
the royal printed cloth manufacture, 15 kilometers outside of Paris, where
a thousand workers labored: Alain Dewerpe and Yves Gaulupeau, La fab-
rique des prolétaires. Les ouvriers de la manufacture d’Oberkampf à Jouy-en-Josas,
1760–1815 (Paris, 1990), 31–34.
25. Marcel Reinhard, Nouvelle histoire de Paris. La Révolution 1789–1799 (Paris,
1971), 78. Sabine Juratic, “Mobilités et populations hébergées en garni,” in
La ville promise. Mobilité et accueil à Paris (fin XVIIe-début XIX siècles), Daniel
Roche (ed.) (Paris, 2000), 175–220: 187. Mercier, Tableau 1, “Chambres
garnies,” chapitre XLVII, 129–131.
26. B.N. Fonds Delamare, F.F. 21677, La Jurisdiction royale des bâtiments, fols. 4–8.
Official edicts promulgated in 1567; 1667; and 1712 officially set the work-
day of builders as between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. in the winter and between
5:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. in the summer. For example: Bibliothèque nationale
de France (henceforth B.N.F.) F-5011: Ordonnance de police portant défense aux
maçons, charpentiers, couvreurs, tailleurs de pierre d’exiger des nouveaux venus des
repas de bienvenue et de les empêcher de louer leur travail au dessous d’un certain
prix, 21 mai 1667.
27. Marie-Annie Moulin, Les maçons de la Haute Marche au XVIIIe siècle
(Clermont-Ferrand, 1987), 444 and 448.
28. For Statistics, see Table A. Hardy, Mes Loisirs, vol. 6, fols. 224–227, 315. B.N.
F.F., fol. 6685. For instance, one of many accidents affreux, on August 28,
1785: “three mason’s assistants or laborers were crushed in a house that they
repaired at the entry of the Faubourg St. Martin by the unseen fall of planks
from the first floor,” fol. 171. On policing the place de Grève: Sentence de
Police A.N. AD 125b (17 August 1787). Michel Le Moël and Jean Derens, La
place de Grève (Paris, 1991).
29. Tableau, vol. 8, chapitre. DCXXXIX, Charpentiers: 389. Mercier was a par-
ticularly virulent critic of the Parisian construction site: Tableau de Paris,
vol. 8, chapitre DCXXXVI: Bâtiments, 378–382. Chapitre DCXXXVII: Ouvri-
ers en bâtiment: 382–385. Chapitre DCXXXVIII: Maçons: 385–388. Chapitre
DCXXXIX: Charpentiers: 389–391. Chapitre DCXL: Jurés experts: 391–392.
A sampling of Mercier’s acerbic observations: “Les procès résultants de sa
vicieuse construction ont mis dans un jour évident les fautes graves des
ouvriers en bâtiment, et combien les malheureux propriétaires ont étéNotes to Pages 44–45 273
trompé par ces hommes . . . ”: “388.” Un seul homme se contenterait d’un
profit honnête, mais il faut être mangé par plusieurs artisans, chacun dans
son métier. Il faut donc appeler deux entrepreneurs, l’un pour la maçonnerie,
l’autre pour la charpente. Il faut traiter séparément avec eux; mais le maçon
et le charpentier s’entendent d’abord entre eux, ensuite avec les autres ouvri-
ers, pour cacher leurs fautes et leurs malversations. Cette multitude de petits
protégés que l’architecte encourage sous main à multiplier les frais se liguent
pour accabler le propriétaire”, 382–383. “Les ouvriers en bâtiment sont plus
rusés et encore plus heureux que les procureurs dans ce qu’ils piratent; car
ils ont eu l’art jusqu’ici de conserver leur réputation. Un procureur, lorsqu’il
manque la probité, est obligé, pour s’enrichir, de travailler sur deux cents
affaires courantes . . . . Mais l’architecte, l’ouvrier en bâtiment ne ruinent ordi-
nairement chaque année qu’un citoyen, qu’un père de famille. Le voilà donc
qu’une voix s’élève: la bâtisse d’une maison vaut plus que dix procès”, 385.
30. A.N. AD I 23A, “Edit du Roi portant création de 25 jurez architectes et (25) bour-
geois.” The number of experts was increased to 60 in 1698: Arrêt du conseil
d’Etat, 17 juin 1698, B.N. MS FR 21679, Fonds Delamare, Bâtiments, t. V, fols.
