How did the Huguenots of Paris survive, and even prosper, in the eighteenth century when the majority Catholic population was notorious for its hostility to Protestantism? Why, by the end of the Old ...Regime, did public opinion overwhelmingly favour giving Huguenots greater rights? This study of the growth of religious toleration in Paris traces the specific history of the Huguenots after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. David Garrioch identifies the roots of this transformation of attitudes towards the minority Huguenot population in their own methods of resistance to persecution and pragmatic government responses to it, as well as in the particular environment of Paris. Above all, this book identifies the extraordinary shift in Catholic religious culture that took place over the century as a significant cause of change, set against the backdrop of cultural and intellectual transformation that we call the Enlightenment.
Entre Aix-en-Provence et Genève, de Paris à Utrecht, cet ouvrage renouvelle les approches traditionnelles de l'histoire religieuse en l'ouvrant davantage à l'histoire sociale dans le contexte urbain. ...Il propose une histoire sociale du religieux. Les fidèles ne sont pas pensés comme des individus dans leur rapport solitaire à Dieu et au clergé mais comme des êtres appartenant à une pluralité de corps. Leur identité religieuse est une de leurs identités corporatives qui sont plurielles (familiales, professionnelles, civiques…). S'appuyant sur la notion d'incorporation, ce livre conçoit la religion comme une dimension de l'expérience des hommes et des femmes qui appartiennent à plusieurs communautés. Comment « faire corps », en quelles occasions et sous quelles formes ? Comment concilier l'appartenance à des corps a priori incompatibles, comment admettre dans un corps la différence confessionnelle ? Comment, aussi, se « désincorporer » en quittant un corps au profit d'un autre, ou par le biais d'une individualisation des conduites ? En mettant en parallèle les mondes protestant et catholique, ce livre interroge donc la religion vécue des citadins de l'Europe de l'Ouest.
Several European cities experienced devastating fires in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and some burned repeatedly. Paris did not. Yet there, as elsewhere, the central quarters were ...crowded, and wood was widely used. People relied on naked flames for heating, cooking, and lighting and for most industrial processes. This article suggests that a combination of interconnected factors explains Paris's good fortune and differentiated it from other cities. It enjoyed a climate that reduced the likelihood of bad fires and provided abundant water, assisted by a geology that also offered fire-resistant building materials. These factors helped its inhabitants fight fires with surprising success, even before the creation of a permanent fire service. The nature of the city's economy also helped, because there were few concentrations of highly combustible products, and its various institutions of government collaborated to make both preventive measures and fire control more effective.
Plusieurs grandes villes européennes ont connu au moins un incendie dévastateur au cours des dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles, mais Paris échappa à ce fléau. Et pourtant, comme dans d'autres villes, les habitants utilisaient le feu pour se chauffer, pour s'éclairer, et dans l'industrie. Cet article suggère qu'une série de facteurs, pris ensemble, explique ce phénomène et différencie Paris de beaucoup d'autres villes modernes. Un climat favorable réduisait la probabilité de graves incendies et assurait une abondance d'eau, alors que le sous-sol fournissait des matières de construction bon marché et assez résistantes au feu. Ces éléments favorisaient la lutte contre l'incendie, en général efficace même avant la création des pompiers. L'économie de la ville nécessitait peu de stockage de produits combustibles, ce qui réduisait encore le risque. Enfin, les mesures prises par les différentes juridictions administratives et policières, qui travaillaient ensemble de façon étonnamment harmonieuse, rendaient les mesures préventives et de contrôle relativement efficaces.
While it is incontestable that the Great Fire led to a new awareness and to stronger measures to prevent and to fight fires, this was not because it was the worst in a long series of serious fires, ...but because it was one of the first. London had no really large fires in the four centuries before 1666, but was to experience fifty or more in the following 200 years. This article asks why. Alongside the obvious facts of rapid population growth and the resulting shoddy building, the continued use of timber for housing, and the inadequacy of fire prevention measures, it suggests that the growth of London's maritime trade and the concentration of stores of new types of highly flammable products, particularly along the river, created a new vulnerability to disaster that made earlier forms of fire control inadequate.
