Review of " Rebel Cities : Paris, London & New York in the Age of Revolution " (May, 2017) Authored by Mike Rappaport.
This book describes the lived in evidence of political life of 18th century Paris, London
and New York, arguably the major urban centers of a European civilization stradling the Atlantic Sea and interconnected economically and culturally in a manner that had political implications. The books arguments concerning history are dense and having read it, I am still rereading it and making salient notes that perhaps over time I will be able to criticize instead of simply relaying. It is interesting reading and a great source of detail from documents, diaries, letters and images of the time.
One of the central ideas of this book is that the formation and activity of social movements can be related to the geography of cities, and perhaps in a early industrial society without methods of mass communication such as cell phones and the internet, this approach has merit. Rappaport (2017) applies this approach to 18th century politics and social revolutions. These were secular revolutionary and counter revolutionary movements that used the Enlightenment ideas of their day and tended to be focused in the political and economic centers, the capital cities and they were expressed in terms of physical control of space. It is an interesting idea that the geography of a city can be used to interpret the behaviour of people in terms of political movements, something that really can only be written about from the position of hindsight, but it does facilitate an interesting amount of detail that would be otherwise lost and it does give a sense of time and place to the events dryly described in the history books. Rappaport (358 : 2017) describes the French and American Revolutions in terms of "the hopes, fears, aspirations, hatreds expressed in politics and cultural displays, exhibitions and processions, symbols, banners, slogans, flags, music, pamphlets, prints, engravings, playing cards, clothing, furniture and hairstyles", and also details the political activity in London during these periods.
Each chapter provides a narrative history on either London, New York or Paris in a particular phase, prior to, during and after the
American War of Independence (1775-1783), and reacting to the process and radical activity of the
French Revolution (1789-1799). The books subject matter is
not militaristic but does include descriptions of military action when
involving the experience of the 18th century cities described, such as the
description of General William Howe's amphibious landing operation onto
Long Island, New York (99 : 2017). I was reading predominantly about the history of the French Revolution, its early phase within the attempt to form a constitutional monarchy and its accelerated radical phase from August 1972 due to the pressures of wartime. The experience of London during these phases provides a contrast to radicalism and supports the idea of social stability by facilitating incremental improvement through legal changes and a representative government, (perhaps reflecting the authors opinion).
The narratives concerning the local London response to the French Revolution are interesting, Rappaport provides a narrative of the English political response by the activities of the London Corresponding Society which had the objective of political reformation (300 : 2017). This activity during the Napoleonic Period was overwhelmed with counter revolutionary movements fulled by British urban patriotism. It can be contrasted with the earlier anti catholic
Gordon Riots in London due to the "Papists Act of 1778" which was trying to ease anti catholic laws due to pressures put on the crown by the American War of Independence (1775 -1780). Rappaport manages to tie narratives of social change and action as reactions to events in the three major urban centers discussed.
The dispersal of the
London Corresponding Society was in someways akin to a movement comparable to using mass social communication, because although it met in taverns, it was able to span the breadth of the London Metropolis and beyond through the use of letters and pamphlets. Ultimately its reach did not show the breadth and depth of the French & American Revolutions, because it did not reach into the homes and workplaces of the common citizen, which its object was to represent and it did not have revolutionary objectives but more reformation, working within the existing legal frame work of the British Parliamentary system. This can be contrasted to the Paris
Cordeliers Club that saw itself as a kind of political school for men and women of the working population and middle class, which by April 1791, spanned all the sections of Paris (225 : 2017). For the London Corresponding Society, taverns were important meeting sites where they could reach the common (male middle class) London citizen. Consequently taverns became sites of competition, first with the magistrates and then with the massive grassroots patriotic organizations formed during the Napoleonic Wars, such as local voluntary militia. The magistrates were able to force the publicans to deny access to the London Corresponding Society and force the reporting of suspected seditious tendencies occurring in said taverns. The publicans faced having their licenses revoked if they were suspected of not cooperating with the magistrates.
