Enlightening the 'misguided brothers of the countryside': Republican fraternalism in the Paris Commune of 1871

French History

Volumn 11, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 411-437

  Johnson, Martin P ^a  

^a NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 66349090877     PISSN: 02691191     EISSN: 14774542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fh/11.4.411     Document Type: Review

References (111)

1. From a proposal for aid from the Communal Council: Archives] H[istoriques du Ministère de la] G[uerre] Ly 22.
2. Poster by the Enfants de Haute-Marne: Les murailles politiques françaises (3 vols., 1873-4), iii. 337.
3. The Fédération républicaine du Rhône wrote of 'nos pères': Le cri du peuple, 22 May 1871.
4. The term 'family romance' is borrowed from Lynn Hunt, who defined it as 'the collective, unconscious, images of the familial order that underlie revolutionary politics': Hunt, The family romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley, Calif., 1992), p.xiii.
5. Communards, however, used family images quite consciously. Also M. Gutwirth, The twilight of the goddesses: women and representation in the French Revolutionary era (New Brunswick, N.J., 1992);
6. Jones, 'A fine "romance" with no sisters', Fr Hist Stud, 19 (1995), 277-89;
7. J. Berthke Elshtain (ed.), The family in political thought (Amherst, 1982);
8. idem, 'The family, democratic politics and the question of authority', Children, parents and politics, ed. G. Scarre (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 55-71.
9. E. Schulkind, 'Socialist women during the 1871 Paris Commune', Past and P, 106 (1985), 56, suggests the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés was the largest group in Paris, but its meetings were smaller and less frequent, even if it organized many hundreds in its co-operative workshops. Despite the size and scope of the department committee movement, most histories of the Commune pass over it in silence, and when it is mentioned the citations are often inaccurate. In a work of 621 pages, William Serman found no place for the Alliance in his section on Parisian relations with province: La Commune de Paris, 1871 (1986), pp. 424ff.
10. Jean Maitron's monumental collection of worker biographies confuses the Alliance with another group and does not mention the role of one of its key leaders, Jean Larocque: Maitron, Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français. Deuxième partie: 1864-71 (6 vols., 1967-71), v. 49, vi. 29 (cited as DBMOF).
11. Georges Bourgin noted that department groups are 'little known', La Commune (1953), p. 158
12. an assertion repeated by Louis Greenberg, Sisters of liberty: Marseilles, Lyon, Paris, and the reaction to a centralized state, 1868-1871 (Cambridge, 1971), p. 158.
13. Maurice Choury devoted a paragraph to the Alliance in 'Les liaisons de la Commune de Paris avec la province d'après les Archives de la Préfecture de Police', Pensée, 132 (1967), 92.
14. Ronald Aminzade points out that historians have been 'remarkably blind' to fraternalism, 'a central feature of the mid-nineteenth-century French Republican part': Ballots and barricades: class formation and republican politics in France, 1830-1871 (Princeton, N.J., 1993), p. 32.
15. Fraternalism was 'the most characteristic form of radical republican movements' in nineteenth-century Europe according to M. A. Clawson, 'Early modern fraternalism and the patriarchal family', Feminist St, 6 (1980), 387.
16. Also idem, Constructing brotherhood: class, gender, and fraternalism (Princeton, N.J., 1989).
17. Solidarism was one of the heirs of Revolutionary fraternity: D. Marcel, Fraternité et Révolution française, 1789-1799 (1987);
18. S. Elwitt, The Third Republic defended: bourgeois reform in France, 1880-1914 (Baton Rouge, La, 1986);
19. T. Zeldin, France, 1848-1945: politics and anger (Oxford, 1979), pp. 276ff.
20. E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: the modernization of rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, Calif., 1976), pp. 282, 290.
21. Also A. Faure, Les premièrs banlieusards: aux origines des banlieues de Paris, 1860-1940 (1991), p. 55;
22. Berlanstein, The working people of Paris, 1870-1914 (Baltimore, Md, 1984), pp. 28, 166.
23. In this atmosphere of growing anxiety a notice for a meeting of Lyonnais declared that 'all the departments are meeting to discuss measures to be taken for national defence': La cloche, 19 Nov. 1870.
