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The French distinguish themselves by thinking they are universal. In early January 2002, Jean-Marie Messier, head of the water-distribution-to-mobile-phones conglomerate Vivendi Universal, announced in a resounding interview the end of l'exception française. The furore which then arose from virtually every corner of politics and the media revealed the deep-rooted belief that France had remained, and should remain for the foreseeable future, a society different from its neighbours and partners. Different parties attach different meanings to this claim but all amount to a call to the government to set standards for society at large and enforce them. What Messier may have been voicing, however, was not so much a normative judgement as a statement of fact, pointing out the relentless erosion of cultural identities in the Western world and beyond. In this he was undoubtedly right. This process of convergence and standardisation, often referred to as ‘Americanisation’, in many aspects of social life, economic and otherwise, has affected France as it has its European neighbours, with increasing vigour in the second half of the century. The end of Malthusianism Convergence has affected first and foremost French patterns of demographic behaviour. The first Western nation historically to have undergone a demographic transition (a drastic reduction of its birth rate), France saw its population virtually stagnate for close to a hundred years from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. In 1936 it numbered thirty-nine million people, barely more than in 1836 (thirty-six million). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HARVESTING 1827 The final years of the Restoration saw Liberals confront two royalist governments. The first was largely Centre-Right in political orientation and was led by Viscount Jean-Baptiste Martignac, a former Bordelais lawyer who had been elected Deputy in 1825 and thereafter had staunchly supported Villèle. Martignac had not to that point established himself as a major political figure and he was not officially appointed as premier ministre, but his oratorical skills in parliament soon established him as the leader of the cabinet. The second royalist government, appointed in August 1829, was very much ultraroyalist in character and was led by Jules de Polignac. During both ministries Liberalstr ength grew, registered in by-elections under Martignac and in the general election of July 1830 under Polignac, and thus there was a consistent underlining theme to these years. Faced by the possibility of a Liberal majority in 1820, royalists had passed the Law of the Double Vote, and this alteration of the electoral regime had helped secure domination for the next seven years. The Law of 2 May 1827 had then reduced administrative fraud, thereby contributing to Liberal recovery and again raising the spectre of an Opposition majority. Latent in this scenario was the potential conflict that had always lurked in the Charter. Accommodating the representative element of the constitution posed little concern as long as parliament was suitably royalist, but what would happen if voters chose to elect an Opposition majority? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PARADISE LOST Most historians have interpreted the election of the Chambre retrouvée in February–March 1824 as a watershed, but the exact nature of this turning point in Restoration politics needs further clarification. Ultraroyalist triumph was due partly to the opportunities presented by Liberal rebellion, and due partly to the deployment of executive despotism. Under Villèle, there was no longer any place for ultraroyalist attack on the centralization of power, because the latter had become crucial to ultraroyalist ascendancy. This fusion of state despotism and ultraroyalism, however, meant that the latter became increasingly dependent upon the control of government. Independent organization at the grassroots level did not entirely disappear, but it was significantly weakened. Conversely, Liberal Opposition steadily recovered. In part, recovery could be attributed to ultraroyalist overconfidence. Moderate by the standards of the extreme Right, Villèle was nonetheless an ultraroyalist and he put forward a steady stream of legislation that consistently favoured the interests of the former privileged orders. Meanwhile Liberals maintained their posture as representatives of the nation, and they profited as association with patriotism returned to them, while alarm over counter-revolution rose. In the first session of the new parliament, Villèle tabled two closely related bills. The first proposed indemnification of émigrés whose lands had been confiscated during the Revolution. Indemnification would be funded by a second proposal: conversion on the rates of government bonds from 5 to 3 per cent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE DECAZES EXPERIMENT During verification procedures for the new parliament, Villèle denounced Louis-Antoine Malouet for interfering in elections in the Pas-de-Calais and, as evidence, gave the press a prefectoral letter urging voters not to support Deputies of the previous Chamber. In the Peers, Chateaubriand called for investigation of ministerial corruption. While out of power, ultraroyalists attacked executive despotism, criticizing