This post is based on a lecture given in 2011 by Paul Smith, a specialist in industrial archaeology with the Direction générale des patrimoines (see references blow).
Paul Smith explains how the organisation of the tobacco trade into a royal monopoly dictated the structure of the tobacco processing industry and its associated buildings:
Unusually for this period, the workforce employed by the Tobacco Farm was concentrated in large-scale factories, an organisational preference dictated both by operational convenience and by the need for tight security. The state tobacco monopoly of the 19th century was also to be characterised by large factories, whereas small scale operations were the rule for the period of deregulation during the Revolution.
The manufactures, which were built and maintained directly by the Crown, functioned as symbols of royal authority. Situated in major ports or urban centres, they represented prestigious architectural projects. Their innovative design anticipated the model factories of Eugène Rolland in the nineteenth century.
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Manufacture de tabac Architectes: Jacques Martinet et Jacques V. Gabriel, Le Havre 1728. |
Paul Smith begins his discussion with this view of the interior of one of the earliest of the factories, the
manufacture du tabac in Le Havre. The illustration is is a small vignette from an engraving of 1728 in the Bibliothèque Nationale. At the tables to the right tobacco leaves are being "spun" or twisted into ropes or
"rôlles" - the basic form in which tobacco was sold in the Ancien Régime.
Already, at this early date, the enduring characteristics of the tobacco industry are apparent - firstly, the large scale concentration of workers and, secondly, the use of child labour: children can be seen under the tables passing up the leaves of tobacco to the ouvriers fileurs.