24. Maitron, DBMOF, iv. 107-9. Augustin Verdure, another future member of the Commune, called Parisians from the Pas-de-Calais to meet for 'maintaining republican government and the regular development of social reforms which should be the goal and consequence of democratic institutions': Le combat, 28 Nov. 1870.
25. One of the first acts of the Central Committee of the National Guard after taking power on 18 March 1871 was to send delegates to Lyon, Marseille and other cities to encourage revolt and explain events in Paris. During the Commune, Pascal Grousset, Delegate for Exterior Relations, organized propaganda and delegations to the provinces: Greenberg, Sisters of liberty, pp. 150, 161;
26. J. Gaillard, Communes de province, Commune de Paris (1971); Choury, 'Les liaisons'.
27. Le vengeur, 9 Apr. 1871.
28. e vers 1860 (d'après mariages)', Population, 40 (1985), 164.
29. e siècle', Ann Démog Hist (1993), 263-302;
30. P. Moch, Paths to the city: regional migration in nineteenth-century France (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1983);
31. R. G. Fuchs and L. P. Moch, 'Pregnant, single, and far from home: migrant women in nineteenth-century Paris', Am Hist R, 95 (1990), 1007-31;
32. P. E. Ogden and P. E. White, Migrants in modern France: population mobility in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries (1989);
33. A. Châtelain, Les migrants temporaires en France de 1800 à 1914 (Lille, 1976).
34. R. Tombs 'Paris and the rural hordes: an exploration of myth and reality in the French Civil War of 1871', Hist J, 29 (1986), 795-808.
35. La nouvelle république, 21 Mar. 1871.
36. S. Davies, Paris and the provinces in eighteenth-century prose fiction (Oxford, 1982), p. 94;
37. J. Lehning, Peasant and French: cultural contact in rural France during the nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1995), p. 17.
38. See also R. Grew, 'Picturing the people: images of the lower orders in nineteenth-century French art', J Interd H, 17 (1986), 203-31;
39. T. J. Clark, Image of the people: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1982);
40. A. Lees, Cities perceived: urban society in European and American thought, 1820-1940 (New York, 1985).
41. M. Agulhon, 'Les paysans dans la vie politique', Histoire de la France rurale, ed. G. Duby and A. Wallon (1976), III. Apogée et crise de la civilisation paysanne, ed. M. Agulhon, G. Désert and R. Specklin, p. 329;
42. e siècle, 1845-1880 (2 vols., 1975), ii. 918;
43. e siècle à nos jours, ed. J-P. Houssel et al. (1976), p. 299.
44. Cremieux cited in Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 176;
45. letter by Eug. Durand in Le cri du peuple, 1 Apr. 1871.
46. P. Ferguson, Paris as revolution: writing the nineteenth-century city (Berkeley, Calif., 1994);
47. A. Corbin, The village of cannibals: rage and murder in France, 1870, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, 1992).
48. e siècle', Hist Reflec, 12 (1985), 403-18;
49. e siècle', Mouvement S, 79 (1972), 15-31;
50. P. Hutton, The cult of the revolutionary tradition: the Blanquists in French politics, 1864-1893 (Berkeley, Calif., 1981).
51. The Enfants de Haute-Marne led the effort for conciliation, asking that committees tell the deputies at Versailles that 'le mouvement actuel n'est pas une misérable insurrection, neé d'instincts de désordre, de pillage et de bouleversement social, mais, au contraire, que c'est peutêtre - malgré de déplorables incidents - la plus grande révolution des temps modernes': Les murailles politiques, iii. 337.
52. This reflected a larger trend, since to the extent that third party groups became more than committees of notables, and were influenced by their public assemblies, they all evolved towards supporting the Commune: M. P. Johnson, The paradise of association: political culture and popular organizations in the Paris Commune of 1871 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1996), pp. 122-5.
53. Eugene Schulkind argued to the contrary that moderate groups 'were increasingly reserved in their support of the Commune': 'The activity of popular organizations in the Paris Commune of 1871', Fr Hist Stud, 1 (1960), 394-415.
