Abstract
The author addresses here the history of Michelin (with its inventions, its development and its paternalistic system) and its impact on the city of Clermont-Ferrand in order to understand the context in which the company was set up and developed economically, demographically, spatially and culturally, generating an industrial myth supporting a specific company spirit. In other words, Corine Vedrine introduces the history that inspired the mythical narratives presented in the next chapter. The whole exercise soon faces the delicate question of entanglement of history, memory and myth. They feed each other and the narrative of one and the same story will shape at times an historic episode, at other times a memory and sometimes a mythical story.
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Notes
- 1.
I carried out my research between 1999 and 2006. Any subsequent publications have therefore not been included in my analysis.
- 2.
Data from 31 December 2014.
- 3.
Michelin entrusted Peugeot with the management of the Paris company at the quai de Javel in 1976. It still holds 10% of the shares in the Peugeot-Citroën group and remains Citroën’s sole supplier and Peugeot’s main supplier.
- 4.
This type of corporation is a variation of a public limited company which allows sleeping partners in addition to general partners. Sleeping partners are non-active partners and have no responsibility. Since 1951, the Michelin holding company, a listed company, has been the partnership limited by shares called “Compagnie générale des Établissements Michelin”.
- 5.
Édouard had already been appointed joint managing director in 1991. I will come back to Édouard Michelin’s career.
- 6.
Études de réforme sociale, les formes nouvelles du patronage , Paris, 1891, quoted by Frey (1995).
- 7.
- 8.
These beavers acquired land at a low price and built their house in a joint effort. The company drew up the plans and provided the required building materials in return for 2500 hours worked (four hours in the evening and eight hours on a Sunday).
- 9.
The ASM became the Montferrand Sports Association [Association sportive Montferrandaise] in 1922.
- 10.
This was the first swimming pool in Clermont-Ferrand. As a result, the first people in Clermont-Ferrand to have learnt to swim were Michelin members or their children.
- 11.
Named after the building’s former religious use.
- 12.
“Michelin ou la féodalité industrielle”, Europe, no. 111, 15 March 1932.
- 13.
For a more detailed history of Clermont-Ferrand and Michelin, see Védrine (2015).
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Védrine, C. (2019). A Myth Built on the Manipulation of Local History and Memory. In: The Spirit of Capitalism According to the Michelin Company. Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96610-6_2
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