The categories of "amateur" and "professional" remain central in studies on the sociology of nineteenth-century science. This article joins a growing body of literature that points out the ...complicated and intersecting connections between these two groups and how blurred the boundaries could be. This study focuses on pyrotechny, the art of fireworks, a field of far more obvious importance in the nineteenth century than it is today. Firework displays were mounted by artisan firework makers, who by the end of the century had become industrialists, and by military specialists, usually artillerymen. They had also become a common amateur pursuit. Across the nineteenth century, the art was transformed by the introduction of new materials, and the key discoveries were the work of enthusiasts who did not seek to profit financially from their discoveries. In this sense, they too were amateurs, although some had a scientific education. This article asks how they were able to make such major contributions to the field, and it situates them within networks that often crossed the boundaries between those who made fireworks for a living, or who studied them in military contexts, and those who were simple enthusiasts.
“Civil society,” in the definition proposed in the introduction to this special issue, was not solely a product of the Enlightenment or of elite sociability. This article focuses on ...eighteenth-century confraternities in Paris and Milan to argue that these religious associations fostered the kinds of values and behaviors that most writers associate with the formation of civil society: cooperation, charity, a sense of responsibility, and peaceful interaction both among the members and between them and others in society. Many of them encouraged a culture of independence and a sense of rights among their members. They also offered experience of organization to a very large number of men and a smaller number of women. They thus contributed to the formation of eighteenth-century “civil society.”
The sights, sounds, and smells of life on the streets and in the houses of eighteenth-century Paris rise from the pages of this marvelously anecdotal chronicle of a perpetually alluring city during ...one hundred years of extraordinary social and cultural change. An excellent general history as well as an innovative synthesis of new research, The Making of Revolutionary Paris combines vivid portraits of individual lives, accounts of social trends, and analyses of significant events as it explores the evolution of Parisian society during the eighteenth century and reveals the city's pivotal role in shaping the French Revolution. David Garrioch rewrites the origins of the Parisian Revolution as the story of an urban metamorphosis stimulated by factors such as the spread of the Enlightenment, the growth of consumerism, and new ideas about urban space. With an eye on the broad social trends emerging during the century, he focuses his narrative on such humble but fascinating aspects of daily life as traffic congestion, a controversy over the renumbering of houses, and the ever-present dilemma of where to bury the dead. He describes changes in family life and women's social status, in religion, in the literary imagination, and in politics. Paris played a significant role in sparking the French Revolution, and in turn, the Revolution changed the city, not only its political structures but also its social organization, gender ideologies, and cultural practices. This book is the first to look comprehensively at the effect of the Revolution on city life. Based on the author's own research in Paris and on the most current scholarship, this absorbing book takes French history in new directions, providing a new understanding of the Parisian and the European past.
Au XVIIe siècle, les communautés de métier et leurs confréries sont en général inséparables. Elles ont souvent une administration commune, les élections ont lieu le jour de la fête du saint patron, ...et les fonds de la corporation paient les frais des offices religieux. Les funérailles et la célébration des fêtes religieuses font partie de la vie communautaire et de l’identité corporative. Cette inséparabilité relève d’une conception « enchantée » du monde, où la vie profane ne se distingue guère du spirituel. Cet article examine le processus de sécularisation des corporations et cherche à expliquer la fin des confréries de métier à Paris. L’action de la monarchie – en dépit de ses fondements religieux – est au cœur du processus. Afin d’extraire un maximum de revenus des corporations, le roi impose au XVIIIe siècle une séparation financière des confréries et des corporations, et limite les dépenses. Il introduit une nouvelle distinction entre les fonctions religieuses et les autres activités des métiers, qui a pour effet de séculariser les corporations. Son intention n’est nullement de s’attaquer à la religion. Au contraire, son action relève d’une nouvelle conception du monde, caractéristique de la Réforme catholique, qui cherche à protéger le sacré en le séparant du profane. Aux yeux des commissaires royaux, le travail appartient au monde séculier. Les confréries de métier n’y ont aucune place. Sujettes à une critique croissante et à une désaffection de la part d’un certain nombre de leurs membres, elles ne survivront pas à la réforme des corporations en 1776.
This book reveals the importance of personal letters in the history of European women between the year 1000 and the advent of the telephone. It explores the changing ways that women used ...correspondence for self-expression and political mobilization over this period, enabling them to navigate the myriad gendered restrictions that limited women’s engagement in the world. Whether written from the medieval cloister, or the renaissance court, or the artisan’s workshop, or the drawing room, letters crossed geographical and social distance and were mobile in ways that women themselves could not always be. Women wrote to govern, to argue, to plead, and to demand. They also wrote to express love and intimacy, and in so doing, to explain and to understand themselves. This book argues that the personal letter was a crucial place for European women’s self-fashioning, and that exploring the history of their letters offers a profound insight into their subjectivity and agency over time.
