A Cultural Elite in Economic Crisis
The king's printer Philippe-Denis Pierres was not alone when he proclaimed in 1790 that his profession was "lost and prostituted."[111] Similar laments echoed both publicly and privately throughout the Paris publishing world from 1789 through 1793. In August 1789, the printer Jean-Baptiste-Paul Valleyre protested to the Administration of the Book Trade that he was being menaced and ruined by a new printer.[112] François-André Godefroy, a bookseller, wrote to the office in September testifying that "our sales are nearly dead."[113] In November, François Gueffier, one of the wealthiest printers of the Paris Book Guild, decried "the decimation of the industry."[114] Guillaume Debure l'aîné , a publisher from one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the guild, testified in December: "I am losing considerable sums on books."[115] The bookseller Méquignon l'aîné acknowledged "the extreme penury of the business" in the spring of the following year.[116] So, too, the bookseller Jean-Baptiste Gobreau remarked a few months later on "the considerable losses I have taken" and "the current radical loss of business."[117] Even Charles-Joseph Panckoucke commented on "the extreme distress in which the book trade finds itself."[118] At the end of 1790, the bookseller Jean-Augustin Grangé presented a collective Mémoire to the National Assembly on behalf of the printers, publishers, and booksellers of the capital. Here he queried before the representatives of the nation, "Are we now to be without means and out of business?"[119]
Laments and testimonies continued over the next several years.
[111] BN, mss. fr. 21896, "Registre des déclarations pour la contribution patriotique," entry no. 111, May 11, 1790.
[112] AN, ser. V1, carton 552, Letter from Valleyre to Poitevin de Maissemy, August 19, 1789.
[113] Ibid., Letter from Godefroy to the Administration of the Book Trade, September 11, 1789.
[114] For Gueffier's position in the guild, see table 2. For his protest, see BN, mss. fr. 21896, "Registre des déclarations pour la contribution patriotique," entry no. 10, November 24, 1789.
[115] For the position of the Debure family in the guild, see table 2. For his testimony, see ibid., entry no. 34, December 24, 1789.
[116] Ibid., entry no. 79, March 12, 1790.
[117] Ibid., entry no. 108, May 7, 1790.
[118] Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, "Avis sur l'encyclopédie par ordre de matières," Mercure de France , February 27, 1790, 155.
[119] Cited in Radiguer, Maîtres imprimeurs et ouvriers typographes , 143.
Jacques-Denis Langlois, a bookseller, wrote to the Committee on the Constitution that he had "greatly suffered in his bookselling business because of losses."[120] The publishers of religious books Vincent Petit and the widow Despilly protested to the Ecclesiastical Committee that six hundred families in the religious book trade were on the verge of ruin.[121] In the National Assembly, the deputy Charles de Lameth testified on behalf of a Paris bookseller that, "earning nothing by printing good books," he was being driven to produce incendiary pamphlets.[122] In 1793, Léger Moutard, a printer and the second wealthiest member of the guild, wrote to fellow printer and bookseller Antoine-Louis-Guillaume-Catherine Laporte lamenting "the enormous losses that I have suffered."[123] So, too, Jean-Luc III Nyon l'aîné, former officer of the Paris Book Guild, testified to the minister of the interior that "our business is totally wiped out."[124] Several months later, his brother Pierre-Michel Nyon le jeune was to use almost identical terms to describe his plight: "From 1789 to this day, my business has been completely demolished."[125]
Were these men and women telling the truth? Or were they merely evoking a picture of financial plight for political and economic purposes, to defend and enhance their monopoly on the printed word? After all, testimony of material duress was almost a required credential of good citizenship during the first years of the Revolution. Furthermore, the statements cited above appeared in somewhat suspect contexts, such as justifications of the modesty of their "patriotic contributions," deferrals of payments to creditors, and requests for government subsidies or contracts.[126] Elysée Loustallot, the vigilant watchdog of press freedoms
[120] AN, ser. DIV, carton 50, doc. 1452, Letter from Langlois fils to the Committee on the Constitution, [1790–1791].
