Description
One of the most dramatic images of the French Revolution is of Parisian market women sloshing through mud and dragging cannons as they marched on Versailles and returned with bread and the king. These market women, the Dames des Halles, sold essential foodstuffs to the residents of the capital but, equally important, through their political and economic engagement, held great revolutionary influence. Politics in the Marketplace examines how the Dames des Halles invented notions of citizenship through everyday trade. It innovatively interweaves the Dames' political activism and economic practices to reveal how marketplace actors shaped the nature of nascent democracy and capitalism through daily commerce. While haggling over price controls, fair taxes, and acceptable currency, the Dames and their clients negotiated tenuous economic and social contracts in tandem, remaking longstanding Old Regime practices. In this environment, the Dames conceptualized a type of economic citizenship in which individuals' activities such as buying goods, selling food, or paying taxes positioned them within the body politic and enabled them to make claims on the state. They insisted that their work as merchants served society and demanded that the state pass favorable regulations for them in return. In addition, they drew on their patriotic work as activists and their gendered work as republican mothers to compel the state to provide practical currency and assist indigent families. Thus, their notion of citizenship portrayed useful work, rather than gender, as the cornerstone of civic legitimacy. In this original work, Katie Jarvis challenges the interpretation that the Revolution launched an inherently masculine trajectory for citizenship and reexamines work, gender, and citizenship at the cusp of modern democracy.
About the Author
Katie Jarvis is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.
Reviews
It is mindboggling that no book-length study of the revolutionary market women of Paris...existed before Katie Jarvis's....This meticulously researched study takes the reader from the din and grit of the marketplace to courtrooms and assembly halls....Jarvis weaves social and cultural analysis together...while never losing sight of experience and agency....Political and economic processes are deftly woven into broad cultural arguments about the meaning of work, gender, and citizenship.....Politics in the Marketplace brings to life the contentious and colorful world of the Dames de Halles while teasing out the vital role they played in shaping revolutionary politics and the world in which they worked. * Charles Walton, H-France *
Jarvis brings to life a rich and multifaceted history of the female hawkers of...the Dames des Halles, listens to their disputes, and traces their steps through the muddy streets and into the turbulent halls of governance. The tableau that she paints is so richly textured that the reader can almost glimpse the Dames as they bargain with consumers, petition for currency reform, denounce monopoly-holders, and contest price limits. Delving deep into police, legislative, judiciary, and financial records, Jarvis illuminates the evolving moral economy of the Dames des Halles and their significance as revolutionary actors....This impressive book reveals how...the Dames des Halles transmuted their corporate privilege and commercial roles into claims upon the polity as citoyennes of the marketplace. * Elizabeth Colwill, Eighteenth-Century Studies *
At the heart of this fascinating study are the thousand or so Dames des Halles of revolutionary Paris. Their daily activities are examined in detail and brilliantly contextualized on the basis of a staggering range of archival research and more recent scholarship.... This allows for an original recasting of revolutionary history in which the usual drivers of elite political factions, competing economic ideologies, or gendered discourses are shown to be fundamentally inflected by the quotidian commerce of non-grain foodstuffs in Les Halles and similar marketplaces across Paris.... Well-written and compellingly argued. * David McCallam, French Studies *
Beautifully written and timely...Katie Jarvis's thought-provoking new study...deftly interweaves socioeconomic history, archival research, and a gendered analysis to contend that the Dames des Halles articulated an economic civic identity....Jarvis convincingly expands the notion of revolutionary citizenship beyond the limits of political rights....A must-read for scholars of history, gender studies, and French studies. * Annie Smart, Labor *
A deeply researched monograph with big interpretive ambitions....Jarvis provides a thoughtful, imaginative, and extensively documented account of...a group of politically engaged working women, the market women of Les Halles and Paris's other food markets, over the course of the French Revolution....In calling for a renewed social history of the Revolution, Jarvis has laid out an important research program that historians in many domains will want to pursue. * Jonathan Dewald, American Historical Review *
