Abstract
The problem of strife within the trade communities reinforced the importance of apprenticeship. Much more than an introduction to the craft, apprenticeship “was a moral and political socialization” and was “at the heart of the corporate conception of work and hierarchy.”1 Apprenticeship not only served to instill in aspiring masters a reverence for the corporate principles of paternalism, hierarchy, and discipline but also functioned to confirm identity within the guild system by establishing well-defined borders between guild masters and their workers.2 Although the sons and sons-in-law of guild members normally were not required to undertake an apprenticeship, for aspirants not related to masters a contracted period of training under the watchful eye of a master craftsman was a prerequisite for entrance into the trade corporations.3 The dramatic urban expansion of eighteenth-century Bordeaux, however, brought into the city’s labor market many immigrants who already were more or less proficient in one of the trades. As a result, Bordeaux masters needed to train few young men, and the number of registered apprentices remained modest. In his study of the Bordeaux trades, Gallinato found evidence of only 2,538 apprentices engaged in the 93 professions during the period 1743–1790.4 Other records yield similarly low figures for apprentices. The inquest of 1762, ordered by the Controller General Bertin into the communities of arts and trades, accounted for only 152 apprentices working among the more than 2,500 merchants and artisans of the city.
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Notes
E. Fauché, “L’apprentissage principalement à Bordeaux du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, suivi d’un appendices ur l’apprentissage des enfants assistés” (Thèse de doctorat, Université de Bordeaux, 1913), p. 36.
Poussou, Bordeaux et le sud-ouest, p. 100; Butel et Poussou, La vie quotidienne, p. 145. In his study of the shoemakers of Brest in the eighteenth century, E. Vo Duc Hanh attributed the absence of apprenticeship contracts to the fact that these agreements between masters and apprentices were made orally (E. Vo Duc Hanh, “La corporation des cordonniers de Brest au XVIIIe siècle,” Bulletin de la société archéologique de Finistère, 102 (1971), p. 61).
E. Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières en France avant 1789 (Paris, 1900–1901; reprint, Paris: Kraus, 1969), p. 789;
Étienne Martin Saint-Léon, Histoire des corps et métiers de leurs origenes jusqu’à leur suppression en 1791, 2 ed. (Paris: Librarie Félix Alcan, 1922), p. 87. In his work on French labor, Levasseur found that the average age of new apprentices was between 10 and 11 years, and Martin Saint-Léon maintained that French apprentices generally were about 12 year old at the time of the start of their training. The average age of apprentices in the leather trades, meanwhile, was 17.5 years, which was similar to the regional average. The relative lateness of Bordeaux apprenticeships partly can be attributed to the large minority of immigrant apprentices (36 percent) who tended to be older (19 years old on average) than local boys (Nadia Mathelin, “L’apprentissage à La Rochelle dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, 1750–1789” (TER, Université de Bordeaux III, 1986), p. 155); Anne-Marie Cocula, “Contracts d’apprentissage à Langon et autour de Langon dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle,” Fédération historique du sud-ouest: Actes du XVIIe congrès d’études régionales tenu à Langon les 2 et 3 mai 1970 (1970), p. 115; Gallinato, Les corporations à Bordeaux, pp. 70–71.
Jean Dubois, “Les apprentis bordelais au XVIIe siècle,” Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde 2, (1909), p. 60; AM Bordeaux, Fonds Baurein, “Ordonnonace qui défende à tous apprentis de jeter des boules de neige,” September 21, 1754; Ibid., January 11, 1755.
Jean Cavignac, “Le compagnonnage dans les luttes ouvrières au XVIIIe siècle. L’exemple de Bordeaux,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 126, (1968), pp. 377–411.
Ibid., p. 61; François Olivier-Martin, L’organisation corporative de la France d’ancien régime (Paris: Sireu, 1938);
Émile Coornaert, Les compagnonnages en France du moyen âge à nos jours (Paris: Éditions ouvrières, 1966).
Michael Sonenscher, “Journeymen Migrations and Workshop Organization in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Steven L. Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp, eds., Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 77; Sonenscher, Work and Wages, p. 284.
See: Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1755–1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).
Arlette Farge, “Les Artisans malades de leur travail,” Annales. Economies, sociétés civilizations 32, no. 5 (1997), p. 994.
John Rule, The Experience of Labour in Eighteenth-Century English Industry (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), pp. 82–83; Farr, Artisans in Europe, p. 134.
It has estimated that between the 1720s and 1789 the average wage-rates rose 24 percent whereas the average wholesale price of grain rose by between 66 and 71 percent, and in general French wage-earners suffered from the effects of spiraling inflation (E. Labrousse, Esquisse du mouvement des prix et de revenues en France au XVIII siècle, 2 vols (Paris: Libraire Dalloz, 1933), 1, pp. 44–95).
Danielle Petrissans, “Recherches sur les métiers à Bordeaux, 1700–1789: taverniers, cabaretiers, cafetiers, restaurateurs, hôteliers, pâtissiers-rôtisseurs, traiteurs” (DES, Université de Bordeaux, 1968), p. 111.
Farr, Artisans in Europe, pp. 191–192; Gervase Rosser, “Crafts, Guilds and Negotiating of Work in the Medieval Town,” Past and Present 154, (1997), p. 4.
Sonenscher, Work and Wages, p. 249. Journeymen in the 1730s’ printing shop of Jacques Vincent on Saint-Séverin in Paris obliquely but violently expressed resentment of their poor treatment when they ritually tried and executed their employer’s beloved cats who acted as surrogates of the authority of the resented master and his wife (See: Robert Darnton, “Worker’s Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the rue Saint-Séverin,” in Robert Darnton, ed., The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Vintage Classics, 1984), pp. 75–104).
Sonenscher, Work and Wages, p. 286; Steven L. Kaplan, “La lutte pour le contrôle du marché du travail à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 36, (1989), pp. 361–412;
Kaplan, “Réflexions sur la police du monde du travail, 1700–1815,” Revue historique 261, (1979), pp. 26–72.
Michael Sonenscher, “Journeymen, the Courts and the French Trades, 1781–1791,” Past and Present 114, (1987), pp. 77–109.
Daniel Roche, ed., Journal de ma vie: Jacques-Louis Ménétra, compagnon vitrier aux xviii siècle (Paris: Montalba, 1983).
David Garrioch and Michael Sonenscher, “Compagnonnages, Confraternities, and Associations of Journeymen in Eighteenth Century Paris,” European History Quarterly 16, (1986), p. 26; Truant, “Independent and Insolent,” p. 42.
The Bordeaux marriage custom was promulgated on June 23, 1521, and was in practice up to the French Revolution, see: Robert Wheaton, “Les classes sociales au xviii siècle à Bordeuax d’après les contrats de mariage,” trans. By M. van Zaan, Revue historique 241, (1969), pp. 99–114.
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© 2014 Daniel Heimmermann
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Heimmermann, D. (2014). Apprentices and Journeymen. In: Work, Regulation, and Identity in Provincial France. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438591_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438591_5
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