272–279.
31. Not only were the 30 “architectes-experts-bourgeois,” forbidden to “engage in
any enterprise either directly, or indirectly by intermediaries,” they were also
not “to have any associations whatsoever with entrepreneurs”: A.N. AD I
23A: “Edit du Roi.” The Chambre des Bâtiment’s deliberations are preserved
for the greater part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the A.N.
series “Z1J.” This immense repertory is divided into two parts: the procès-
verbaux of the Chambre des bâtiments extends from A.N. Z1J 1 to 255; the
“Greffier des bâtiments” for the on-site visits, Z1J 256 to 1314: Carbonnier,
“Le bâti et l’habitat.” Also: Robert Carvais, “La force du droit. Contribution
à la définition de l’entrepreneur parisien du bâtiment au XVIIIe siècle,” His-
toire, économie et société, 2 (1995), 163–189. Carvais, “Le statut juridique de
l’entrepreneur du bâtiment dans la France moderne,” Revue historique de droit
français et étranger, vol. 74, no. 2 (1996), 221–252.
32. Guide des corps des marchands et des Communautés des arts et métiers (1766).
The earlier price was fixed by an Arrêt du Conseil d’Etat of 1745: René
de Lespinasse (ed.), Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris, vol. 1:
XIVe–XVIIIe siècles: Ordonnances générales (Paris, 1886), 612–613. On the
corporation’s history focusing on statutes and ordinances: J.J. Letrait, “La
communauté des maîtres maçons à Paris au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècles,” Revue
historique de droit français et étranger, 4ème série t. 23 (1944–1947), 215–266.
Part two: Ibid., t. 25 (1948), 96–136. On the numbers of masterships among
guildsmen: B.N.F. V 21544: Almanach des bâtiments, 1776. B.N.F. V 29997:
Almanach des bâtiments, 1790. Also: L. Vinsonneau, Du privilège des architectes,
entrepreneurs, maçons et autres ouvriers (Thèse de droit, Bordeaux, 1903).
33. Claude-Joseph de Ferrière, Dictionnaire de droit et de pratique (Paris, t. III,
1740), 429. See also: B.N. F.F. 13022, Ordonnance, statuts, règlements, &
arrets concernant le mestier des Maîtres Maçons, Tailleurs de Pierres, Plastriers,
Mortelliers, & la justice que le Maître général des oeuvres & bâtiments du Roy
a sur lesdits Maîtres Maçons & autres ouvriers dépendans de l’Art de Maçon-
nerie (Paris, 1721). Mercier, Tableau, 1, Chapter LXXXIX, “Ameublements,”
228–229.274 Notes to Pages 45–49
34. Surviving editions of the Almanach in the Bibliothèque nationale de France:
1770, 1774, 1776, 1777, 1780, 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790,
1791. This publication appears to have had connections to the Chambre des
Bâtiments. A valuable study of this elusive source: Nicolas Lemas, «Les “pages
jaunes” du bâtiment parisien au XVIIIe siècle», Histoire urbaine, no. 12, avril
2005, 175–182.
35. Cf., Maurice Garden, Lyon et les Lyonnais au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1975), esp.,
2e partie, chapitre III, 207–242. On the construction projects in Paris: Roche,
The People of Paris, 100.
36. B.N. Joly de Fleury 1423, Mémoire sur la police des bâtiments (n.d., but from
its contents, 1724–1725). The primacy of public interest over corporate sol-
idarity was expressed in the condemnation of an entrepreneur by his peers
in the Chambre for the use of “unqualified labor” in the construction of a
foundation: A.N. Z1J 252, 26 September 1785.
37. B.N. Fonds Delamare F.F. 21677, March 1735. B.N. Fonds Delamare F.F.
21677: April, 1744. A.N. A.D. XI 20: June, 1747. B.N. F.F. 13023: April, 1762.
Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris 132217 and B.N. Joly de Fleury
419.
38. Despite a historical myth, this was not a discourse exclusive to the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Youri Carbonnier, Maisons parisiennes,
123–124.
39. A formidable legal expertise was a requirement for membership in the
Chambre des bâtiments which thus restricted access to its venal offices. The
inventaire après décès of Jean-Baptist Depuisieux in 1776, an expert-bourgeois
associated with the building of Ste. Geneviève, has no mention of an atelier
and any tools. But Despuisieux had an extensive library comprising some
400 books. Included in the library were 28 volumes on building laws, 50
volumes on Parisian geography, and 80 volumes on geometry. He surely
deserved his legal title of expert: A.N. Z2 3754: 6–13 fevrier 1776.
