As promised, here is something on the Paris Commune, a topic that I talked about only very briefly in the lecture. I'm posting this in sections so that it is easier to digest...
Part One deals with the background and context, including Baron Haussmann.
There is an awful lot we could say about the Paris commune, we could run a whole module on this in fact. However we will deal with it briefly here, whilst also placing it suitably in context. In short, the Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 28 to May 28, 1871. Principally, it was a government comprised of workers and their representatives, who demanded that Paris should be self-governing with its own elected council. This famous episode in history which lasted two months was bitter and eventually bloody, highlights once more and in a more graphic manner the ongoing dialectic of control and resistance that has characterised the modern metropolis.
The popular uprising in working class arrondisements that led to the commune was not supposed to happen. This was because between 1852 and 1870 Baron Haussmann had reconstructed Paris under the instruction of Napoleon III. Haussmann’s planning was influenced by many factors, not least was Paris’ history of street revolutions. There was also a concern, as was the case in London, with overcrowding, filth and disease in poor areas of city. Much of the concern was brought on by the 1832 cholera epidemic, which claimed the lives of 20,000 Parisians. It was believed that to prevent disease, ‘men and air should circulate’. As such the renovations were based upon the expropriation and clearance of the very worst districts which wide sweeping boulevards built in the place. These new roads were also claimed to enable public authority and to control a capital that had overthrown several regimes since 1789. The new large straight avenues helped to manoeuvre troops. Haussmann never hesitated to explain that his street plan would ease the maintenance of public order. Haussmann’s projects were funded by the French banks but controlled and managed by the state.
Critics pointed to the social rupture caused by the renovation of many working class districts. The city centre improvements prompted a rise in rents and forced poorer families towards the cities outer arrondissements. Thus the population decreased in the centre and grew in the more peripheral districts. There was also an imbalance, in line perhaps with London, between a new and wealthy West and a poorer, underprivileged and relatively untouched East. Alistair Horne (2007) writes that far from piercing the main trouble centres of the city, by neglecting some areas he produced a resentful apartheid, with infinitely more dangerous proletarian ‘red’ spaces such as the arrondissements of Belleville and Menilmontant. Greater concentration of the poor made self-organisation and self-determination easier- as the commune demonstrated.
This forms part of the context for the Paris commune. The other key aspect was the Franco-Prussian war. Prussia was a German Empire that eventually defeated France in a 10-month war leading up to the commune. Paris itself was under siege by 1870 and the gap between the rich and poor in the city had widened. In addition, the demoralization caused by the occupation of the city and subsequent armistice as well as food shortages caused widespread discontent amongst the impoverished working class in Paris.
Part 2 tomorrow follows the role of the National Guard.
Part One deals with the background and context, including Baron Haussmann.
There is an awful lot we could say about the Paris commune, we could run a whole module on this in fact. However we will deal with it briefly here, whilst also placing it suitably in context. In short, the Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 28 to May 28, 1871. Principally, it was a government comprised of workers and their representatives, who demanded that Paris should be self-governing with its own elected council. This famous episode in history which lasted two months was bitter and eventually bloody, highlights once more and in a more graphic manner the ongoing dialectic of control and resistance that has characterised the modern metropolis.
The popular uprising in working class arrondisements that led to the commune was not supposed to happen. This was because between 1852 and 1870 Baron Haussmann had reconstructed Paris under the instruction of Napoleon III. Haussmann’s planning was influenced by many factors, not least was Paris’ history of street revolutions. There was also a concern, as was the case in London, with overcrowding, filth and disease in poor areas of city. Much of the concern was brought on by the 1832 cholera epidemic, which claimed the lives of 20,000 Parisians. It was believed that to prevent disease, ‘men and air should circulate’. As such the renovations were based upon the expropriation and clearance of the very worst districts which wide sweeping boulevards built in the place. These new roads were also claimed to enable public authority and to control a capital that had overthrown several regimes since 1789. The new large straight avenues helped to manoeuvre troops. Haussmann never hesitated to explain that his street plan would ease the maintenance of public order. Haussmann’s projects were funded by the French banks but controlled and managed by the state.
Critics pointed to the social rupture caused by the renovation of many working class districts. The city centre improvements prompted a rise in rents and forced poorer families towards the cities outer arrondissements. Thus the population decreased in the centre and grew in the more peripheral districts. There was also an imbalance, in line perhaps with London, between a new and wealthy West and a poorer, underprivileged and relatively untouched East. Alistair Horne (2007) writes that far from piercing the main trouble centres of the city, by neglecting some areas he produced a resentful apartheid, with infinitely more dangerous proletarian ‘red’ spaces such as the arrondissements of Belleville and Menilmontant. Greater concentration of the poor made self-organisation and self-determination easier- as the commune demonstrated.
This forms part of the context for the Paris commune. The other key aspect was the Franco-Prussian war. Prussia was a German Empire that eventually defeated France in a 10-month war leading up to the commune. Paris itself was under siege by 1870 and the gap between the rich and poor in the city had widened. In addition, the demoralization caused by the occupation of the city and subsequent armistice as well as food shortages caused widespread discontent amongst the impoverished working class in Paris.
Part 2 tomorrow follows the role of the National Guard.
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