The Boot and Shoe Trades in London and Paris in the Long Eighteenth Century

surprising to find that a large part of the magasins, mainly located in the capital
or its hinterland, became in the 1860s and 1870s the most important fabricants
of France. The difference in the relationship between Paris and its provinces
compared to the British case can be explained also from a labour point of view.
In France there was only a moderate growth of provincial productive centres
because of the late development of the sector and the low level of mechanisation
of provincial production. Paris, with its 'sweatshop' system, attracted not only
local workers, but also shoemakers from the provinces themselves.32
The last quarter of the century saw a sudden change in the export market.
French shoes had been in the previous fifty years extremely competitive not only
on European, but also on transatlantic markets. In 1870 the French footwear
production reached 120 million pairs a year. 33 By 1874 France was exporting 60
million pairs of shoes per year to foreign markets. However the slump of 1873
and the problems of the 1870 Commune signalled a break in such trend. During
the last quarter of the nineteenth century France had to face both stronger British
export producers and the competition from new producers such as Australia and
the United States. 34 By 1897 the French shoe export was only a third of what it
had been 25 years before, exporting low-quality footwear especially to Mexico,
Brazil, the Antilles and to South America.35
We have finally to mention that a 'pre-industrial tradition' survived in Paris
well into the twentieth century. In the French capital ideals of quality, made-to-
measure, hand-sewn shoes and autonomous mobility outside the factory were to
be maintained until the 1920s. 36 This was partially due to the birth and
development of haute couture, as an elite culture of consumption supporting
small artisanal businesses located especially in the upper-class districts of central
Paris. A second reason for the survival of un-mechanised workshops mainly for
M j • Morin, Manuel du bottier et du cordonnier... (Paris, 1831), p. 5.
32 A. Cottereau, 'The distinctiveness of working-class cultures in France, 1848-1900', in I.
Katznelson and A.R. Zolberg, eds., Working-class formation: nineteenth-century patterns in
Western Europe and the United States (New Jersey, 1986), p. 126. See also A. Daumard and F.
Furet, Structures et relations sociales a Paris au milieu du XVIII siècle (Paris, 1961), pp. 65-7.
Exposition de Vienne:rapport (Paris, 1873), vol. ii, p.3 17.
In the USA, Lynn and the Chicago area had been the first technologically-advanced
producers of boots and shoes in the world. See Dawley, Class and community: the industrial
revolution in Lynn (Cambridge-Massachusetts, 1976);
Dictionaire du Commerce de l'industrie et de la banque (Paris, 1897), vol. i, p. 1059.
300