Abstract
In May 1807, as Napoleon Bonaparte made preparations for the decisive Battle of Friedland against the Russians and the Fourth Coalition, the Emperor ordered his envoy in Hamburg to obtain desperately needed cloth and leather from England to supply the Imperial army with uniform coats, vests, caps, and shoes.1 Napoleon’s violation of his own continental blockade of Britain, instituted only 6 months earlier (November 1806), acknowledged both the strategic importance of textiles and leather and the severe shortage of these materials that afflicted the French Empire at the dawn of the nineteenth century.
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Notes
Eli F. Heckscher, The Continental System: An Economic Interpretation (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964), p. 166.
Giorgio Riello, “Nature, Production and Regulation in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France,” Historical Research 81, no. 211 (2008), p. 76.
AD Gironde, C 1767, État du droit et ce que observant les maîtres tanneurs de la ville de Bordeaux, undated; René Passet, L’industrie dans la généralité de Bordeaux sous l’intendant Tourny: Contribution à l’étude de la décadence du système corporatif au milieu du XVIII siècle (Bordeaux: Bière, 1954).
H. Depors, Recherches sur l’état de l’industrie des cuirs en France pendant le XVIIIe siècle et de le début du XIXe siècle (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1932), pp. 23–24. Throughout the early-modern period the best cattle in France was sent to Paris where meat consumption and price were higher.
Marie-Claude Segurel, “Les bouchers bordelaise dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle.” (TER, Université de Bordeaux, 1971), p. 26.
On the major grain shortages in Guienne during the eighteenth century see: Joseph Benzacar, “La disette à Bordeaux (1747–1748),” Revue philomatique de Bordeaux et du sud-ouest (November 1904), pp. 481–495; P. Caraman, “La disette des grains et les émeutes populares en 1773 dans la généralité de Bordeaux,” Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde 3 (1910), pp. 295–319;
E. Bougouin, “Une disette en Guyenne à la fin de l’ancien régime (1777–1778),” Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde 11 (1918), pp. 143–161;
Marcel Marion, “Une famine en Guyenne (1747–1748),” Revue historique 45 (1902) pp. 97–139, 209–235, 335–391, 451–478.
For grain and bread prices in Bordeaux during the eighteenth century see: Joseph Benzacar, Le pain à Bordeaux (Bordeaux: Imprimerie G. Gounouilhou, 1905).
Albert Despujol, “La boucherie à Bordeaux au XVIIIe siècle” (Thèse de doctorat, Université de Bordeaux, 1906), p. 85.
Brigitte Baruch, “La grande épizootie de 1774–1778 dans les pays du sud de la Garonne” (TER, Université de Bordeaux III, 1982), pp. 66–71, 85–86.
E. Bourgouin, Une disette en Guyenne à la fin de l’Ancien Régime, 1772–1778 (Bordeaux: Gounouilhou, 1920), pp. 156–158.
François-de-Paul Latapie, “Notice de la généralité de Bordeaux: ouvrage envoyé au conseil du commerce en 1785,” Archives historiques du département de la Gironde 34 (1913), p. 273.
The naval war and continental blockade of 1806–1811, in particular, stifled trade with the West Indian islands and South America, preventing the importation of raw hides from these traditional suppliers (Paul Butel, “Crise et mutation de l’activité économique à Bordeaux sous le Consulat et l’Empire,” Revue d’histoire modern et contemporaine 17 (1970), pp. 541–546).
O. Granat, La politique économique des intendants de Guyenne au XVIIIe siècle (Agen: Imprimerie Moderne, 1907), p. 2.
Julia de Fontenelle and F. Malepeyre, The Ar of Tanning, Currying and Leather Dressing, edited and translated by Campbell Morfit (Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1852), p. 2.
R. Thomson, “The Nineteenth Century Revolution in Leather Industries,” in S. Thomas, L. A. Clarkson and R. Thomson, eds., Leather Manufacturing through the Ages, Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh East Midlands Industrial Archaeology Conference, October 1983, pp. 24–33.
Peter C. Welsh, Tanning in the United States to 1850: A Brief History (Washington: Museum of History and Technology—Smithsonian Institution, 1964), p. 3.
See: James C. Riley, The Eighteenth-Century Campaign to Avoid Disease (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987).
AM Bordeaux, Inventaire sommaire des registres de la Jurade (1520–1783) (Bordeaux: Dast le Vacher de Boisville, A. Ducaunnès-Duval, X. Védère, 1896–1947), 6, pp. 250–251.
Pierre Deyon and Philippe Guignet, “The Royal Manufactures and Economic and Technological Progress in France before the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 9 (1980), pp. 618–619, 629.
Jeff Horn, “Marx Was Right!: The Guilds and Technological Change,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 33 (2005), p. 232;
William Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 72–77.
Horn, “Marx Was Right!” pp. 228–229; Joel Mokyr, “The Political Economy of Technological Change: Resistance and Innovation in Economic History,” in Maxine Berg and Kristine Bruland, eds., Technological Revolutions in Europe: Historical Perspectives (Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar, 1988), pp. 39–64, 55–57.
David MacBride, “Instructions to Tanners,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 61 (1778), p. 120.
A portion of the following material originally appeared in Daniel Heimmermann, “The Old Regime Fiscal System and the Decline of the French Tanning Industry, 1759–1791,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 26 (1999), pp. 173–183.
Unlike its attempt to control the leather industry, the French government proved to be more successful in regulating the grain market. See: Judith A. Miller, Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern France, 1700–1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
François-de-Paul Latapie, “Notice de la généralité de Bordeaux. Ouvrage envoyé au conseil du commerce en 1785,” Archives historiques du département de la Gironde 34 (1903), p. 273.
Alan Forrest, The Revolution in Provincial France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 291.
Pierre Bécamps, “L’Agence commerciale de Bordeaux—les relations avec des neutres au temps de la Révolution,” Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde 4 (1955), p. 305.
Heckscher, The Continental System, p. 166; Geoffrey Ellis, Napoleon’s Continental Blockade: The Case of Alsace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). Ellis’ study focuses on the positive and developmental effects of the European blockade on local industrial development.
Paul Butel, “Crise et mutation de l’activité économique à Bordeaux sous le Consulat et l’Empire,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 17 (1970), pp. 540–544;
Paul Butel, “Revolution and the Urban Economy: Maritime Cities and the Continental Cities,” in Alan Forrest and P. Jones, eds., Reshaping France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), p. 39;
Paul Butel, “Succès et déclin du commerce colonial français de la Révolution à la Restauration,” Revue économique 40, no. 6 (1989), pp. 1080–1084;
François Crouzet, “Wars, Blockade and Economic Change in Europe, 1792–1815,” Journal of Economic History 24 (1964), p. 573.
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Heimmermann, D. (2014). Nature, Work, Regulation, and the Bordeaux Leather-Manufacturing Economy. In: Work, Regulation, and Identity in Provincial France. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438591_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438591_2
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