40. The fact that the Chambre did not see growth in membership during
the eighteenth century is unusual. William Doyle found an expansion of
venal offices after 1771, when hereditary privileges were attached to guild
masterships; the overall number of masterships numbered 46,000 by the
Revolution: Doyle, Venality. The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France
(New York & Oxford, 1996), 69, 121, and 309. The lieutenant général de police
in 1775 complained that 400,000 livres each year were spent on legal costs
by corporations: Garrioch, The Making, 74–75.
41. Laugier, Essai sur l’architecture, seconde édition (Paris, 1755), 2.
42. On the creation of a “liberty lobby” before Turgot, see the account of the
debate between the liberal Normand magistrate Bigot de Saint-Croix and
the inspector of manufacture and commerce from Reims, Simon Clicquot de
Blervache, by: Kaplan, La fin des corporations, 29–47.
43. On the impact of architectural discourse upon public opinion: Richard
Wittman, “Architecture, Space, and Abstraction in the Eighteenth-Century
French Public Sphere,”Representations, vol. 102, no. 1 (2008), 1–26.
44. The Encyclopédie’s article on “Maçonnerie,” by the construction law specialist
J.R. Lucotte, featured 60 pages of text illustrated by over 150 plates. Its suc-
cess was such that it was republished separately: J.R. Lucotte, Description desNotes to Pages 50–54 275
arts et métiers, L’art de la maçonnerie (Paris, 1783). Diderot citation in Vidler,
L’espace des Lumières, 148.
45. M. de Fremin, Mémoires critiques d’architecture contenant l’idée de la vraie et
de la fausse architecture (1702). A. Desgodetz, Les lois des bâtiments suiv-
ant la coutume de Paris (1748). Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières, Le guide de
l’architecture pratique pour ceux qui veulent bâtir (2 vols., 1781). Le Camus,
the innovative architect of les Halles aux Blés (1762), was an architecte-
expert-bourgeois between 1750 and 1789. His was an insider’s critique of
the excessive complaisance shown toward proprietors during the expertise:
Carbonnier, Le bâti et l’habitat, 615–620. Jean Antoine, Traité d’architecture
(1768). J.F. Blondel, Architecture françoise (1752). S.G. de Cordemoy, Nouveau
traité de toute l’architecture (1706).
46. Wolfgang Herrmann, Laugier and Eighteenth Century French Theory (London,
1962). Gallet, Demeures parisiennes: 51. Laugier, 118, 129–130. The study of
“public opinion” in debates on the corporations bolsters the broad contours
of Habermas’ argument. On construction issues, the appeal to the public by
magistrates – public safety, public good, and public interest – indeed became
a recurrent theme in this period following the 1771 Maupeou “coup” against
the magistrates of the Parlement of Paris. The Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere (Cambridge, 1989; original German version, 1962), 5, 9,
68–70. See also Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston, 1973; original German
version, 1969), 77.
47. Laugier, 136–138. “Cheating” is a translation of “les friponneries.”
48. A.N. AD XI 12B, 8 March 1775, Arrêt du Conseil d’Etat privé du Roi rendu
en faveur des Architectes-Experts-Entrepreneurs contre les Architectes-Experts-
Bourgeois, 24–25. F. Bayard, Joel Félix, P. Hamon, Dictionnaire des surintendants
et contrôleurs généraux des finances, XVI e -XVII e -XVIIII e siècles (Paris, 2000).
49. De Lespinasse (ed.), Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris, vol 1: 612.
The vital fiscal role of guilds, however, speaks to why Turgot’s abolition ulti-
mately failed. The French state was heavily dependent on the contributions
of the corporations: Kwass, Privilege, 12. Gail Bossenga, “Taxes,” in A Criti-
cal Dictionary of the French Revolution, François Furet and Mona Ozouf (eds.)
(Cambridge, MA. and London, 1989, French edition first published in 1988),
582–589.
50. De Lespinasse, Les métiers et corporations, vol. 1: “Édit du roi portant suppres-
sion des jurandes et communautés de commerce, arts et métiers.” Février,
1776, 162–175. On the broader context of previous efforts by reform minis-
ters to bring laissez-faire to the grain trade in 1763–1764, cf.: Kaplan, Bread,
Politics: “The irony of liberalization” was that it needed “a better disciplined
and more extensive royal bureaucracy,” vol. 1, 228.
