Press, Revolution, and Social Identities in France, 1830-1835 (review)

Jeremy Popkin, who gave us a superb study of journalism during the late eighteenth century and the French Revolution, now presents us with a thorough examination of newspapers and publishers in early July Monarchy Lyon. Emphasis on Paris—so obvious in a highly centralized country like France—has become commonplace, although in recent decades the provinces have been "visited" with greater frequency in a variety of provocative studies of other French municipalities. For example, Carol Harrison recently published a work in gender history that focuses on eastern cities like Besançon and Mulhouse in the nineteenth century. Here Popkin continues his focus on journalism by analyzing the active newspaper press and its publishers in Lyon from the fall of Charles X in 1830 through the promulgation of stiff censorship laws in 1835. This "springtime" for Lyon also witnessed two insurrections by the silkworkers, whose economic and demographic power in France's second city was overwhelming.

In the first place, we must realize the centrality of newspapers in the shaping of public opinion in nineteenth-century France. Their proliferation in Lyon was not unusual; it was similar to other parts of western Europe as well as the United States at that time. Each divergent point of view felt a need to express itself in print. Using Habermas's identification of the public sphere, Popkin proceeds to apply it to a growing class cleavage in Lyon between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Indeed, these journalistic encounters early in the 1830s seem to prophesy the Revolution of 1848. Their call for universal manhood suffrage and other radical social and political reforms foreshadows the demands of the following decade. Despite the restrictions on freedom of the press, the Lyon publishers were able to circumvent them often by propagandizing their political agenda through an imaginative variety of venues. The banquet, so prominent in Paris more than a decade later, was a common means of protest and political expression, while public trials of publishers also provided significant opportunities to express defiance or at least opposition to increasing restrictions of the Orléanist regime and its encroachments on press liberties. "The most valuable opportunity press trials offered to prosecuted newspapers was a unique chance to dress themselves up as martyrs" (184). In fact, Popkin considers this latter activity of the Lyonnais more successful than anywhere else in France.

A number of times, the author diverges into a discussion of the importance of newspapers in the culture of Lyon. He distinguishes often the entrepreneurial class from the workers and then defines the social and political philosophy each supported in their publications. He points out significantly that newspaper reading was a social activity—not pursued at home but in the cafés. It was primarily the domain of the male population, although the women of Lyon had for a brief time their own Papillon. He surmises that even the size of the newspaper precluded its reading in the home and necessitated more space than the pro-letariat enjoyed in their dwellings. Even a religious dimension was apparent, for Catholics appeared to be excluded from this aspect of the public sphere—quite similar to the minimalized position of women. This public nature of newspaper reading seems very similar to that of the revolutionary era. Indeed, reading still demanded, as it did for centuries, a public to hear, to share, and to participate, since the private sphere of personal reading was still quite young.

The press in Lyon is also important because of the two silkworker insurrections that took place there in 1831 and 1834. These in many ways helped to shape social consciousness and, of course, created animosity. But at this time a spirit of helplessness prevailed: "[T]he press had been a powerful indicator of the fact that, even as violence imposed its mark...