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The Business of Invention in the Paris Industrial Exposition of 1806

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Daryl M. Hafter
Daryl M. Hafter
Affiliation:
Daryl M. Hafter is professor of history at Eastern Michigan University
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Abstract

In the late eighteenth century, the competitive position of French industry was seriously undermined by the sudden influx of inexpensive English goods—the products of the First Industrial Revolution. Responding to this challenge, French government officials established trade fairs—such as the Paris Industrial Exposition of 1806—to promote the introduction of commercially viable technologies. In this article, Professor Hafter takes a close look at this 1806 exposition. She discovers that, in addition to praising English-style machinery, the exposition's judges also praised traditional French production methods—a choice, she suggests, that reflected the uneven pattern of French industrialization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1984 , pp. 317 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1984

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References

1 Stearns, Peter, “British Industry through the Eyes of French Industrialists (1820–1848),” Journal of Modern History 37 (1965): 50–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Many of the themes Stearns finds were already in circulation by 1806. See the comments of Louis Bergeron on business conditions. Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à l'Empire (Paris, 1978), 213 et seq.

2 Pioneering works on the Industrial Revolution include Mantoux, Paul, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1907)Google Scholar; Toynbee, Arnold, The Industrial Revolution (Boston, 1956)Google Scholar; and Hammond, J. L. and Barbara, The Rise of Modern Industry (London, 1925).Google Scholar More recent scholarship modifying some earlier assertions may be found in Crouzet, François, “Angleterre et France au XVIIIe siècle: essai d'analyse comparée de deux croissances économiques,” Annales: E.S.C. 21 (March-April 1966): 254–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marezewski, J., “The Take-off Hypothesis and the French Experience,” in The Economics of Take-off into Sustained Growth, ed. Rostow, W. W. (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; and Roehl, Richard, “French Industrialization: A Reconsideration,” Explorations in Economic History 13 (1976): 233–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Aiming to revive industrial standards, the prefect J. B. LeRoy gave assurances that the winning tools, machines, and instruments in the exhibit of 1801 would be placed in the Paris Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers; see letter of 15 August 1799, no. 95, Archives of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. Michel Stürmer suggests that industrial expositions helped to fill the vacuum left by the demise of absolutist patronage. Firms that had been rewarded earlier for providing the trappings of royal display retained their prestige in the nineteenth century as “successful industrial entrepreneurs.” See “An Economy of Delight: Court Artisans of the Eighteenth Century,” Business History Review 53 (winter 1979): 496–528.

4 Samuel, René, “Exposition,” La Grande Encyclopédie (Paris, 1892) 16: 970–71Google Scholar, gives detailed descriptions of early French expositions. For comments setting the exposition within the context of other industrial fairs, see Ferguson, Eugene S., “Expositions of Technology, 1851–1900,” in Technology in Western Civilization ed. Kranzberg, Melvin and Pursell, Carroll W. Jr, 2 vols. (New York, London, Toronto, 1967), 1: 706–26Google Scholar; and Crosland, Maurice P., ed., “Introduction,” Science in France in the Revolutionary Era (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 128.Google Scholar

5 Samuel, “Exposition,” 970–71.

6 Rapport du jury sur les produits de l'industrie française, 2 vols. (Paris, 1806). Not named in the report, Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours was thanked by Minister of the Interior Jean Baptiste de Champagny for participating as a member of the subjury on watches in a letter of 25 October 1806, W2-3556, Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, Greenville, Wilmington, Del. (hereafter EMHL).

7 By this means the exposition helped to amplify the tardy and incomplete inquests of the post-Revolutionary period. See the comments of Gille, Bertrand, Les Sources statistiques de l'histoire de France des enquêtes du XVIII siècle à 1870 (Geneva and Paris, 1964), 117–18.Google Scholar Some 0.02 percent of the manufacturers honored were women. Not surprisingly, most came from textile manufactures in Normandy, Belgium, and the Departments of Eure and le Nord.

