The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700-1775 9780822381983

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The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Q1testion

17oo -I775

The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Qyestion 1700 - 1775 Steven Laurence Kaplan Duke University Press Durham and London

© I996 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 00 Designed by Cherie H. Westmoreland and typeset in Caslon by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

This book has been published with the aid ofa grantfrom the Hull Memorial Publication Fund ofCornell University.

For Karen and David Blumenthal

Contents

List of Illustrations ix List ofTables xiii Acknowledgments :xv Introduction I

I Bread: Demand and Supply

21

Breadways 23 Bread Making 61 3. Baker Shops and Bread Markets 81 4. The Forain World 116 5. Bread on Credit 137 I.

2.

II Bakers: Social Structure and Life Cycle 153 6. The Guild 155 7. From Apprentice to Journeyman 192 8. At Work 227 9. The Journeyman's World outside the Shop 250 10. Establishment 271 II. Marriage Strategies and Family Life 302 12. Fortune 337 13· Bakers as Debtors 377 14. Failure 400 IS· Reputation 423 III Police ofBread and Bakers 437 16. Primer to Policing: Figuring Supply and Consumption 439 17. The Police of Bakers 458 18. Setting the Price of Bread 493 19. Policing the Price of Bread, 1725-1780 521

Conclusion 567 Appendixes 581 Notes 591 Bibliography 717 Index 745

Vll1

Contents

Illustrations

Plates Bakeroom with tools, nineteenth century 62 Kneading by hand 71 Kneading in an eighteenth-century bakeroom 72 Weighing and forming loaves, mid-twentieth century 74 Preparing the oven, mid-twentieth century 75 Fifteenth-century bakery 86 Woman buying part of a loafin a time of scarcity, eighteenth century 86 A late-eighteenth or early-nineteenth century bakery with the baker's wife weighing bread (a practice that suggests perhaps a later dating), while journeymen tend to the oven and the fashioning ofloaves in the adjacent bakeroom 92 Bread market at the Qyai des Augustins, circa 1670 95 Statue of the bread porteuse, destroyed by the Nazis (in the square of the SaintJacques Tower) 107 Eighteenth-century bakeshop; credit offered at shop on register or at home on faille 141 Saint Honore, patron of the bakers, nineteenth-century depiction 168 Baker boy making home deliveries with failles in hand to record sales on credit, circa 1737 202 Parade ofjourneyman bakers, 1905 220 A sixteenth-century bakeroom with a servant collecting fresh loaves in the background next to a journeyman who is kneading dough, while a powerfully built baker, half-naked and sweating profusely, removes breads from the oven 229 (Above) Shaping, weighing, and placing loaves in oven, eighteenth century 232 (Below) Removing and cooling loaves, eighteenth century 232

The Baker's Outfit, a caricature portraying numerous bread-making operations, dominated by the task of bolting flour, a product that the baker might obtain in rough form from the water mill in the background 339 Popular retribution for a baker's betrayal: baker Frans:ois is summarily executed for hoarding fancy loaves reserved for wealthy customers-bread aristocrats-in {)ctoberI789 534 The women of Paris returning triumphantly from their expedition to Versailles on 6 {)ctober 1789, with their royal trophy, the "baker," Louis XVI, whose link to subsistence is figured by the carts full of sacks of flour that precede and follow him 578

Figures 11.1

Distribution of Baker Marriage Contributions: Husbands and Wives Combined 308

11.2

Percentage Distribution of Baker Marriage Contributions: Husbands and Wives 308

11.3

Percentage Distribution of Baker Wives' Marriage Contributions 310

11.4

Percentage Distribution of Baker Husbands' Marriage Contributions 311

11.5

Percentage Distribution of Components of Baker Marriage Contributions 318

11.6

Percentage Distribution of Components of Baker Marriage Contributions: Cash 318

11.7

Percentage Distribution of Components of Baker Marriage Contributions: Tools & Equipment and Grain & Flour Stock 319

11.8

Percentage Distribution of Components of Baker Marriage Contributions: Household and Personal Effects 319