51. Jules Flammermont, Remontrances du Parlement de Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris,
1898) vol. 3, 2–4 March 1776, 297 and 349. Cf. Kaplan, La fin des corporations,
77–104.
52. Flammermont, Remontrances, vol. 3, 2–4 March 1776, 309 and 333.
53. Elsewhere, the Paris Parlement made explicit connections between previous,
failed experiments in liberalization under Laverdy, 1763–1764 and under
Turgot, 1775, when price controls on grain were lifted resulting in subsis-
tence riots. The paternalist Parlementarians of 1776 evoked these food crises276 Notes to Pages 54–58
as another instance where Parlement was “alerted by the cry” of the people
to intervene. Remonstrances, vol. 3, 2–4 March 1776, 297, 313, and 318.
54. Ibid., 310. As an example, in 1724 the King tried to delimit the boundary of
outer Paris by erecting 300 markers as the effective “town limits.” Garrioch,
The Making, 128.
55. Remonstrances, 2–4 March 1776, 319 and 312.
56. Ibid., 309–310. See Steven Kaplan, “Réflexions sur la police du monde du
travail, 1700–1815,” Revue historique 261 (January–March 1979), 17–77: 69.
57. Remonstrances, Août, 1776: 312.
58. Hardy, a severe critic, registered numerous complaints about the abolition. A
mere sampling: B.N. F. F. 6682, Hardy, Mes Loisirs, vol. 2: fols. 191, 192, 194
(16, 18, 21, 24 March 1776). On the returning journeymen: fol. 232 (11 June
1776). De Lespinasse, Les métiers, edict of August 1776, 175–188. On the post-
August 1776 building corporations: 616–632. See Steven Kaplan’s book on
the end of the corporations that interprets the period, 1776–1791 – from the
restoration of the guilds to their definitive abolition by the loi Le Chapelier –
as a fertile moment of experimentation in which a rather pragmatic reformist
guild policy was elaborated. This held out, if only too briefly, the possibility
of an innovative corporatism in France: La fin des corporations, 320–323.
59. Moulin, Les maçons, 444 and 448.
60. See Necker’s attack on Turgot’s liberalism: Sur la législation et le commerce des
grains (Paris, 1775). Also, B.N. Joly de Fleury 1732, Lettre patente, 1781. On
the livrets: A.N. AD XI 20, Lettres patentes du Roi, 5 Septembre 1782.
61. The commissaire Allix’s descents in the carpentry trade, 1785–1789, are doc-
umented in A.N. Y 10806 to Y 10810. On 5 November 1786, Allix engaged
in five separate interventions: A.N. Y 10809C. Source on the place de Grève:
A.N. AD XI 16.
62. The recrudescence of labor strife toward the end of the ancien régime is
confirmed by Jean Nicolas in his monumental study of popular uprisings
in France from 1661 to 1789. Around 30 percent of Nicolas’ sampling of
462 dossiers of eighteenth-century labor conflict occurred in the period
1780–1789: La Rébellion française. Mouvements populaires et conscience sociale
1661–1789 (Paris, 2002), 292–293. David Garrioch argues “clusters of dis-
putes” around salaries and labor conditions at century’s end “have no direct
connection to the Revolution:” The Making of Revolutionary Paris, 66.
63. A.N. Y 9949, Garde de Paris, Poste à Vaugirard, rapport de 2 Mai, 1785, à 6
heures du soir. Cf. Sonenscher, “Journeymen, the Courts, and the French
Trades, 1781–1791”: Past and Present 114 (February 1987), 77–109: 84.
64. Mois Tailleurs de Maçons Limousins Main-d’œuvre
pierres (plasterers)
Juillet 42 sous 42 s. 36 s. 28 s.
Août 42 s. 42 s. 36 s. 28 s.
Septembre 40 s. 40 s. 36 s. 28 s.
Octobre 40 s. 40 s. 34 s. 26 s.
Novembre 38 s. 38 s. 32 s. 24 s.
Décembre 36 s. 36 s. 30 s. 22 s.
Source: B.N. Joly de Fleury 557, fols. 2–28: Sentence de 1785: fols. 3–4. This
sliding scale accurately reflects the weak demand in construction during theYou can also read
