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  • La trace du fleuve: La Seine et Paris, 1750–1850
  • Sara B. Pritchard (bio)
La trace du fleuve: La Seine et Paris, 1750–1850. By Isabelle Backouche. Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2000. Pp. 430. €42.75/6.53.

Parisians and tourists alike know that the Seine is a defining feature of the city of lights. Its famous left bank, numerous bateaux mouches, and now Paris plage ("Paris beach") are just a few obvious examples of how contemporaries interact with the river. In La trace du fleuve, Isabelle Backouche explores the relationship between Paris and the Seine during a formative century in France's history. The book is neither a history of Paris nor of the Seine, but rather of "the relationships between a city and its river," particularly the "mechanisms" of these relationships and their "evolution" (p. 9). Reflecting the enduring influence of geography on the discipline of history in France, her methodological aim is to determine "how to inscribe in time the game between a society and its space and geography" (p. 10).

La trace du fleuve is divided into three parts, reflecting the book's three-part argument. The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed a "rupture" between city and river; no longer used and managed by a variety of actors, the Seine primarily became a transportation thoroughfare; this transformation resulted in the loss of the river's vitality as a center of Parisian life. In early chapters Backouche explores the Seine as a contested site of work: because mills and laundries, merchants and butchers all depended upon the river, it played a multifaceted role in the urban environment. Subsequent chapters trace the growing intervention in the river as the monarchy and city of Paris undertook flood control projects, improved navigability, and built bridges, quais (riverside promenades), and water supply systems. Finally, Backouche shows how navigation became nearly dominant.

Several aspects of this book will interest historians of technology. Backouche describes tensions between the monarchy and Paris Parlement over the Seine well before 1789. In addition, she traces a shift in river management and engineering, as constraints on users gave way to substantial intervention and notions of the Seine's purpose changed between 1750 and 1850. She thus provides an important corrective to accounts of urban reform in French history that focus almost exclusively on Baron Haussmann and the modernization of Paris during the mid- and late nineteenth century. [End Page 876]

The historical relationship between Paris and the Seine is an important topic, and Backouche's analysis has much to offer. But her book will frustrate many historians interested in the intersection of technology and the environment. Too often Backouche makes Paris a historical actor. But who is Paris? The Parlement? The citizens? Which ones? In addition, there are discrepancies between Backouche's methodology and her analysis. Unlike many environmental historians in the United States who underscore the role of nature in history, Backouche's analysis of relations between Paris and the Seine focuses almost entirely on the human. It is notable, too, that she frames her study as "the relationships between a city and its river" and not "a river and its city"—in contrast to Ari Kelman's 2003 book of that name about the Mississippi and New Orleans.

Backouche's concept of relations is essentially limited to literal connections between Parisians and the Seine. For instance, she critiques the building of quais because they impeded residents' access to the river. Yet such construction did not mean that Parisians experienced what Backouche repeatedly calls a "cutting off" (coupure). Links between Parisians and the Seine may have been increasingly mediated, but they did not disappear. Technological artifacts such as quais and sewers instead masked many of the connections between the city's residents and its natural environment that had once been easily visible.

La trace du fleuve is, then, a declensional narrative. But there is much more to the history of Paris and Seine than this. Backouche might have made a convincing argument about transformations in the relationships between the city and the river. Instead of focusing her study on the supposed cutting off of Parisians...

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