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The Perils of Petty Production: Pierre and Jean-Baptiste Serve of Chamalières

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Leonard N. Rosenband
Leonard N. Rosenband
Affiliation:
Department of History, Utah State University
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Abstract

This essay examines the prospects and plans of a family of small-scale French papermakers, the Serves, from the 1780s to the 1830s. It explores the interplay of risk, the state, labor discipline, and technological diffusion. Pierre Serve petitioned the monarchy, the Revolutionary state, and the Napoleonic regime for a subsidy to install Hollander beaters, a machine that macerated rags, in his shops. His son pursued a law to humble the journeymen paperworkers, whose custom and skill continuously challenged the Serves' mastery of their mill. Timely responses from the state, which favored large producers, never came. Consequently, the Serves fell back on their own resources and the market, which determined their fate.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 3 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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