The places of social action for the American Revolution as occurring in New York and the French Revolution in Paris involved particular segments of society and localities and the books idea of tying urban geography to social movement is most successful when describing the French Revolution because Paris had suburbs and parks that featured concentrations of social economic groups. In Paris, prior to the French Revolution, the places of concentration of the popular Enlightenment movements were around the
"Palais Royal", as it provided a location facilitating intellectual liberty and the distribution of literature in bookshops and parks. The
"Les Halles" markets were the backdrop to the early phase because they were locations where the real economic issues were exposed, discussed and connected to the greater city of Paris. The nature of this connection is interesting, which I will subsequently parrot.
The market of "Les Halles" is described by the book as the largest and most popular market of Paris at the time (Rappaport 209 : 2017 ), it had a social space for working Parisians with all night dances, wine shops and cafes and was the center of the 5th of October 1789 insurrection because it was an economic centre that connected to the household economies of the surrounding suburbs. Rappaport describes the role of women during the early phases of the French revolution and the logic of their role.
Women were an important part of this insurrection because their economic contribution was not only their labour but their economic and social connections (210 : 2017). They had social relationships with the market sellers, bakers and parish priest in times of crisis. When there was no bread in the markets, Rappaport describes a hierarchy of hunger, where the first people aware were the women in families and it appears logical that women were at the forefront of bread riots in the eighteenth century and were necessity of mobilizing their family behind them.
The hardworking female fishmongers (fishwives) of the markets had a notorious reputation as hard and foul mouthed (210 : 2017) , who apparently have given French its slang terminology of
Poissardes and were at the forefront of the
5th of October 1789 march on Versailles, which eventually forced King Louis XVI to move into Paris from Versailles. Apparently there were hard realities behind the patriotic images of the sans culotte wearing pants and Phyrgian caps.
The storming of the Bastile was by "Foubouriens" from around the
Foubourg Saint-Antoine suburb (foubourg is french for suburb so perhaps this is a pleonasm), a suburb composed of around 87% of skilled trades, including the famous (?)
ebenistes (furniture and cabinet makers) (159 : 2017). These places represented concentrations of
particular forms of relationship and socio-economic groups. Both the Palais-Royal and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine are described by Rappaport as "sites where independent action were habitual" (169 : 2017). The book
describes the suburbs and the markets of Paris, including the
Cordelier district (217 : 2017), (which I probably should have described), in a methodical manner that
differs from the usual broad stroke of vicious mobs that one would get, arguably justified, from other
sources describing the Paris commune during the Terror (1793 -1794). Perhaps trying to approach the subject matter from both ways has the greatest utility.
Military action was encouraged by radical factions, that included the
Girondins, who wanted war and Louis XVI and loyalists, who were expecting the Austrian and Prussian military to live up to their reputations of iron discipline. The subsequent pressures brought on by the invading Austrians and Prussians ramped up the Convention replacing the Legislative Assembly and the adoption of
the Terror (1973 - 1794) as a state program. Louis XVI was beheaded on the 21st of January 1793 and the Girondins followed soon after (well October 1793).
The Terror entered its most radical phase between March and September 1793. The book emphasizes the changes to the city due to the war (278 : 2017), it becoming an enormous wartime factory and provides a description of the factions and politics during 1793 -1794. The books examination of the geography of the Paris commune features an interesting description of the lifestyle and solidly middle class dwellings of Maximillian Robsperrie at No 366 Rue Saint Honore (289 : 2017), which ties to his ideology, stresses and perhaps what we would now call virtue signalling and do suggest a sincerity to his beliefs. These narratives are backed up with maps, documents and denoted imagery, the book is without a complete map of Paris circa 1793, but this can be readily obtained
here
The subject matter of the book is quite wide ranging and
provides a compelling narrative of three major urban centers of the 18th century transitioning from medieval cities to cities with recognizably modern institutions and diverse forms of representative government that express a consciousness more recognizably similar to our own.
