Geoffrey Crossick - The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780-1914: Enterprise, Family and Independence

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: THE VICTORIAN WORLD

Volume 8

THE PETITE BOURGEOISIE IN EUROPE 17801914

Enterprise, Family and Independence

GEOFFREY CROSSICK AND HEINZ-GERHARD HAUPT

First published 1995

by C.H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandling

This edition in English first published 1995

by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

First published in paperback 1998

1995 C.H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Mnchen

English translation 1995 Geoffrey Crossick and

Heinz-Gerhard Haupt

Typeset in Garamond by

Ponting-Green Publishing Services, Chesham, Bucks

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

T.J. International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0415118824 (hbk)

ISBN 0415174635 (pbk)

This book is an analysis, based on our own researches and those of other historians, of the history of the petite bourgeoisie of shopkeepers and master artisans in Europe during the long nineteenth century. Our separate interest in the subject was given shape and developed in the context of the Research Group on the Petite Bourgeoisie in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe which organised a succession of round tables between 1979 and 1990. The round tables were important for all those who participated in them regularly, stimulating the research of others but also providing an essential stimulus for our own ideas. They were also enjoyable and friendly occasions which encouraged our belief in the personal as well as the intellectual benefits of co-operative projects. We are immensely grateful to our fellow organisers of those round tables, Philippe Vigier of the University of Paris X, Nanterre, who sadly died while this book was in the process of publication, and Ginette Kurgan-van Hentenryk of the Free University of Brussels. We are also grateful to all participants in the round tables, from which we learned a great deal about the petite bourgeoisie, and where we also made many good friends. In particular we would like to thank those who became regular members of the round tables, and whose support and conversation over the years have so strongly influenced our own ideas, in particular David Blackbourn, Josef Ehmer, Serge Jaumain, Friedrich Lenger, and Philip Nord.

This book is a combination of personal research and our reading of the work of other historians. While writing this book we have continued our own separate primary researches on the history of the petite bourgeoisie, and in the book we have drawn extensively on that research, as well as on our reading of a large primary printed literature from the period. The references make that clear, but they make even clearer our debt to the work of other historians, some of whom have worked on the petite bourgeoisie but the great majority of whom have been interested only incidentally in the history of small enterprises and their owners. It is for that reason that we have been able to carry out one of our main objectives in this study, which is not so much to write a self-enclosed history of a social group, but rather to place a neglected group within the social history of modern Europe.

The book was written jointly, and readers attempting to work out who wrote which chapters will be disappointed, for there was no such division of labour. We did not write separate chapters, but worked on each others drafts, passing the drafts backwards and forwards for further discussion and development. It is a form of joint authorship which takes longer, and there were moments when each of us wondered whether the book would ever see the light of day, not least as a succession of changes of university temporarily distracted one or the other of us from his work on the book. Only the reader can judge whether the extra effort of this form of writing was worth it, but we found it very rewarding, in the sharing and developing of ideas, and above all on the personal level. Our comparative approach extended to the very writing of the book itself, as we became increasingly aware of the different expectations of the writing of history in our two countries which each of us brought to the book. It may have taken longer, but we have enjoyed it.

Our main academic debts have been recorded above, but we are specially grateful to Lars Edgren and Friedrich Lenger who each read a chapter of the book in draft form and offered valuable comments. We would like to express our gratitude to the universities and colleagues with whom we worked while writing the book, and who supported and stimulated us in ways of which they are probably not even aware. For Geoffrey Crossick: the University of Essex, for Heinz-Gerhard Haupt: the European University Institute in Florence and the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, and for both of us: the University Lumire Lyon 2 and its Centre Pierre Lon, then directed by Yves Lequin, where each of us worked, though at different times. Our most important thanks are acknowledged in the books dedication.