8 Le Normand, L. Seb. and de Moleon, J. G. V., “Discours Préliminaire,” Description des expositions des produits de l'industrie française faites à Paris depuis leur origine jusqu' à celle de 1819 inclusivement (Paris, 1824), 1:60–61.Google Scholar

9 Costaz's, Baron quotation is from “Process-verbal des operations du Jury,” Rapport 1:xi.Google Scholar

10 Rapport 1:173–83. Maurice Daumas points to the tenuous link between chemical science and business until after 1850 in “Le Mythe de la révolution technique,” Revue d'histoire des sciences 16 (1963): 299–300.

11 For an astute discussion of the influence of inventions and businessmen on the development of machine tools, see Daumas, Maurice. “Precision Mechanics,” in A History of Technology, ed. Singer, Charles et al., 5 vols. (Oxford, 1954–1958), 4: 379–416.Google Scholar

12 Letter of 12 July 1806, W2-3534, EMHL.

13 Rapport 1:195.

14 Ibid. 1:200, 170.

15 Ibid. 1:76, 45–46. Perhaps the jurors hoped to promote a new loom just introduced by Charles Quéval of Fécamp, which would make it possible to give a single warp thread several shots, each adjusted to the degree of firmness desired.

16 Ibid., vol. 1; and Costaz, “Introduction,” Rapport. Thomas Bugge's criticisms of the 1798 exposition are instructive in this context. The Danish astronomer attributed the lackluster performance of many French manufacturers to the political and economic turmoil of the past decade. Of coppersmith work he wrote, “Excellent but still inferior to that of England,” and of models of various machines, “I could not find any marks of excellence in them, they were very clumsily executed. I was surprised to find that they should be offered as specimens of national ingenuity.” See Crosland, Science in France, 135.

17 The industry of this period provided the basis for the “irregular, but sometimes fast growth” that François Crouzet found to characterize the important gains from 1815 to 1840. See “French Economic Growth in the Nineteenth Century Reconsidered,” History 59 (1974): 171.

18 Daniels, George, The Art of Breguet (London and New York, 1975)Google Scholar gives a detailed and beautifully illustrated account. Pierre Mesnage attributes the new popularity of French watches in the eighteenth century to Breguet's improvements. See his discussion, “La chronometrie,’ in L'Expansion du machinisme, ed. Daumas, Maurice. vol. 3 (Paris, 1968).Google Scholar Breguet's models in the exposition are described in Rapport 1:146. For further discussions of clocks and their effects on history see Tardy, , Bibliographie générale de la mesure du temps, suivie d'un essai de classification technique et géographique (Paris, [1947])Google Scholar, and Landes, David S., Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass., 1983).Google Scholar

For the lengthy descriptions set down in Du Pont's “Opinion du Jury,” see W2–4984, EMHL. The subjury's care in evaluating this industry can be seen in watchmaker Antide Janvier's respectful correction of the terminology in Du Pont's report. Janvier thanks Du Pont for having included his name as juror; see his letter to Du Pont, 18 July 1806, W2-3536, EMHL. Notice of Breguet's double escapement appears in the Rapport, with the disclaimer that the jurors have not seen it in action and therefore cannot express an opinion on its success. See Rapport 1:146–47; the section on watches and horological tools is found on 145–52. See also Daniels, Breguet, 70.

The importance of skilled labor in the industry is shown by Landes, David S., “Watchmaking: A Case Study in Enterprise and Change,” Business History Review 53 (Spring 1979): 1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 On the sequence of clockmaking innovations, see Landes, “Watchmaking,” 26–29. The contributions of Janvier and Desblancs are recorded in Rapport 2:151. The more modern techniques appear in Rapport 1:122, 187, 308.

20 Ibid. 1:15–16, 20; for the contrast between industrialization in England and France, see Landes, David S., The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge, 1972), esp. chap. 3Google Scholar, “Continental Emulation,” and Arthur Louis Dunham, The Industrial Revolution in France 1815–1848 (New York, 1955), 277–78.