[121] AN, ser. DIX, carton 81, doc. 623, Letter from Petit and Despilly, publishers, to the Ecclesiastical Committee, January 10, 1791. See also AN, ser. ADVIII, carton 20, Mémoire présenté à l'Assemblée Nationale au nom des imprimeurs-libraires, propriétaires des privilèges des divers liturgies de France (Paris: N.-H. Nyon, 1790).
[122] Buchez and Roux (eds.), Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française 4:270, proceedings of the National Assembly for January 12, 1791.
[123] AN, ser. BB 16, carton 703, doss. 17, Ministry of Justice, Letter from Moutard to Laporte, May 11, 1793.
[124] AN, ser. F17, carton 1004c, doss. 650. Committee on Public Instruction, Letter from Nyon l'aîné to the minister of the interior, June 30, 1793.
[125] Ibid., carton 1008a, doss. 1374, Committee on Public Instruction, Letter from Nyon le jeune, 8 frimaire, an II (November 28, 1793).
[126] See BN, mss. fr. 21896, "Registre des déclarations pour la contribution patriotique," entry nos. 10 (November 24, 1789), 34 (December 24, 1789), 79 (March 12, 1790), and 108 (May 7, 1790). On deferrals of payments, see AN, ser. BB16, carton 703, doss. 17, Ministry of Justice, Letter from Moutard to Laporte, May 11, 1793. And on requests for government subsidies or contracts, see AN, ser. DIV, carton 50, doss. 1452, Committee on the Constitution, Letter from Langlois fils [1790–1791]; and AN, ser. F17, carton 1004c, doss. 650, Committee on Public Instruction, Letter from Nyon le jeune, 8 frimaire, an II (November 28, 1793).
for the Révolutions de Paris , adopted this latter interpretation, persistently decrying the Paris Book Guild, its members, and "their scandalous profits."[127] But the bankruptcy records in the Archives de Paris suggest that for once Loustallot was wrong.
The Paris head-tax roll for 1788, declarations for the national "patriotic contribution" (1789–1791), and declarations of bankruptcy (1789–1793) together offer a fairly accurate picture of the wealth of the members of the Paris Book Guild and the fate of their affairs during the first few years of the Revolution. Figure 3 gives a breakdown of guild members according to head-tax class and profession.[128] Declarations of total assets at bankruptcy by seventeen members between 1789 and 1793 provide a rough estimate of the thresholds of actual wealth within the guild; these figures are presented beneath the capitation classes.[129]
Figure 3 can be cross-checked by an alternative measure of relative wealth provided by individual declarations for the "patriotic contribution" (figure 4).[130] Taken together, figures 3 and 4 show the extreme
[127] See Révolutions de Paris, no. 23, December 12–19, 1789, 17.
[128] It should be noted that whereas libraires (publishers and/or booksellers) were prohibited by law from owning printing shops, imprimeurs were legally allowed to print as well as to publish and retail books. Thus, while all members of the guild were technically libraires, only some were imprimeurs . The character of these enterprises varied widely. The assessment for each of the twenty capitation tax classes was established along a sliding incremental scale (4–200 livres ), the ratio narrowing toward the bottom. Figure 3 plots the twenty classes on an absolute scale, correlating each class according to its assessment in livres to reveal the relative metric "distance" between them.
[129] For the exact figures on which these estimates are based, see appendix 2, "Declarations of Bankruptcy."
[130] The contribution patriotique was a forced loan levied by the National Assembly in 1789. It required all citizens to sacrifice, one time only, one-quarter of their net revenue to the service of the state. In contrast to the capitation tax, the "contribution" to be paid was determined by each individual rather than by the lieutenant of police and the guild officers. It also differed from the capitation in that the "contribution" was based on a percentage of the individual's actual revenue, rather than on a fixed sum paid by the guild as a whole and divided proportionally among its members. Figure 4 correlates the range of declarations for the "contribution" (72–6,000 livres ) with the incremental scale used to determine the payment of the capitation, for purposes of comparison.
Figure 3.
Estimates of the Relative and Actual Wealth of the Paris Book Guild By Correlation of Capitation Tax and Declarations of
Bankruptcy, 1789–1791 Note: On the distinction between publishers and printer-publishers, see further chapter 2, note 128.
Sources: BN, mss. fr. 21861, "Registre de la communauté des libraires et imprimeurs"; and AP, Fond Faillite, ser. D4B6.