54. Also A. Lefèvre, Histoire de la Ligue d'union républicaine des droits de Paris (1881);
55. J. Gaillard, 'Les papiers de la Ligue d'union républicaine des droits de Paris', Mouvements, 56 (1966), 65-87;
56. P. G. Nord, 'The party of conciliation and the Paris Commune', Fr Hist Stud, 15 (1987), 1-36.
57. The official 'Programme of the Commune', issued just days before this meeting, hailed the national unity 'acclaimed by our fathers when they thronged from all corners of our land to the festival of federation': E. Schulkind (ed. and trans.), The Paris Commune of 1871: the view from the left (New York, 1972), p. 151.
58. While covering a strike of 1870 in Le Creusot, Larocque apparently helped strike leaders formulate goals and tactics, and Fribourg, a founder of the International Workingman's Association, said Larocque joined the oganization at that time. Larocque claimed to have founded the department movement, which is probably true, since he was a member of the committee of the Deux-Charentes that called the first general meeting of committees on 7 April 1871. He also claimed to have initiated the 31 October 1870 insurrection, although with far less justification: Jean Larocque, 1871: souvenirs révolutionnaires (1888), pp. ii, iii;
59. J. Dautry and L. Scheler, Le Comité central républicain des vingt arrondissements de Paris, septembre 1870-mai 1871 (1960), p. 267.
60. Estimates of the crowd vary; certainly the figure of 100,000 in the Journal Officiel is exaggerated: Les procès-verbaux de la Commune de 1871, ed. G. Bourgin and G. Henriot (2 vols., 1924-45), i. 579.
61. The Communard agent recounted the conversation of two 'nouveaux convertis' who 'sentent la bourgeoisie à plein nez' and who allegedly said, 'où sont-ils, ces pillards, ces assassins? ... Nous ne voyons que d'honnêtes ouvriers qui vont se faire tuer pour leur foi républicaine'. The agent was reporting to Communard superiors, and his comments must be evaluated accordingly. The original reports may be consulted at the army archive at Vincennes, and they are excerpted in Charles-Aimé Dauban, Le fond de la société sous la Commune (Geneva, 1977, reprint of 1873 edition), pp. 150-1. The Versailles agent's report is in APP Ba 364-6.
62. La Commune, 2 May 1871.
63. Dauban, Le fond de la société sous la Commune, pp. 150-1.
64. Le réveil du peuple, reprinted in La sociale, 3 May 1871.
65. Le siècle, an anti-Communard paper, reported that some in the crowd hesitated to declare their adhesion to the Commune, 4 May 1871.
66. Les procès-verbaux, i. 582.
67. Le réveil du peuple, reprinted in. La sociale, 3 May 1871;
68. Benoit Malon, La troisième défaite du prolétariat français (Neuchâtel, 1871), p. 263.
69. Les procès-verbaux, i. 580-1.
70. Troops from Brittany had helped put down the Parisian insurrections of 31 October 1870 and 22 January 1871. Beslay evoked the role of Bretons in founding the first Jacobin club and the First Republic.
71. The figures for Communards and the male population are taken from Rougerie, 'Composition d'une population insurgée: l'exemple de la Commune', Mouvement S, 48 (1964), 31-47.
72. For a recent analysis of the National Guard: R. V. Gould, Insurgent identities: class, community and protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune (Chicago, 1995).
73. This may have been Paule Minck, who made several trips to the provinces during the Commune. On women in the Commune: E. Thomas, The women incendiaries, trans. J. and S. Atkinson (New York, 1961);
74. Schulkind, 'Socialist women'; G. Gullickson, 'La pétroleuse: representing revolution', Feminist St, 17 (1991), 241-65;
75. K. B. Jones and F. Verges, '"Aux citoyennes!": women, politics, and the Paris Commune of 1871', Hist Eur Id, 13 (1991), 711-32;
76. Shafer, 'Plus que des ambulancières: women in articulation and defence of their ideals during the Paris Commune (1871)', Fr Hist, 7 (1993), 85-101;
77. P.Johnson, 'Citizenship and gender: the Légion des Fédérées during the Paris Commune of 1871', Fr Hist, 8 (1994), 276-95.
