In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Stonemasons of Creuse in Nineteenth-Century Paris
  • Steven E. Rowe
The Stonemasons of Creuse in Nineteenth-Century Paris. By Casey Harison (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008. 331 pp. $65.00).

Casey Harison’s study of the migrant stonemasons from central France who were responsible for much of the construction of Paris in the nineteenth century fills a significant gap in the historiography of nineteenth-century France. While labor historians have concentrated on problems of industrialization, politics, and class formation, the stonemasons and other members of the building trades have suffered from a lack of attention, most likely due to their perceived inability to fit into existing problematics. As Harison points out, this could be partly the result of the enduring nineteenth-century image of the migrant stonemasons as backward peasants out of touch with French modernity, despite working at the very heart of modernity – the construction of Paris. Harison’s book is, therefore, a corrective to this oversight, in particular because it demonstrates the significance of the stonemasons’ experiences for understanding labor and politics in nineteenth-century Paris.

The seasonal migration of young men from the provinces of Limousin and Marche to work in the building trades in France’s cities, particularly Paris, was well established by the 17th and 18th centuries. However, it was in the 19th century that increasingly large numbers of migrant laborers arrived looking for work in the expanding construction industry in the nation’s capital. Stonemasons from the department of the Creuse (formerly part of the province of Limousin) formed the largest migrant community in Paris. They resided in the overcrowded boarding houses of the city’s center and gathered each morning looking for work in an open-air hiring market in the Place de Grève, located in front of Paris’s town hall (the Hôtel de Ville). By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the stonemasons had been largely displaced from the city center and the hiring market at the Place de Grève no longer existed. This was somewhat ironically the result of their own labor in the reconstruction of Paris under Baron Haussmann, which made Paris into the city of broad boulevards we know today. [End Page 783]

Harison’s analysis focuses on the intersections of labor practices, place, and rebellion that defined the migrant stonemasons’ lives in Paris. With their residence and hiring located in central Paris, Harison demonstrates the significance of this space for defining the masons’ experiences and others’ perception of them. Harison ties the hiring market at the Place de Grève to the development of laissez-faire capitalism following the French Revolution, particularly the practice of marchandage, a form of subcontracting that was frequently the subject of criticism by the stonemasons and other workers. By examining this connection between place and laissez-faire labor practices, Harison demonstrates the centrality of the stonemasons’ experiences for understanding the development of laissez-faire practices that increasingly dominated French trades in the wake of the Revolution’s elimination of guilds and journeymen’s associations.

Harison further connects the stonemasons’ location in central Paris to their contentious relationship with the police. His ultimate goal is to explain why so many stonemasons were arrested at such high rates following major periods of rebellion. He argues that the stonemasons’ association with the Place de Grève and its location immediately in front of the Hôtel de Ville made them the subject of intensive police surveillance throughout the 19th century. Drawing on the work of Charles Tilly and others, Harison seeks to demonstrate the development of a “repertoire of contention,” but he also argues that this contentious relationship must be seen as a result of the creation of a “repertoire of repression” by the police themselves.

This analysis of the contentious relationship between the stonemasons and the police is the strongest part of Harison’s book. In chapters 4–6, Harison examines this evolving contentious relationship during the July Monarchy (1830–1848), following the 1848 Revolution, and in the aftermath of the Paris Commune of 1871. Harison begins his analysis of police surveillance by examining police tactics and images of the masons contained...

pdf

Share