Figure 4.
An Alternate Estimate of the Wealth of the Paris Book Guild by Correlation of Patriotic Contributions and Declarations of
Bankruptcy, 1789–1791 Note: On patriotic contributions, see further chapter 2, note 130.
Sources: BN, mss. fr. 21861, "Registre de la communauté des libraires et imprimeurs"; and 21896, "Registre des déclarations
pour la contribution patriotique."
polarization of wealth among the privileged purveyors of literate culture in Paris, whose assets spanned practically the entire wealth spectrum of the Parisian population above indigence.[131] Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, Léger Moutard, Gérard Barbou, FrançoisNoël Debure le jeune , the widow Desaint, and Antoine-Louis-Guillaume-Catherine Laporte formed a kind of superelite, living in a different world from the hundreds of small book dealers and modest printers who swelled the lower ranks of the guild. The contrast between these two groups could not have been sharper, as there were relatively few medium-scale establishments to bridge the enormous gap in material wealth and social milieu that divided them. Of the 123 guild members who provided the information requested for the "patriotic contribution"—that is, concerning living situation and property holdings—only 18 declared themselves owners of their residence, and only 4 identified themselves as the principal tenants of the houses in which they lived.[132]
In 1788, Panckoucke boasted eight hundred workers and employees in his pay. He owned elegant homes in Paris and Boulogne and maintained personal relations with both the most famous literary figures of the period and the most powerful ministers at the court of Versailles.[133] A man as at home in fashionable salons as in noisy printing shops, Panckoucke formed part of the politico-cultural elite that ruled France on the eve of the Revolution.[134]
The Debure-d'Houry establishment, formed by a marriage between two of the oldest families in the Paris Book Guild, cut a similar profile in the social landscape of the late eighteenth century. FrançoisNoël Debure le jeune declared his total wealth (minus his wife's dowry) at 1,870,247 livres in 1790. The couple owned a country house in the village of Massy, with "outbuildings, a garden, and landholdings comprising
[131] For estimates of the socio-economic breakdown of the Parisian population in the second half of the eighteenth century, see Adeline Daumard and François Furet, Structures et relations sociales à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1981), 76–100.
[132] BN, mss. fr. 21896, "Registre des déclarations pour la contribution patriotique," 1789–1791.
[133] For a description of Panckoucke's social milieu, see David I. Kulstein, "The Ideas of Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, Publisher of the Moniteur universel, on the French Revolution," French Historical Studies 4, no. 3 (Spring 1966): 307–309.
[134] Pierre Goubert, L'Ancien Régime, vol. 2: Les Pouvoirs (Paris: Armand Colin, 1973), 210, 218.
around seventy acres," assessed at 95,650 livres ; a maison bourgeoise in Paris, with "a coach entry and garden, . . . on the rue Copeau" and "half of an entire establishment . . . on the rue Neuve François, also with a coach entry, a garden, and ice cellar." They were creditors of the Estates of Brittany and Languedoc and of the duc d'Orléans, among numerous others.[135]
These grands bourgeois , despite having the same official profession and "privileges" as their fellow guild members, lived in worlds apart. More representative, at least quantitatively, of the Parisian merchants of the printed word on the eve of the Revolution were types like François Momoro, on the rue de la Harpe with a stock of eleven titles in his boutique, his entire fortune;[136] or Jean Fabre, a bookseller on Pont St-Michel whose 30,245 livres' worth of books constituted nearly all he had in the world.[137] These two were joined by hundreds of other small printers and booksellers, like Charles Guillaume on the place du Pont St-Michel, who assessed his entire "belongings and merchandise" at 1,500 livres;[138] or Lefevre on the rue des Mathurins, who estimated his merchandise at 1,500 livres and his "furniture, suits, linens, and the everyday clothing worn by husband, wife, and children" at the same sum.[139] In second-floor printing shops and wooden storefronts, the majority of the "privileged" members of the Paris Book Guild produced and disseminated the printed word in Paris, with neither hope nor aspirations of entry into the literary salons of Panckoucke or the genteel country-manor circles of the Debure-d'Houry family.