21 Schmidt, Charles, “Les Débuts de l'industrie cotonnière en France, 1760 à 1806; II. De 1786 à 1806,” Revue d'histoire économique et sociale 7 (1914); 26–55Google Scholar; Dunham, Industrial Revolution. 277–78; Dardel, Pierre, “Une Famille de manufacturiers en Haute-Normandie, Les Pouchet (XVe-XIXe siècles),” Annales de Normandie 12 (June 1962): 103–7Google Scholar; and Annales de Normandie 12 (Oct. 1962): 169–84. See also Pinckney, David, “Paris, capitale du coton sous le Premier Empire,” Annales. E.S.C. 5 (1950): 56–60.Google Scholar

22 Rapport 1:57 and 2:257–58. Cotton in the 1789 exposition was praised by Thomas Bugge; see Science in France, 134. The variety of threads was much wider in the hand-sewing era, ranging up to no. 300, while cotton thread today stops at no. 100 according to Endrei, Walter, L'Evolution des techniques du filage et du tissage du môyen age à la revolution industrielle (Paris and La Haye, 1968), 158.Google Scholar

23 Montier, Armand, Recherches sur le commerce et la fabrication dans le Liewvin aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles de toiles delin dites rouens-fleurets-blancards (Pont-Audemer, 1874), 65–66.Google Scholar

24 Schmidt, “Les Débuts,” 48–49.

25 Rapport 1:43, 142, 125. Charles Ballot shows how the development of mechanical linen spinning was hindered by commercial conservatism and lack of the means to exchange information in “Philippe de Girard et l'invention de la filature mécanique du lin,” Revue d'histoire économique et sociale 7 (1917–19): 136–55.

26 See the discussion of Kemp, Tom, Economic Forces in French History (London, 1971), esp. 100–101.Google Scholar

27 Rapport 2:258.

28 Letters from Meillan to Du Pont, 8 March 1806, W2–3504; and 21 April 1806, W2–3515; both in EMHL.

29 Costaz, , “Introduction,” Rapport 1:14–15.Google Scholar For discussions of the technical institutions founded in France during this period, see Léon, Antoine, La Révolution française et l'éducation technique (Paris, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Artz, Frederick B., The Development of Technical Education in France, 1500–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 112–81.Google Scholar The jurors gratuitously ignored institutions providing earlier stimuli for invention. See Parker, Harold T., The Bureau of Commerce in 1781 and Its Policies with Respect to French Industry: The Bureau of Manufactures during the French Revolution and under Napoleon (Durham, N. C., 1979)Google Scholar, and Hahn, Roger, The Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley, Calif., 1971).Google Scholar

30 Rapport 1:119–20; Science in France, 133. Scholars analyzing the sources of inventiveness in society include Gilfillan, S. C., The Sociology of Invention (Chicago, 1935)Google Scholar; Schmookler, Jacob, ‘The Level of Inventive Activity,” Review of Economics and Statistics 36 (1954): 183–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jewkes, John, Sawyers, David, and Stillerman, Richard, The Sources of Invention (London, 1958)Google Scholar; and Kuznets, Simon, “Inventive Activity: Problems of Definition and Measurement,” in The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors, ed. Rostow, W. W. (Princeton, 1975), 19–30.Google Scholar

31 Rapport 1:131. For a more theoretical discussion of the influence of science and education on invention see Hall, A. R., “What Did the Industrial Revolution in Britain Owe to Science?” in Historical Perspectives, ed. McKendrick, N. (London, 1974), 129–51Google Scholar; and Multhauf, R. P., “The Scientist and the ‘Improver’ of Technology,” Technology and Culture 1 (1959): 38–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Crouzet, “England and France,” 148, 150–54, 172.

33 Cameron, Rondo E., France and the Economic Development of Europe, 1800–1914 (Princeton, 1961), 67Google Scholar; Levy-Leboyer, Les Banques, 409. Both works place the characteristics of French industrialization in historical context.

34 Jacques Payen discusses the problem of investment in relation to mechanization in Capital et machine à vapeur au XVIIIe siècle: Les frères Perier et l'introduction en France de la machine à vapeur de Watt (Paris, 1969). Levy-Leboyer estimates that the average French firm before 1850 had only 60,000–100,000 francs in capital; Les Banques, 705.