the practice of making Deputies civil servants, or promoting Deputies who already held government office. Such ‘favours’ enhanced cabinet influence by reducing parliamentary independence. In 1816 an ultraroyalist Deputy proposed a complete ban on holding both positions, and in January 1817 Villéle suggested adoption of the British model, whereby Deputies must seek re-election after appointment or promotion. Both propositions were designed to hamper the cabinet from corrupting elections, and both ran aground against warnings of the danger of restricting royal prerogative. Even the doctrinaire Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, generally associated by historians with advocacy of constitutional checks and balances, argued against excessive division of powers. Villèle replied that he wanted to secure a Chamber sufficiently independent to inform the king of the truth. Subsequently, the electoral law of 1817 did establish that prefects and military commanders were ineligible to run in the departments they administered, but went no further. The first two years of the Restoration deeply influenced left-wing opposition by entrenching resistance to ultraroyalism, but a more complex dynamic emerged after the elections of 1816. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level, never equalise … The levellers therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of society, by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. WHO'S WHO AMONG THE JACOBINS AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF MODERATION Before attempting to elucidate further the ideological underpinnings of Jacobin egalitarianism, it may be helpful to introduce the principal protagonists of this study, many of whom belong to the amorphous body of rank-and-file Montagnards not often the subject of historiographical scrutiny. The reader is entitled to ask who they were and why the regional centres in which they operated, often far from the capital, are of specific interest to our topic. The short answer is that they represent the mainstream, though by no means the silent majority, that they put into practice what they preached and that their activities were largely concentrated in areas free from terrorist excess. While none were major revolutionaries of the stature of a Danton or a Robespierre, it would be equally misleading to suggest that they were merely practitioners imposing the will of the legislature in the depths of the French countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Revolution only municipal personnel and justices of the peace were directly elected to their posts. National deputies, like departmental officials and district administrators (until their suppression in 1795), were chosen at electoral colleges by second-degree electors who emanated from primary assemblies in the cantons. This indirect route to high office was a procedure retained from the ancien régime, exemplified by the successive stages of election to the Estates General in 1789. It was, above all, a means of vesting real power in the hands of a political elite which, even in the absence of a fiscal threshold in 1792, was drawn predominantly from wealthier elements of the broad electorate. The relatively small secondary assemblies in the departments were clearly the fulcrum of electoral authority in revolutionary France. Government officials and contenders for higher office alike were especially concerned to secure a favourable outcome at this level. Yet, despite the existence of a good deal of accessible documentation, these all-important departmental colleges have received surprisingly little attention from historians; much remains to be done, as this exploratory survey will suggest. Departmental assemblies were created on seven occasions during the revolutionary decade, in 1790, 1791, 1792, 1795, 1797, 1798 and 1799. They ranged in size from less than 200 to almost 1,000 members, reflecting the total of enfranchised citizens in each department: the Pyrénées-Orientales hosted the smallest, while the Seine (usually referred to as Paris) housed the largest assembly. In 1790 and 1791 one second-degree elector was awarded for every 100 ayant droit de voter residing in the canton, regardless of actual turnout. In 1792 the total of electors remained static, notwithstanding an extension of the franchise, because there was no time to compile new voter lists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our final task is to examine the impact of factory legislation on the evolution of child labour practices during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. With the 1874 law at last providing for a reasonably effective inspection service, the stage was set for a serious confrontation between the State and employers who resisted or ignored the reform movement. A number of important questions arise for the historian: How did the laws making primary education free and compulsory affect child labour? Which sections of the 1874 law provoked the most hostility? Were large-scale enterprises more amenable to pressure from Factory Inspectors than small ones? And what was the overall position when the 1874 law was superseded by new factory legislation in 1892? Fortunately, the documentation available to help provide some answers is abundant. All of the quarterly and annual reports drawn up by the Divisional