Melting Shops. Une histoire des commerçants étrangers en France by Claire Zalc (review)

This book's research perspective is about trade, which takes its roots in the Braudelian studies and is also inspired by the followers of Fernand Braudel, Daniel Roche, and Laurence Fontaine. The world of little commerce in France described by Claire Zalc is a necessary complement to the Big Business studies that flourish since the seminal work of Alfred Chandler Jr. The task is difficult because sources and data are more difficult to find in comparison with big firms that produced annual reports containing a résumé of activities, economic results, and names of administrators and directors. As Clair Zalc admits, "It is quite impossible to furnish a measure of the world of little enterprise: the available statistics are inadequate" (33). The analysis is still more difficult because the author took the decision to focus on foreigner traders. Claire Zalc built on three kinds of sources: printing sources at the national level, as laws and juridical books, departmental statistics, and nominative documents at the level of urban districts.

The nineteenth century was mostly an open world for foreigners who wanted to make commerce. An elite of entrepreneurs, English, Belgian, and Swiss, were welcome in France because they brought innovations linked with the first industrialization. Encouraged by the liberty of commerce established during the French Revolution, a growing flow of immigrants brought important structural modifications. Numerous and unqualified workers took the place of a small elite coming from the world of business.

The Great Depression of the late nineteenth century (1873-1896) had for consequence to modify the benefit of the free concurrence. Under the pressure of the middle class, it was clearly a question of protecting the national market. Zalc reports an accident in 1893 between French and Italian workers in the Salines of the Midi, which resulted in eight dead and fifty injured, all Italians. The category of ambulant merchants moving to search clients (as did the colporteurs during the preindustrial society) was particularly considered a danger for society. For the state and the local collectivities, sedentarity became a rule. In this context, the situation of the foreign shop men began to be more and more difficult.

During the First World War, foreign commerce was accused of unfair concurrence since working quietly, whereas their French homologues were soldiers on the front. Those who were coming from the adversary side (Germans and Austrian-Hungary) were also suspected of spying. Furthermore, the French society was destabilized by the arrival of 1.5 million of foreigners who entered suddenly in the French labor market. Among them, some 220,000 were recruited in the African and in the Indochinese colonies.

Thanks to more adequate sources (Répertoire du commerce), the Interwar period is better known at the level of the departments. It is thus possible to learn that the sociologist Norbert Elias, escaping the Nazis persecutions, entered in the Department of Seine in 1933. This ex-assistant professor at the University of Frankfurt sought to install a commerce in France, without success. This example of personal trajectory is used by Zalc as a line from the introduction to the conclusion.

Foreign commerce faced challenges in the 1930s. The revenue of the French middle class was declining, and therefore, they put pressure on the French government to take measures against the foreign traders. As in the years of Great Depression at the end of the nineteenth century, the term of unfair concurrence was again on the track. But the xenophobia became more profound. The French administration went further by mapping foreign traders. Since 1938, each of them had to fulfill a card. The following years, 200,000 cards were printed. Before the printing of these cards, the minister of Interior gave only temporary authorizations. The objective was to install quotas reducing the number of foreign traders. Their number should not go beyond 0.5 percent of the total of foreigners censed in the departments. For the Department of Rhône with...