European Women and Preindustrial Craft

This art icle was downloaded by: [ York Universit y Libraries] On: 23 Novem ber 2014, At : 19: 21 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK History: Reviews of New Books Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ vhis20 European Women and Preindustrial Craft Dora Dumont Published online: 13 Jul 2010. To cite this article: Dora Dumont (1996) European Women and Preindust rial Craf t , Hist ory: Reviews of New Books, 25: 1, 29-29, DOI: 10. 1080/ 03612759. 1996. 9952618 To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 03612759. 1996. 9952618 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . 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Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. Term s & Condit ions of access and use can be found at ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- and- condit ions workers, the Second Republic, as Merriman has shown, had turned to repression. Kudlick is wrong to speak of a Catholic revival that reconciled workers to the Church and the “bourgeoisie.” Catholic legislators during the Second Republic opposed universal suffrage and social legislation like the tenhour day, while Christian workers who admired “Jksus rkpublicain” despised the Church. Parisian workers rebelled in June 1849 after France sent troops to help the Pope. The generation of 1820 might not like Kudlick’s portrayal of them as products of the Enlightenment. These readers of Cousin, Constant, Hugo, and George Sand abhorred the rational materialism of the Enlightenment and preferred passion to logic. Were these Romantics as rational as Kudlick says when confronted by the mystery of cholera? If Kudlick’s conclusions sometimes fly without wings, every page shines with promise. I look forward to this exuberant young cultural historian’s future publications. denied formal citizenship, because it enabled them to become involved in political discussion. Women frequented the cafes, acted as servers, and some actually owned the business. Operating a small business was probably the most powerful position to which a working-class woman could aspire. One special lure of the cafe was alcoholic drink, which was tied to working-class values of strength, equality, and sociability. But these cafes were far more than places to eat and drink to the great majority of workingclass Parisians, who also frequented such establishments seeking shelter from authorities, exchanging and developing and sometimes enacting their ideas; processes Haine dubs “shelter, incubator and stage.” The working class considered the cafe an extension of their domestic space. Among the most intriguing aspects of the book is an evaluation of the role of the cafe owners. The introduction of the serving counter into most Parisian cafes resulted in increased interaction and camaraderie between the proprietor and the customers. The owner often directed the pleasures of daily life in the cafe and accepted responsibility for a series of complex social functions. Haine maintains that most societies have needed some type of drinking establishment for people to gather for relaxation and conversation. The Parisian cafe became the crossroads of work, neighborhood, family, and leisure activities and served as the venue for popular political action from the sansculottes of the 1790s through anarcho-syndicalists of the early twentieth century. Professionals will appreciate the appended bibliographical and historiographical essays. By thorough examination of an impressive array of primary and secondary sources, Haine has provided the specialist a fresh new perspective on nineteenth-century Parisian social history. historical and gender theory, the book offers little that is new. Hafter herself might have strengthened the central theme-the relation between gender, technology, and skill in craftsworkers’ confrontations with industrialization. The introductory essay is slightly awkward, with a tooquick historiographical survey that does not focus the book’s position in the most recent literature on preindustrial working women (and surely Hafter should have made reference to Barbara A. Hanawalt’s Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe!). In fact, Hafter states her intention to debunk certain assumptions about women and preindustrial work that have already been pretty thoroughly debunked in the last few years, without providing a coherent new point of view. The essays are of varying success. Aside from offering some very valuable technical information on work processes, several of them offer fresh ideas on the rapport between women and technology and/or skill. Although not all the authors do so (surely, for instance, calico painting was not as entirely “unskilled’ as Pierre Caspard indicates), Inger Jonsson and Tessie P. Liu in particular offer more sophisticated means of considering skill-as a power to define, as a relation, as inherently gendered. Several other essays, too, take up the less-explored theme of female entrepreneurs or managers, considerably expanding our sense of women’s role in the business end of craft. Given the focus on women, however, one would hope for a greater contribution to gender theory. One or two authors reveal a lack of familiarity with the current (or older, for that matter) state of gender theory in historical studies. At the other end of the scale, Patrizia Sione, Jean Quataert, md Tessie P. Liu make constructive contributions with their essays combining broader economic trends with local gender relations. Overall, the generally informed historian will find the book a source of useful data but little fresh theory; the beginner on preindustrial working women would be better advised to start out with Hanawalt. Downloaded by [York University Libraries] at 19:21 23 November 2014 zyxwvutsrqpon zyxwvutsr zyxw zyxwvutsrqpo EDGAR LEON NEWMAN New Mexico State University Haine, W. Scott The World of the Paris Cafe: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789-1914 Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press 325 pp.. $39.95, ISBN 0-8018-5104-1 Publication Date: February 1996 W. Scott Haine, who edits the Social History of Alcohol Review, invites the reader of The World of the Paris Cafe to step up to the serving counter of a nineteenth-century Parisian cafe to eavesdrop on the conversations and to observe the dynamics of this unique workingclass establishment. Haine devotes chapters to perceptions of the cafe, its context in housing and family life, work at the cafe, drinking, the role of the owner, the etiquette of sociability, the role of women and gender politics, and the integration of “cafe sociability” into Parisian politics. Each topic is also placed in a broader context, including the impact of various political regimes from 1789 to 1914 on these “cauldrons of conversation and thought.” As expected, republican governments usually were more tolerant of the cafes and their clientele than authoritarian regimes. Haine disputes many stereotypes of the working-class cafe, including the notion that cafes were disorderly places frequented by prostitutes. If anything, cafe sociability may have actually mitigated violence. Moreover, while prostitutes could be found in the cafes, they were outnumbered by female garment workers and day laborers. Skilled workers and artisans of both sexes, rather than the outcast and poor, made up the bulk of the cafes’ customers. The cafe may have provided a special liberating environment for women, who were Fall 1996 JACK B. RIDLEY University of Missouri, Rolla Hafter, Daryl M., ed. European Women and Preindustrial Craft Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 204 pp., $29.95 cloth, $14.95 paper ISBN 0-253-32755-5 cloth, 0-253-20943-9 paper Publication Date: July 1995 Despite a promising subject matter and an interesting array of case studies, European Women and Preindustrial Crafr bites off a bit more than it can chew. Daryl M. Hafter, a professor of history at Eastern Michigan University, should be applauded for gathering a diverse range of contributors. Their credentials include home economics, educational research, and museum curatorship, providing a fresh interdisciplinary tone to the collection. As European Women is intended primarily for professional historians, however, readers may be disappointed: from the point of view of DORA DUMONT Boston College Nipperdey, Thomas Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck: 1800-1866 Trans. Daniel Nolan Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 760 pp., $69.95, ISBN 0-691-02636-X Publication Date: April 1996 The “big book,” as Gordon Craig calls it, still has an important place in history. James Sheehan, who was still working on German History: 1770-1 866 when Thomas Nipperdey’s Deutsche Geschichte, 1800-1866 appeared in 1983, magnanimously recognized the book as “the best general history of the first two- 29 z