Inspectors for the Minister of Commerce have survived in the national archives. Although unlikely to provide a full account of events, being vulnerable to the widespread fraud committed in the workshops, this source does leave us with a mass of detail on the implementation of the law. It can be complemented by the findings of various Enquiries into the condition of the proletariat during the 1870s and 1880s, and by the occasional working-class autobiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw a more forceful intervention by the State in the lives of children than had hitherto been attempted. The loi Roussel of 1874 regulated the practice of putting infants out to wet-nurse. The lois scolaires of the 1880s, associated with the name of Jules Ferry, made schooling free and compulsory for all children aged between six and thirteen. More direct curbs on the power of fathers over their offspring came with laws passed in 1889 and 1898. The former permitted the State to deprive parents of their authority if they were compromising the welfare of their children through habitual drunkenness or scandalous ill-treatment. The latter made it possible for minors who had been criminally abused within their families to be handed over to the assistance publique or to guardians from a charitable society. This was the context for the child labour law of 19 May 1874, which is the focus for the final two chapters of this book. The new Act went some way to meet the criticisms levelled at its predecessor of 1841. But it was one thing to pass ambitious legislation, quite another to transform the customs of a large sector of the population. The 1874 law and its network of Inspectors had to contend with a whole range of forces on the labour market, which affected the willingness of employers and parents alike to see children move from the workshops to the primary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The difficult birth of the 1841 law gave a hint of the obstacles to come during the period of enforcement. The crusading fervour of the reformers had exposed the complacent attitude to child labour of Ministers in the Government, and the opposition to State intervention of many industrialists. The passage of the law did at the outset provoke a flurry of activity within the administration. A body of Inspectors was created, and a campaign of enforcement launched at both the national and the municipal levels. Nonetheless, the early experience of social legislation was fraught with difficulties, against which successive régimes made little headway. The period of illusions and disappointments, 1841–3 In August of 1841 the Minister of Commerce requested Prefects to draw up lists of firms covered by the 1841 law, and others to which it might usefully be extended. The Prefects in turn consulted the Mayor of each commune, and examples of their replies survive in all of the major manufacturing areas. The Minister then set about organizing a system of inspection. He chose to ignore the considerable pressure for salaried Inspectors, on the lines of those established in Britain by the 1833 law. Instead he opted for voluntary, unpaid Commissions of Inspection, recruited mostly from the notables of industry, commerce and the liberal professions. The twelve members of the Commission covering the arrondissement of Colmar, for example, included three manufacturers, three doctors, two lawyers, a landowner, a former merchant and a retired army officer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child labour first became an issue in the political arena during the 1820s and 1830s. As we have seen, evidence that the youngest and most vulnerable members of the labour force were suffering from abuses on the shop floor began to accumulate in the writings of social investigators. Mechanization and heightened competition in industry were held responsible for the imposition of excessively long hours and a gruelling pace of work on large numbers of women and children. The effects of the new régime were widely canvassed. Reformers wrote passionately of child ‘martyrs’ in the mills, disastrous military recruitment figures in the industrial cantons, a new breed of ‘barbarians’ emerging in the slums, and so forth. The case did not by any means go unchallenged. Time and again, we have noted employers indignantly asserting that the allegations of a physical and intellectual decline were exaggerated. We have also come across their emphasis on the positive achievements of the factory system, with the argument that it was bringing improved working conditions and more disciplined attitudes amongst the labour force. Nonetheless, there was something of a consensus on the misery of many working-class children in the manufacturing areas. The first task of the reformers was to convince those in power that State intervention was the appropriate response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The allegation that industrial development was undermining the physical condition of the population was worrying enough for notables during the mid-nineteenth century, not least because it implied a threat to the military strength of the country. The possibility that there was also a moral and intellectual decline under way was if anything more disturbing. In their minds, moral corruption and the politics of their opponents were inextricably linked. The great