12.1

Percentage Distribution of Baker Total Assets and Liabilities 343

12.2

Mean Baker Fortunes, 1711-92 344

12.3

Percentage Distribution ofTotal Assets ofMaster and Faubourg Bakers 345

12.4 Percentage Distribution of Net Worth ofMaster and Faubourg Bakers 345 12.5

Rents Paid by Bakers (Shops with Apartment) 347

12.6 Percentage Distribution ofTotal Assets of Bakers 348

x

12.7

Percentage Distribution ofAssets ofMaster, Faubourg, and Merchant Bakers 349

12.8

Percentage Distribution of Baker Household Goods and Clothing 352

List ofIllustrations

12.9

Baker Investment in Shop Fittings and Tools 354

12.10 Percentage Distribution of Baker Hard and Paper Assets 359 12.11 Percentage Distribution ofTotal Liabilities ofMaster and Faubourg Bakers 364 12.12 Percentage Distribution of Baker Total Liabilities and Commercial Liabilities (Grain, Flour, and Mill Fees) 366 12.13 Baker Commercial Liabilities: Grain, Flour, and Mill Fees 366 14.1

Baker Failures: Mean Total Assets, Liabilities, and Claimed Losses, 1740 -9 2 4°4

14.2

Percentage Distribution ofAssets, Liabilities, and Claimed Losses of Bakers Who Failed 407

14.3

Distribution of Net Worth of Bakers Who Failed 409

List ofIllustrations

xi

Tables

4.1

Market Bakers in Paris, 1700-59 120

4.2

Bakers at the Bread Markets, 1725-33 121

4.3

Bread-Market Supply, 1727 123

4.4

Bread-Market Supply, 1733 124

4.5

Second-Class Forain Supply, 1725-33 125

11.1

Marriage Patterns ofMaster Bakers 304

11.2

Marriage Patterns of Bakers 304

11.3

Evaluation ofMarriage Contributions, 1711-90 310

12.1

Baker Net Worth 343

12.2 Baker Fortunes 344 12.3

Marriage Contributions in Marriage Contracts and Inventories 363

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to scores of individuals and institutions for their intellectual, moral, and material assistance in this project, which has stretched out over many years. Two mentors from my Princeton days, Charles C. Gillispie and David Bien, pressed me at the outset to clarify my thinking and make choices, and not to worry overly about how to label what I was doing. Jeffry Kaplow, whose departure from the ranks ofeighteenth-century historians impoverished us all, shared with me his impressive knowledge ofand feel for Parisian life. On the French side, I got off the ground with help from one of France's most distinguished and tentacular old boys' networks, the normaliens of the rue d'Ulm. Francis Leaud, a specialist in English literature from Poitiers, and Henri Peyre, a Renaissance man from Yale, each wrote in my behalf to Jean Meuvret, their erstwhile school librarian, who had become one of Europe's most insightful economic historians and the leading specialist on France's subsistence question. Meuvret welcomed me into his seminar, allowed me to accompany him on the marathon weekly promenade from the Sorbonne to the Luxembourg station, and helped me to articulate my problematique and design my research strategy. Maurice Laugaa, a normalien of more recent vintage, put me in touch with schoolmate Frans:ois Billacois, a superb historian of enormous generosity who did much to help me get started. Through Billacois I became connected with the Nanterre clan, two ofwhose members became dear friends. Pierre Goubert looked after me, fed me, criticized me, and enriched me in countless ways. The late Erica-Marie Benabou shared with me her insights and discoveries, her hospitality, and her affection: I miss her very much. Virtually all the players on my implausible basketball team composed of graduates of the Ecole nationale des chartes, the institution that trained the curators for France's great libraries and archives, proved to be far more precious off the hardwood than on it, with the possible exception ofJean Derens, an excellent rebounder and a wonderful friend. Derens unlocked myriad doors, gave me new ideas for sources, and challenged me to rethink my premises. Fatally tentative under the hoop, Fr~ns:ois Avril was absolutely sure of himself in the

manuscript room of the Bibliotheque nationale, where he helped me decode texts, unearth muddled references, and surpass my daily allotment of documents. A hustling player frustrated by bad hands, Michel Melot found striking images for me in the Cabinet des estampes. (Many years later, the wife of another player, Fran