The Coachmen of Nineteenth-Century Paris: Service Workers and Class Consciousness.

Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, thousands of coachmen served the people of Paris as drivers of voitures de place, coaches that could be hired at municipal cab stands, or as drivers of voitures sous remise, vehicles that could be rented only at the Owner's depot. In 1860 there were about 5,000 coachmen in Paris, for example, and in 1911 there were about 15,000. One of the main tasks Nicholas Papayanis has set for himself in his book on the coachmen of Paris is to sketch what he calls a "social portrait" of these workers. In order to do so, Papayanis explores such factors as the geographic and social origins of the coachmen, their residence and marriage patterns, and their friendship networks. Seeking to examine how the coachmen manifested their own identities, Papayanis also discusses the various journals that coachmen read, the associations that they formed (including unions and cooperatives), and the largely unsuccessful strikes in which they participated from time to time. In order to put his study of coachmen in context, Papayanis also provides some very valuable information on matters such as the structure of the urban transportation system in Paris and the transition from horse-drawn cabs to motorized vehicles.

On the basis of his investigations, Papayanis argues convincingly that the coach trade provided opportunities for seasonal workers to supplement their incomes and for rural migrants without high levels of skill to make a transition to urban life. He also maintains that the coach industry created a way for ambitious individuals to improve their social and economic status. Ultimately, however, Papayanis is most interested in the development of a class consciousness among the coachmen of Paris. His analysis here concludes that most within this important group of service workers possessed a sort of corporate mentality throughout much of the nineteenth century, but that as the century neared its end, a working-class consciousness took root among many Parisian coachmen. This transformation, Papayanis contends, was prompted by the increased concentration of cab ownership toward the end of the century, by the intensification of surveillance over drivers, and by the economic crisis of the 1880s. Papayanis emphasizes, however, that the coachmen's new class consciousness was not all pervasive. Many ordinary coachmen still aspired to become owners of cabs themselves and many continued to sympathize with the small-scale owners who shared much of the hardship faced by employees in the coach trade.

One of the great strengths of this book is the creative way in which it uses statistical sources such as government surveys, coachmen's marriage certificates, and employee files from the Compagnie Generale des Voitures a Paris (the largest cab company in the capital) in order to craft a collective image of the coach drivers of Paris. One of the book's weaknesses, on the other hand, is that it seldom complements its skillful statistical analyses with the kind of anecdotal material that could have added another useful element to the text. Papayanis has quite successfully debunked the popular nineteenth-century myth that coachmen were "sluggards, drunkards, country bumpkins, and unreliable nomads" (p. 45), but he has left a rather lifeless image of the coachmen in its place. Similarly, while Papayanis's appraisals of journals and strikes are enlightening and often insightful (there is a good discussion of how the treatment of horses was turned into a political issue, for example), sometimes his discussions of these matters seem less engaging than they might have been.

Occasionally the text of Papayanis's book is enlivened by biographical passages about individuals such as Jean-Baptiste Bouteiller, coachman in the household of Napoleon III, or Maurice Bixio, president of the Compagnie Generale des Voitures from 1873 until 1905. And there are also a few accounts of dramatic incidents that took place during the coachmen's strikes of 1878 and 1889. The twelve pictures in the book add some spice as well. But humanizing elements such as these could have appeared more frequently.

Throughout his book, Papayanis reminds his readers that certain characteristics of the coach industry placed coachmen in a unique position among nineteenth-century workers. Even when they were employees of large firms, for example, they maintained a great deal of autonomy as they did their jobs. Nonetheless, the coachmen's trade was not completely different from others. Certainly it was not the only trade in which the interests of employees and small-scale entrepreneurs often coincided, nor the only one in which workers aspired to become owners, even as their working-class consciousness developed. Thus, Papayanis's generally satisfying volume serves as yet another reminder that the development of a class consciousness among nineteenth-century French workers was an extremely complex affair.

Lee Shai Weissbach University of Louisville