Introduction

Little is yet known about the history of the urban family. The study that I have carried out over the last few years into the social and demographic history of the town of Rheims in Champagne will eventually illuminate the fundamental characteristics of a non-rural society before the Industrial Revolution. I propose here to analyse the census of 1802, which has survived in its entirety, for this town of 30,200 inhabitants. This document provides the closing point for the family reconstitution of all Rheims parishes beginning in 1660. The opening of the nineteenth century makes a fitting end to the study. By then, the tumultuous revolutionary period was over, and the town had recovered the demographic prosperity it had enjoyed in 1780. Yet no one suspected at the time that the century which was about to begin was to result in unprecedented population increase and the modification of all demographic and economic structures.

The economic situation at the beginning of the nineteenth century

Rheims in 1802 remained fundamentally as it had been under the Ancien Régime: it was dominated by an intensive artisan-based textile industry involving the preparation and weaving of wool. In 1790 the town had contained 1,300 master drapers as well as serge, buttermuslin, and cheesecloth weavers working more than 3,000 looms among them. Those not actually concerned with weaving combed, span, and set the warp for the looms. Men and women had their separate tasks.