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

by Michael Sonenscher

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107404144
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2012
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	454
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.02(d)

Table of Contents

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.