(Abbé Bertholon, Du commerce des manufactures distinctives de la ville de Lyon, 1787)
Immensely populated, Lyon has always been split between a great number of privileged rich and oppressors, and a much greater number of poor, crushed beneath the weight of charges, demeaned by humiliation.
(Joseph Chalier, Declaration to the National Assembly, 1792).
Class struggle in Lyon
Ancien Régime Lyon is seen with some justification as providing a precocious example of the collision of class interests characteristic of industrial society. 19th-century Lyon was notorious for the radicalism of its factory-based weavers, the "canuts", and it is abundantly that, despite the tradition artisan context, the canuts had their forerunners in the 18th century. Certainly by 1789 the bourgeoisie of Lyon already had cause to fear the insurrectionary potential of aggrieved and desperate silk workers.
In the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, the status of the independent master weavers of Lyon had suffered progressive erosion as the industry came to be dominated by wealthy entrepreneurs who secured commissions in bulk, signed contracts with selected workshops and sold finished fabric on a wholesale basis. Raw silk would be purchased from dealers in Italy or sometimes from the French provinces of the Vivarais and Bas-Languedoc. The maîtres fabricants found it increasingly prohibitive to work on their own account and came de facto to be regarded as a labour force to be paid in accordance with market prices. Whilst the number of independent weavers decreased sharply during the 18th century, the number of subcontracted workers, still called masters, rose to over seven thousand.
Arms of the Communauté Godart, J., L'ouvrier en soie, Lyon-Paris, 1899 |
The protest of 1744
The first major collision took place in 1744. In 1737, thanks to the sympathetic policies of Philibert Orry as controller general of finance, the weavers had secured some revisions in their favour, but in 1744 a new set of guild regulations were published which annulled these concessions and once more reinforced the power of the merchant members. Behind this move were government reforms led by the new royal inspector of silk manufactures, Jacques Vaucanson, who had ambitions to rationalise the entire French silk trade under the control of Lyon merchants running giant silk throwing mills, designed on modern factory lines. Publication provoked a popular uprising, from 3rd to 6th August 1744. Weavers ceased work and pillaged the homes of several merchants. The prisons were thrown open, notables fled from the city and in the course of the week perhaps 15,000 rebels took to the streets. Vaucanson was forced to flee to Paris disguised as a capuchin and the Prévôt des Marchants was temporarily obliged to reinstate the règlement of 1737.
Royal repression swiftly followed, in the course of which one weaver was hanged for sedition and four more sentenced to the galleys. In February 1745 the arrêt of 1744 was finally imposed, and, apart from Turgot's shortlived suppression of the Grande Fabrique in 1776, was not to be substantially modified until the Revolution. By setting an elevated fee for admission to mastership the new rules laid down with clarity the barrier between maîtres marchands and "workers" (artisans and compagnons); as a declaration of 1753 put it, "the state of merchant and that of worker ("l'ouvrier") must be distinguished from one another".
The atelier: another late 19th-century image from the Musée Gadagne |
The strike of 1786
The rising of 1786, just a few years before the Revolution, cut across several industries. Unlike the protest of 1744 it was the product of poverty and desperation. In August 1786 after several months of unrest, artisans in a number of trades - hatters, pastry-cooks and carpenters as well as silk workers - threatened by an increase in wine prices, stopped work. Agitation rapidly centred on the silk workers and their demand for a doubling of the prix de façon from 2 to 4 sous per aune of fabric (hence it became "l’émeute des deux sous"). The weaver's strike was powerful enough to persuade the local authorities to endorse a new tarif at the end of August but in the end repression was swift and merciless. Three strikers were hanged and not only was the new tarif quoshed but the piecework scales abolished. leaving the weavers entirely without protection. Recourse to collective action once again led only to reinforcement of the merchants' position, with the inherently unequal system of bargaining piecework rates officially incorporated into royal legislation for the first time.
The disturbances of 1786 were followed by alarming decline in the fortunes of an already ailing industry. Finished cloth stockpiled in merchant warehouses and the harsh winter of 1786-87 destroyed most of Italy's mulberry plantations. By Spring 1788 the municipality estimated the number of unemployed at twenty-two thousand. Perhaps half the city's looms idle and many of the rest were devoted to poorly paid silk "plaincloth". On the eve of Revolution, Lyon was already an economy in crisis, with a desperate and volatile workforce ready for change.
David L. Longfellow, "Silk weavers and the social struggle in Lyon during the French Revolution, 1789-94", French Historical Studies, vol.12(1) 1981 p.1-40. [on JStor]
Bill Edmonds, "The rise and fall of popular democracy in Lyon, 1789-1795" (pdf)
Bill Edmonds, "The rise and fall of popular democracy in Lyon, 1789-1795" (pdf)
Jean-Jacques Boucher, Arts et techniques de la soie 1996 [Extracts on Google Books]
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