The members of the Paris Book Guild, then, were dramatically polarized, related, it would seem, only by inverse correlation. But statistics do not tell the entire story, of either fortunes or personal destiny. Money flows. And individuals live or work together, marry and do business with one another. However extreme the contrasts of wealth and social standing within the guild, the Paris publishing world was in reality a very tightly woven community. And it was the weave of this fabric as much as its constituent threads that would shape and determine its fate.
[135] AP, Fond Faillite, ser. D4B6, carton 110, doss. 7844, July 26, 1790.
[136] See table 2 for his position in the guild (20th capitation class); and AP, Fond Faillite, ser. D4B6, carton 110, doss. 7811, June 8, 1790.
[137] See table 2 for his position in the guild (15th capitation class); and AP, Fond Faillite, ser. D4B6, carton 109, doss. 7763, April 3, 1790.
[138] AP, Fond Faillite, ser. D11U3, carton 2, January 22, 1793.
[139] Ibid., ser. D4B6, carton 108, doss. 7711, February 20, 1790.
While the count provided by the head-tax roll for 1788 lists 213 guild members, only 163 family names appear on the list (see table 2). Moreover, at least eleven of the largest of these families were related by marriage: Nyon-Brocas, Knapen-Delaguette, Didot-Barrois, Didot-Regnault, Lottin-Pierres, and Debure-d'Houry.[140] The Paris publishing community was, above all, a community of blood relatives and in-laws who sought to consolidate and enhance their family empires. And guild members also lived together and rented from one another. For example, Cellot fils lived with Cellot le jeune .[141] Tillard, Duchesne, and Crapart all lived with their mothers.[142] And Mme Didot, the widow of Barrois, shared a roof with Didot l'aîné .[143] Cohabitation and space sharing, moreover, did not require formal family and apprenticeship bonds. Plassan worked as Panckoucke's agent, and Ruault as the director of his printing shop.[144] The two widows Tillard and Leroy shared a household.[145] The printer Stoupe rented from Debure.[146] The publisher Hardy lived with the widow Desaint; Babuty with the Debures; Ballard with Mlle Simon; Lamy with Leroy; Froullé with Didot fils aîné ; Gueffier le jeune with Onfroy; and Saugrain le jeune with Leroy.[147] Thus in daily life, family, household, and social ties frequently spanned the great divisions in wealth and living standards, rendering them less sharp.
Even more important, perhaps, than kinship bonds or social connections was the high degree of financial interdependence among Parisian printers, publishers, and booksellers, a result of their labyrinthine business transactions. The detailed business accounts of seventeen members
[140] For Nyon and Brocas, see BN, mss. fr. 21896, "Registre des déclarations pour la contribution patriotique," entry no. 3, December 22, 1789; Knapen and Delaguet te, no. 73, March 9, 1790; Didot and Regnault, no. 97, March 29, 1790; Didot and Barrois, no. 27, December 22, 1789; Lottin and Pierres, no. 16, December 9, 1789; and for Debure and d'Houry, see AP, Fond Faillite, ser. D4B6, carton 110, doss. 7844, July 26, 1790.
[141] BN, mss. fr. 21896, "Registre des déclarations," entry no. 11.
[142] Ibid., entry nos. 58 (February 26, 1790), 110 (May 7, 1790), and 120 (May 14, 1790).
[143] Ibid., entry no. 27, December 22, 1789.
[144] See AN, ser. F18, carton 25, "Notes sur les imprimeurs ci-après désignés," [1811], entries for Plassan and Agasse.
[145] BN, mss. fr. 21896, "Registre des déclarations pour la contribution patriotique," entry no. 58, February 26, 1791.
[146] Ibid., entry no. 7, November 17, 1789.
[147] For each of these shared households, see, respectively, ibid., entry nos. 23, December 18, 1789; 40, December 27, 1789; 53, February 23, 1790; 54, February 23, 1790; 86, March 23, 1790; 80, March 16, 1790; and 114, May 11, 1790.
of the Paris Book Guild for the years 1789 to 1793 held at the Archives de Paris enable one to reconstruct a partial, but nonetheless significant, picture of the maze of business relations among guild members (see appendix 1).[148] Strikingly, ninety members—almost half the guild's total membership—appear in fifteen of these accounts.