Politics in the Marketplace makes a major contribution to the unjustly dormant field of labour history during the Revolution (as well as the trendier history of capitalism), extends our understanding of Revolutionary gender into the working classes far better than its predecessors and provides a welcome hybrid of social and cultural approaches worthy of emulation. * Micah Alpaugh, French History *
Finely wrought and persuasively argued....Jarvis returns to source bases, topics, and questions that might have appeared exhausted by generations of scholarly literature, and, with an exceptional archival eye and delicate analytic brushstrokes, reveals them to be still alive with insights and possibilities....Jarvis provides a compelling, nuanced, and surprising exploration of the contigent and negotiated nature of gender, citizenship, and the economy that challenges generalizations about the nature of political engagement and gendered relations. Jarvis's findings reach beyond the Revolution to show how careful social and cultural history can challenge the boundaries of what we mean by the political and economic. * Erika Vause, Journal of Social History *
The most imaginative and indomitable research lies behind this elegantly argued book that recasts a whole series of now standard arguments about gender and citizenship in the French Revolution. Katie Jarvis brings markets, food, money, and taxes back into the mix and in the process shows how politics, economics, and gender cannot be understood as separate categories. This is a brilliant achievement that marks the appearance of a major new talent in historical scholarship. * Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters *
Katie Jarvis's remarkably innovative and beautifully written book brings to life one of the most visible and active participants in the French Revolution, the fishwives and market women of central Paris. It goes beyond abstract political, economic, and gender theory to explore the women's real experience at street level and how they helped shape a new concept of citizenship and national identity. It will stand as a landmark in the history of women in the French Revolution and of the Revolution more generally. * Timothy Tackett, author of The Coming of the Terror *
Combining insights from labor and economic history, the history of women and gender, and the political history of the Revolution in wonderfully innovative ways, Katie Jarvis challenges us to understand the formation of the category of citizen from the bottom up and through the daily practices of working women. * Clare Haru Crowston, author of Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France *
With a Balzacian eye for the telling detail, Jarvis brings the reader into the world of the revolutionary market women of Paris, the Dames des Halles. Richly textured, in the best tradition of the classic studies of the early modern working class, Politics in the Marketplace brings into dialogue gender analysis, legal history, and political economic approaches to provide a model for how social history should be done. * Rafe Blaufarb, author of The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property *
Awards
Winner of Winner of the 2020 Louis A. Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Honorable Mention from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Award for Best First Book on the History of Women, Gender, and/or Sexuality.
Book Information
ISBN 9780190917111
Author Katie Jarvis
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 612g
Dimensions(mm) 160mm * 236mm * 33mm
About the Author
Katie Jarvis is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.
Reviews
It is mindboggling that no book-length study of the revolutionary market women of Paris...existed before Katie Jarvis's....This meticulously researched study takes the reader from the din and grit of the marketplace to courtrooms and assembly halls....Jarvis weaves social and cultural analysis together...while never losing sight of experience and agency....Political and economic processes are deftly woven into broad cultural arguments about the meaning of work, gender, and citizenship.....Politics in the Marketplace brings to life the contentious and colorful world of the Dames de Halles while teasing out the vital role they played in shaping revolutionary politics and the world in which they worked. * Charles Walton, H-France *
Jarvis brings to life a rich and multifaceted history of the female hawkers of...the Dames des Halles, listens to their disputes, and traces their steps through the muddy streets and into the turbulent halls of governance. The tableau that she paints is so richly textured that the reader can almost glimpse the Dames as they bargain with consumers, petition for currency reform, denounce monopoly-holders, and contest price limits. Delving deep into police, legislative, judiciary, and financial records, Jarvis illuminates the evolving moral economy of the Dames des Halles and their significance as revolutionary actors....This impressive book reveals how...the Dames des Halles transmuted their corporate privilege and commercial roles into claims upon the polity as citoyennes of the marketplace. * Elizabeth Colwill, Eighteenth-Century Studies *