fear was that a deterioration in the general education of the classes populaires would prepare the ground for some kind of social and political revolution. Time and again reformers of various political hues argued that industrial society was prising away working-class children from established institutions, such as the family, the Church, the school and the apprenticeship system, only to thrust them into the unsavoury atmosphere of the factory and the slum. Deprived of ‘wise counsels’, the gamins of the city were exposed to all manner of debauchery and political extremism – or so the argument ran. Sorting out fact from fantasy in all this is not easy. Accusations of declining moral standards amongst the young are far from specific to the 1830s and 1840s. Nonetheless, it is possible to discern a number of changes, if not an overall decline, affecting the various strands of the popular education in the towns during the early nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From discussing changes in the working conditions of children, it was but a short step to looking at the impact of industrial employment on their physical and intellectual welfare. The issue was raised in 1828 by Jean-Jacques Bourcart, during the course of a famous speech to the Société Industrielle de Mulhouse. He proposed that juvenile labour in the spinning mills be given legal protection, on the grounds that: The industry of our country has developed in an extraordinary manner, but if on the one side it has eased the misery of the working class by providing work, it has not contributed, or at least has barely contributed, to their moral and physical improvement … It is noticeable that children employed for too long in the workshops have feeble bodies and feeble health, and that, not having time to look after their education, they cannot develop morally. Such forthright criticism of the new industrial system was not to the taste of the majority of employers, threatening as it did one of their most cherished liberties: that of running their enterprises unhindered by the intervention of the State. There followed a long and emotive propaganda war between reformers and apologists for the unfettered expansion of the industrial sector. This chapter confines itself to the first part of the debate, concerning the physical state of children employed in industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education amongst the peasantry of nineteenth-century France continued to be dominated by the Medieval notion of apprenticeship. Following this approach, children were plunged headlong into the world of adults as early as possible in order to learn the ‘art of living’ from those around them. All of the ideas, the beliefs and the values of peasant society were transmitted in this way, as well as the manual skills needed for work. In the absence of specialized institutions, education melted imperceptibly into the normal round of activities in the village. However, as the century wore on, this informal type of education came increasingly to be supplanted by a new rival: the elementary school. A very different philosophy of education was percolating down from middle- and upper-class circles, one which required children to be sheltered from an outside world judged too dangerous and too corrupt for their sensibilities. Children were now to be taught systematically in the cloistered atmosphere of the school, before being launched on their chosen occupations. The profound upheaval in customs that this extension of childhood implied was not to be achieved in the short term. The movement to school the population was spread over several centuries, starting in the case of primary education with the petites écoles of the reign of Louis XIV, and ending with the free, compulsory schooling of the Third Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural France in the nineteenth century was first and foremost a mosaic of regions. The landscape provided an immediate image of diversity: mountains and forests looked down on lush valleys and plains; pays de vignoble stood out from surrounding arable and grass lands; maritime France differed from continental France. Most importantly of all, the great open-field systems characteristic of the north and east could be distinguished from the enclosed bocages of the west and the irregular ‘square’ fields more common in the south. Adolphe Blanqui, writing during the 1850s, depicted such contrasts between neighbouring pays in terms of oases in the desert: ‘Thus, the Limagne of the Auvergne shines like a diamond at the foot of the wilderness of Cantal; the Vaucluse plain at the entry to the terres brûlantes of Provence; the Médoc at the threshold of the Landes; the Touraine close by the Sologne; the gardens of Annonay at the exit from the gorges of Forez.’ These physical differences were matched by an equally wide variety of social structures. In much of northern France, on the vast open fields of the Ile-de-France, Picardy, the Beauce and parts of Normandy, the concentration of farms meant that a few wealthy tenant farmers and laboureurs held sway over a vast army of dependent agricultural labourers. Elsewhere, in the Mediterranean coastal district, the south-west, the Massif, Brittany and Flanders, society was nearer the Jacobin ideal of a ‘republic of peasants’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]