Work and Wages
Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades

This 1989 analysis of the urban trades of eighteenth-century France lays the foundations for studies of the workshop economy in modern European history.

Michael Sonenscher (Author)

9781107404144, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 April 2012

454 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm, 0.66 kg

First published in 1989, this paperback edition of Work and Wages comes with a new Preface, entitled 'Fashion's Empire', that positions the book's argument within the broader context of historical thinking about eighteenth-century France and the origins of the French revolution. It also comes with an updated set of bibliographical notes linking recent historical writing on industry before industrialisation to the picture of the eighteenth-century French trades presented in Work and Wages. Together, they add up to a fresh way in to one of the books that has changed the direction of historical thinking about artisans, small businesses and the political economy of eighteenth-century France.

List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations and units of measurement
Introduction
1. The limits of money
2. Images of artisans
3. Journeymen and the law
4. The world of the trades
5. Patterns of employment: the economy of the trades and the economy of the bazaar
6. Work, wages and customs
7. The Parisian luxury trades and the workshop economy
8. Conflict and the courts
9. Journeymen's migrations and the mythology of the 'compagnonnages'
10. Artisans, 'sans-culottes' and the politics of Republicanism
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]