At the heart of this fascinating study are the thousand or so Dames des Halles of revolutionary Paris. Their daily activities are examined in detail and brilliantly contextualized on the basis of a staggering range of archival research and more recent scholarship.... This allows for an original recasting of revolutionary history in which the usual drivers of elite political factions, competing economic ideologies, or gendered discourses are shown to be fundamentally inflected by the quotidian commerce of non-grain foodstuffs in Les Halles and similar marketplaces across Paris.... Well-written and compellingly argued. * David McCallam, French Studies *
Beautifully written and timely...Katie Jarvis's thought-provoking new study...deftly interweaves socioeconomic history, archival research, and a gendered analysis to contend that the Dames des Halles articulated an economic civic identity....Jarvis convincingly expands the notion of revolutionary citizenship beyond the limits of political rights....A must-read for scholars of history, gender studies, and French studies. * Annie Smart, Labor *
A deeply researched monograph with big interpretive ambitions....Jarvis provides a thoughtful, imaginative, and extensively documented account of...a group of politically engaged working women, the market women of Les Halles and Paris's other food markets, over the course of the French Revolution....In calling for a renewed social history of the Revolution, Jarvis has laid out an important research program that historians in many domains will want to pursue. * Jonathan Dewald, American Historical Review *
Politics in the Marketplace makes a major contribution to the unjustly dormant field of labour history during the Revolution (as well as the trendier history of capitalism), extends our understanding of Revolutionary gender into the working classes far better than its predecessors and provides a welcome hybrid of social and cultural approaches worthy of emulation. * Micah Alpaugh, French History *
Finely wrought and persuasively argued....Jarvis returns to source bases, topics, and questions that might have appeared exhausted by generations of scholarly literature, and, with an exceptional archival eye and delicate analytic brushstrokes, reveals them to be still alive with insights and possibilities....Jarvis provides a compelling, nuanced, and surprising exploration of the contigent and negotiated nature of gender, citizenship, and the economy that challenges generalizations about the nature of political engagement and gendered relations. Jarvis's findings reach beyond the Revolution to show how careful social and cultural history can challenge the boundaries of what we mean by the political and economic. * Erika Vause, Journal of Social History *
The most imaginative and indomitable research lies behind this elegantly argued book that recasts a whole series of now standard arguments about gender and citizenship in the French Revolution. Katie Jarvis brings markets, food, money, and taxes back into the mix and in the process shows how politics, economics, and gender cannot be understood as separate categories. This is a brilliant achievement that marks the appearance of a major new talent in historical scholarship. * Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters *
Katie Jarvis's remarkably innovative and beautifully written book brings to life one of the most visible and active participants in the French Revolution, the fishwives and market women of central Paris. It goes beyond abstract political, economic, and gender theory to explore the women's real experience at street level and how they helped shape a new concept of citizenship and national identity. It will stand as a landmark in the history of women in the French Revolution and of the Revolution more generally. * Timothy Tackett, author of The Coming of the Terror *
Combining insights from labor and economic history, the history of women and gender, and the political history of the Revolution in wonderfully innovative ways, Katie Jarvis challenges us to understand the formation of the category of citizen from the bottom up and through the daily practices of working women. * Clare Haru Crowston, author of Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France *
With a Balzacian eye for the telling detail, Jarvis brings the reader into the world of the revolutionary market women of Paris, the Dames des Halles. Richly textured, in the best tradition of the classic studies of the early modern working class, Politics in the Marketplace brings into dialogue gender analysis, legal history, and political economic approaches to provide a model for how social history should be done. * Rafe Blaufarb, author of The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property *
Awards
Winner of Winner of the 2020 Louis A. Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Honorable Mention from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Award for Best First Book on the History of Women, Gender, and/or Sexuality.
Book Information
ISBN 9780190917111
Author Katie Jarvis
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 612g
Dimensions(mm) 160mm * 236mm * 33mm
