Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France

Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805
Erscheinungsjahr 2000
ISBN: 978-0-8018-6392-9
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 232 Seiten, Format (B × H): 158 mm x 237 mm, Gewicht: 445 g

Eight years before the French Revolution, the paper mill at Vidalon-le-Haut was the setting for a bitter strike and successful lockout. This labor dispute, resulting from conflicts between master papermakers and skilled journeymen, ultimately benefitted the mill's owners and administrators—the Montgolfier family. They converted the 1781 lockout into an opportunity to train a new kind of worker, a malleable employee, and to fashion a new sort of workplace, a theater of technological experiment.

Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France: Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805, gives us history from the workshop up, offering the most comprehensive exploration available of the historical experience of papermaking. Leonard N. Rosenband explains how paper was made, depicting the tools, techniques, raw materials, and seasonable flows of the craft, and explores the many conflicts and compromises between masters and men. Rosenband provides a compelling account of how technological change affected the papermaking industry, transforming an elaborate, established system of production.

The Montgolfier archives are a rich source of information, providing records of daily output and procedures, including complex rules ranging from the precise hours of meals and prayer to matters of propriety and personal sanitation. They also provide insight into the attitudes of the Montgolfier family and their workers—what they made of their trade, their labor, and one another. This case study of the Montgolfier mill, adding details about technological innovation and shopfloor relations during a time of social unrest, enriches the current debate about the nature and impact of capitalism in France during the years leading up to the French Revolution.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rosenband, Leonard N

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technikgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Acknowledgments
Money, Weights, and Measures
Part I: An Old Industry
Chapter 1. French Industry in the Eighteenth Century
Chapter 2. Making Paper
Chapter 3. The Montgolfiers and Their Craft
Chapter 4. Rags, Regulation, and Government Stimulation
Part II: The "Modes" and the Lockout of 1781
Chapter 5. Building the Beaters and the Journeymen's Custom
Chapter 6. The Lockout
Part III: Managing to Rule
Chapter 7. The New Regime
Chapter 8. Hiring and Firing
Chapter 9. Paternalism
Chapter 10. Wages
Chapter 11. Discipline
Part IV: Measuring Change
Chapter 12. Technological Transfer
Chapter 13. Persistence
Chapter 14. Attitudes
Chapter 15. Productivity
Chapter 16. The Hierarchy of Vats
Part V: The End of Hand Papermaking
Chapter 17. The French Revolution and the Papermaking Machine
Conclusion
Appendix: Tables and Graph
Notes
Note on Sources
Index
Illustrations Appear on Pages 16-21

Über Autor(innen)

Rosenband, Leonard N
Leonard N. Rosenband is a professor of history at Utah State University. He coedited, with Thomas M. Safley, The Workplace before the Factory: Artisans and Proletarians, 1500-1800.