78. D. Godineau, Citoyennes tricoteuses: les femmes du peuple à Paris pendant la Révolution française (Aix, 1988);
79. O. H. Hufton, Women and the limits of citizenship in the French Revolution (Toronto, 1992);
80. G. Levy and H. B. Applewhite, 'Women and militant citizenship in Revolutionary Paris', Rebel daughters: women and the French Revolution, ed. S. E. Melzer and L. W. Rabine (New York, 1992), pp. 79-101;
81. Yalom, Blood sisters: the French Revolution in women's memory (New York, 1993).
82. And the centre of the brotherhood was Paris: J. Michelet, Le peuple, trans. J. P. McKay (Urbana, Ill., 1973), pp. 191, 204.
83. R. A. Nye has argued that the 'new religion of the fatherland' arose from aristocratic ideals of masculine honour: Masculinity and male codes of honor in modern France (Oxford, 1993), p. 33.
84. Le mot du peuple, 12 and 15 Apr. 1871;
85. Le Journal Officiel, 2 May 1871.
86. Le mot d'ordre, 8 and 9 May 1871;
87. For the original Comité central républicain convocation: La sociale, 24, 28 and 29 Apr. 1871.
88. e République vues de l'Isère. Exposition. Grenoble, janvier-juin, 1972 (Grenoble, n.d.), pp. 43, 47.
89. e conseil 1587, dossier Peru. On the Congress of Bordeaux: Greenberg, Sisters of liberty, p. 295.
90. The Communal Council discussed the obstacles to sending out delegates, Les procès-verbaux, ii. 45.
91. Maurice Moissonnier has called attention to this 'dramatique disharmonie temporaire' between Paris and the provinces, although it was in fact far from temporary: 'La province et la Commune', 1871: jalons pour une histoire de la Commune, ed. J. Rougerie (1973), pp. 151-82.
92. The manifesto is translated in Schulkind, The Paris Commune of 1871, p. 152.
93. Police were justifiably suspicious of cafés as subversive sites. Lestang had a drink with a chance acquaintance at Nony's tavern and told him that he was sent by the Paris Commune, a fine example of political discussion in the framework of café sociability. On cafés: E. Berenson, Populist religion and left-wing politics in France, 1830-1852 (Princeton, N.J., 1984), p. 149;
94. J. M. Merriman, The agony of the Republic: the repression of the Left in revolutionary France, 1848-1851 (New Haven, Conn., 1978), p. 97;
95. P. McPhee, A social history' of France, 1780-1880 (1992), p. 234;
96. W. S. Haine, The world of the Parisian café: sociability among the working class, 1789-1914 (Jlaltimore, Md, 1995).
97. On 'face-to-face' communities: A. B. Cohen, The symbolic construction of community (1989), p. 29;
98. R. Price, A social history of nineteenth-century France (New York, 1987), p. 169;
99. H. Mendras, The vanishing peasant: innovation and change in French agriculture, trans. J. Lerner (Cambridge, 1970).
100. Aminzade notes that republicanism incorporated an ideological rather than patronage form of mobilization: Ballots and barricades, p. 32.
101. Theodore Zeldin emphasizes the gulf between town and country: France, 1848-1915: ambition and love (Oxford, 1979), p. 130.
102. This last picturesque detail from A. Corbin, Les filles de noce (1978), p. 99;
103. also J. Thomas, Le temps des foires: foires et marchés dans le Midi toulousain de la fin de l'ancien régime à 1914 (Toulouse, 1993).
104. e siècle: le cas du Limousin', Rev Hist, 246 (1971), 329.
105. e siècle: migrations saisonnières entre industrie et agriculture', Annales ESC, 451 (1990), 55-76.
106. Eugen Weber used the term 'agencies of change': Peasants into Frenchmen, p. 282.
107. For recent additions to the peasants and modernization debate: Lehning, Peasant and French;
108. Ford, Creating the nation in provincial France: religion and political identity in Brittany (Princeton, N.J., 1993);
109. P. Sahlins, Boundaries: the making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley, Calif., 1989).
110. J. Devlin, The superstitious mind: French peasants and the supernatural in the nineteenth century (New Haven, Conn., 1987);
111. Corbin, Village of cannibals.