Examining the social and political history of workers and entrepreneurs engaged in constructing the French capital from 1763-1815, this book argues that Paris construction was a core sector in which 'archaic' and 'innovative' practices were symbiotically used by guilds, the state, and enterprises to launch the commercial revolution in France.
Table of Contents:
List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Parisian Construction at the End of the Ancien Régime: The Building Trades, The Pre-Industrial Market, And The Guild Debate, 1750-1789 The Revolution and Construction Guilds, 1789-1793 Projecting the Revolution on the Parisian Work Site, 1789-1793 The Building Trades in the Terror and Thermidor, 1793-1795 Reconciling Commerce and Revolution, 1795-1805 Constraining Capital, Containing Labor: State Urban Planning In Paris, 1802-1815 Conclusion and Epilogue Appendix Notes and Bibliography
About the Author :
ALLAN POTOFSKY is Professor at the Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7. He was awarded a PhD in History from Columbia University, New York, and previously was Associate Professor at the Université Paris-8 (Saint-Denis). His research interests include the history of Paris, the French Revolution, eighteenth-century Atlantic history, France in America, and comparative urban history, 1750-1850. He lives in the northeast Parisian quarter of Belleville.
Review :
Shortlisted for the Longman - History Today Book Prize 2010
'Far from destroying corporatism, the late eighteenth century and the Revolution inaugurated a pragmatic compromise between private enterprise and the state that enabled capitalism to flourish. Allan Potofsky's beautifully-researched study of the Paris building trades blends social, economic and cultural history and gives us a whole swathe of new insights into the city's political, social, and ideological transformation from the Old Regime to the nineteenth century.' - David Garrioch, Monash University, Australia
'Allan Potofsky's book will make an important contribution to the history of the French Revolution, the history of Paris and the history of labour. No one but he could have written this book, which is grounded in impressively extensive archival research, yet which wears its archival learning elegantly and lightly.' - Colin Jones, Queen Mary University of London, UK
'This impressive book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the complex story of construction in Paris during the late-Old Regime and the Revolution.' - K. Steven Vincent, North Carolina University, The European Legacy
'Constructing Paris is an authoritative history of the capital's building trades in a period of dramatic political change. Tracing how 'three dreams of commerce' corporatism, statism, and liberalism combined to shape Paris' construction industry, Potofsky powerfully illuminates the distinctive characteristics of French capitalism in the age of the French Revolution.' - Michael Kwass, The John Hopkins University, USA
'No one knows more about the Parisian construction industry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century than Allan Potofsky. He has worked in and published on this field for some years now, and the range of archival research in this book attests to his deep knowledge.' - James R. Farr, Purdue University
