Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France: Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805 - Hardcover

Rosenband, Leonard N.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801863929 ISBN 13: 9780801863929

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Eight years before the French Revolution, the paper mill at Vidalon-le-Haut was the setting for a bitter strike and successful lockout. This labor dispute, resulting from conflicts between master papermakers and skilled journeymen, ultimately benefitted the mill's owners and administrators―the Montgolfier family. They converted the 1781 lockout into an opportunity to train a new kind of worker, a malleable employee, and to fashion a new sort of workplace, a theater of technological experiment.

Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France: Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805, gives us history from the workshop up, offering the most comprehensive exploration available of the historical experience of papermaking. Leonard N. Rosenband explains how paper was made, depicting the tools, techniques, raw materials, and seasonable flows of the craft, and explores the many conflicts and compromises between masters and men. Rosenband provides a compelling account of how technological change affected the papermaking industry, transforming an elaborate, established system of production.

The Montgolfier archives are a rich source of information, providing records of daily output and procedures, including complex rules ranging from the precise hours of meals and prayer to matters of propriety and personal sanitation. They also provide insight into the attitudes of the Montgolfier family and their workers―what they made of their trade, their labor, and one another. This case study of the Montgolfier mill, adding details about technological innovation and shopfloor relations during a time of social unrest, enriches the current debate about the nature and impact of capitalism in France during the years leading up to the French Revolution.

About this title

About the Author

Leonard N. Rosenband is a professor of history at Utah State University. He coedited, with Thomas M. Safley, The Workplace before the Factory: Artisans and Proletarians, 1500-1800.

Review

"A richly textured account... The benefit to Rosenband's approach is its nuance and richness of detail that allows readers to enter into the world of papermaking and to follow the peculiar logic of the culture and institutional arrangements of this industry. Those who want to experience one segment of an evolving artisanal world of work from the ground up will find much to savor."

(Gail Bossenga Journal of Interdisciplinary History)

"While Leonard N. Rosenband's monograph is primarily a study of one mill and its enterprising owners, it can serve as an English-language introduction to the whole subject of artisanal papermaking."

(David Longfellow American Historical Review)

"Elegantly written and well researched."

(Michael Huberman EH.Net)

"A significant contribution to an almost unknown economic sector, papermaking... As interesting for the historian of Modern France before the Revolution as it is for the historian of the nineteenth-century economy. Both will find in Rosenband's work reliable information, deep knowledge and reflection."

(Marc de Ferričre Le Vayer Business History)

"Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France provides a fresh model for historians... This book poses a fundamental challange to many orthodox methods and conventional approaches in economic history and the history of technology. It raises an many questions as it answers... With any luck, it will motivate others to tend this rich and, until now, relatively unculitvated ground."

(Andre Wakefield Technology and Culture)

"Many will profit from Rosenband's long study and clear narrative."

(James E. May Eighteenth Century: Current Bibliography)

"Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France is a crisp and extremely well-written exploration of the attempts by the Montgolfier family to restructure their paper mills. Its originality lies in its combination of technological history and the investigation of a specific problem in the workplace―the implementation of a new system of recruitment, training, and rewards."

(Judith A. Miller, Emory University)

Edition details

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0801863929
• ISBN 13: 9780801863929
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232