Description
Book SynopsisBecoming Bourgeois traces the fortunes of three French families in the municipality of Vannes, in Brittany—Galles, Jollivet, and Le Ridant—who rose to prominence in publishing, law, the military, public administration, and intellectual pursuits over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Trade ReviewJohnson's latest book, in my opinion, represents his supreme intellectual achievement. Since the turn of the century, his method of studying economic history—culling data, facts, and testimony from archives; synthesizing and interpreting them by means of theories of development and crisis—has been overtaken by studies of the writings on political economy.
-- Stephen Miller * H-France Review *
The book chips away at our assumptions about a period and a class thatseem to epitomize 'separate spheres.' It convincingly demonstrates the importance of studying the inner life of a family—its taken-for-granteds, its habitus, and within the grid of kinship that provides the bedrock of class solidarity. It is also a delight to read.
-- Denise Z. Davidson * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
Following an interconnected set of families in the western French city of Vannes from the end of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries, Christopher H. Johnson argues that kinship—especially marital strategies and the cultivation of intense familial affection—made the modern bourgeoisie.... Becoming Bourgeois is a model for combining social and cultural history. Johnson knows the traditional materials of social history—tax rolls, property transactions, and voter lists—inside and out. He is also fully in command of the état-civil and the details of the marriages, births, and deaths on the Jollivet-Galles family trees. His sympathetic and meticulous readings of the family correspondence make the archive of social and demographic history come to life.
-- Carol E. Harrison, University of South Carolina * Journal of Modern History *
Becoming Bourgeois joins the vibrant scholarship on the history of emotions, particularly on love and family in the modern era. It is as engaging as it is significant for the history of modern France and of the European bourgeoisie by a preeminent scholar of the history of social class formation.
* American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Correspondence and Its Limits
Kinship, Class, Sociability, and the Interior History of the Bourgeoisie
Love, Interest, and the Sibling Archipelago
GenderPART I. THE ASCENT (1670–1800)CHAPTER 1. The Way of Print
Talent and Marriage
Cultural Capital
Printers, IntellectualsCHAPTER 2. Bourgeois de Vannes, Bourgeois de Paris
Kinsmen (and Women) to the Rescue: The Saga of Jean-Nicolas Galles
Kin and Connection in the Book Trade
Love and Agony in ParisCHAPTER 3. The Revolutions of the Galles
Economic Establishment: Veuve Galles and the Articulation of Power
Expanding Horizons
Cultural Leadership and Bourgeois Ascent
Political Establishment: Three Families Merge
Surviving the French Revolution (If Not Childbed Fever)PART II. BOURGEOIS CULTURE (1800–1880)CHAPTER 4. The Sibling Archipelago
Talented Royalists Accommodate Bonaparte
A New Generation and a Renewed Polity
A Sibling Courtship
Cousin Marriage and the Political Integration of Vannes's BourgeoisieCHAPTER 5. "Mon Adèle"
Fulfillment and the Firstborn
Establishment: A Joint Venture
Public ServiceCHAPTER 6. Notre Adèle
Settling In
The Great Crisis
Affairs Military and Domestic
Living ClassCHAPTER 7. GuadeloupeCHAPTER 8. The Chosen: Educating René
Pont Sal
Exile and Redemption: A Mother’s Will
Family MattersCHAPTER 9. Into the World
La vie d’un polytechnicien breton
Aunt Marie: Power and Betrayal
The Kinship Elite
Career and Guidance
Weathering Revolution, Again: Adèle, femme politique
Fulfillment: René WedCHAPTER 10. The Legacy: Bourgeois Nation Building and Civic Leadership
Nation Building by Kinship
Civic Leadership
The National Stage: Combating le BretonismeBibliographical Notes
Index