Nor were patterns of indebtedness unidirectional. Individuals sometimes appeared as both creditors and debtors in a single account, and some of the wealthiest members of the guild, such as Debure-d'Houry and Moutard, were debtors to more minor figures like Valleyre and Briand. Debits and credits flowed in both directions. In the publishing world, debts were an index not of simple dependency, but of ongoing reciprocity. Indebtedness was not simply an unavoidable, or even a regrettable, fact of economic life; it was rather a way of life, the essence of good business relations in a world where financial institutions were few, metal coins scarce and cumbersome, communication slow, and transportation time-consuming, expensive, and often dangerous. All these factors combined to encourage the conduct of business as the elaboration of a continuous and, if successful, expanding web of debts and credits, negotiated through bills of exchange and letters of credit.
The evidence suggests that the guild functioned as a kind of credit union in a time of highly unpredictable production and distribution and uneven and episodic markets. It was better business to keep creditors at bay and uncollected debts in the coffer. Debts and credits were passed on through multiple countersignatures rather than squared up, because unsettled accounts functioned as a kind of private currency that at once maximized options and insured the continuance of business relations. Credit, as much and perhaps more than capital, was the stuff of economic life. Hence the members of the Paris Book Guild, both rich and poor, were inextricably tied to one another's economic fate.
Although the practice of pursuing indebtedness could lead to a positive mutual interdependence, it often led to illiquidity as well. The figures provided by guild members in declaring their "patriotic contributions"—a requirement that citizens offer the government one-quarter of net revenues and 2.5 percent of their precious metals—warrant fur-
[148] The list in appendix 1 cites members of the Paris Book Guild only . Of course, many of these businesses had extensive financial relations beyond the guild, in Paris, the provinces, and abroad.
ther examination (figure 4).[149] Because these declarations were made under written oath at the office of the Paris Book Guild,[150] they should in principle offer us an index of the net revenues of declarants.
The declarations of Paris Book Guild members ranged from 72 to 6,000 livres , surprisingly modest figures in light of the declared assets presented in figure 3 and appendix 2. François Prault, for example, declared on March 16, 1790, that his net revenue for that year amounted to 1,200 livres .[151] But seven months later when, on November 20, Prault filed for bankruptcy, he estimated his total assets at 329, 935 livres .[152] When Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, the guild's wealthiest member, declared his contribution on April 30, 1790, he estimated onequarter of his net revenue at 6,000 livres .[153] One current expert on Panckoucke's publishing business estimates that his total assets at this time were somewhere near 2,500,000 livres , that is, close to one hundred times his declared annual net revenue.[154] Were Prault and Panckoucke simply guilty of unpatriotic tax evasion? Evidence suggests otherwise.
While Panckoucke, Prault, and others no doubt took advantage of any loopholes the law afforded, it is unlikely that they, or the other declarants, resisted conformity to the letter of the law. A week before he made his contribution, Panckoucke had published an article under his own signature in the Moniteur universel in which he declared that "only a complete execution of the patriotic contribution can save the state" and the French business classes as well. He then held up the corporations of Paris as models of conformity to the law and urged all citizens to follow their example.[155]
If we take Panckoucke and other guild members at their word, they had substantial assets and credit but little revenue. This fact suggests an alternative interpretation of the contrast between their large assets and
[149] France, National Constituent Assembly, Procès-verbal de l'Assemblée Nationale, October 6, 1789, 5:1–12.
[150] Ibid., arts. 3 and 5.
[151] BN, mss. fr. 21896, "Registre des déclarations pour la contribution patriotique," entry no. 82, March 16, 1790.
[152] See appendix 2.
[153] BN, mss. fr. 21896, "Registre des déclarations," entry no. 31 (undated).
[154] The estimate was given by Robert Darnton, author of The Business of Enlightenment, a study of Panckoucke's business, in conversation with the author at Princeton University in February 1985.
[155] Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, "Sur la contribution patriotique," Moniteur universel, no. 97, April 7, 1790 (Reprint Paris: Panckoucke, an III [1795–1796]), 396.
their modest declarations: the corporate publishing and printing establishments of Paris were incredibly insolvent on the eve of the Revolution. This situation left them unable to respond effectively to the rapidly changing circumstances, legal, political, and institutional, that ensued from the declaration of the freedom of the press and the suppression of the guild.