Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-wxhwt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T03:19:53.775Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

And They Sang the “Marseillaise”: A Look at the Left French Press as It Responded to the Haymarket

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Marjorie Murphy
Marjorie Murphy
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This is a tale of two cities: Chicago and Paris. They were different worlds, one the gem of western Europe, the other the gem of the prairies, yet both had a working-class movement in the 1870s and 1880s that produced a unique set of historical events which have served a symbolic function of communicating between one side of the globe and another. To illustrate these events as they appeared to one continent from the other I will begin with Chicago and demonstrate how the Paris Commune served as a symbolic event which gave meaning to local political struggles in the Windy City. Then, as the Haymarket Affair of 1886 unfolds, I will shift to Paris and the left-wing press as it tried to translate Chicago events into something meaningful for French workers. If these were the best of times and worst of times for workers in the late nineteenth century, then it is worth exploring the uses of these events in the creation of a working-class language of internationalism.

Type
The Haymarket
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 29 , Spring 1986 , pp. 28 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

My student, Molly Roth, provided me with copies of articles, found materials on the Knights of Labor, and sent me ideas, notes, and essential translations for this article. Laura Frader, Jollian Howarth and Pat Manning gave me their help and advice.

1. Avrich, Paul, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, 1984) 40–45Google Scholar; Kann, Kenneth Lyle, “Working Class Culture and the Labor Movement in Nineteenth Century Chicago” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1977).Google Scholar

2. Foner, Philip S., The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs (New York, 1969) 36Google Scholar; Avrich, , 49Google Scholar; Kann, , “Working Class Culture.”Google Scholar

3. Hutton, Patrick, The Cult of the Revolutionary Tradition: The Blanquists in French Politics, 1864–1893 (Berkeley, 1981) 105Google Scholar; Anderson, R.D., France, 1870–1914: Politics and Society (London, 1977) 120–28Google Scholar. I am grateful to Laura Frader and Jollian Howarth for offering me advice on the French Left. I give more weight to electoral victories in Marseilles and Bordeaux than they would have it.

4. Maitron, Jean, Le Mouvement Anarchiste en France vol. 1 (Paris, 1975) 145Google Scholar. Grave, Jean “Le pape de la rue Mouffetard” was the editor of Le Révolté; Le Révolté 29 05 to 4 06 1886Google Scholar; other papers read but not cited in this paper: La Revue Socialiste; La Tribune des Peuples; L'Intransigeant; La Voix du Peuple; Le Cri du Travailleur; Le Prolétariat; La République Radicale; Le Glaneur; L'Avenir Social; Journal du Peuple; L'Ouvrier Normand; Le Reveil du Forçat.

5. Le Cri du Peuple, 4 May, 1886.

6. Le Révolté, 15–21 May, 1886.

7. Le France Libre, 8 May, 1886; Le Socialiste,29 May, 1886; Le Révolté, 29 May–4 June,1886.

8. Le Cri, 4 May, 1886.

9. Le Révolté, 15–21 May, 1886.

10. Ibid.

11. Le Socialiste, 19 June, 1886.

12. Le Cri, 9 May, 1886.

13. La Voix du Peuple, 5 April, 1887.

14. Le Cri, 9 May, 1886.

15. Ibid.

16. Le Cri, 12 May, 1886.

17. Ibid.

18. Le Révolté, 21–27 January, 1888.

19. Le Révolté, 8–14 January 1887.

20. Le Cri, 28 November, 1886.

21. Le Cri, 3 December, 1886.

22. Le Rappel, 6 November, 1887.

23. Le Socialiste, 22 October, 1887.

24. Le Cri, 13 November, 1887.

25. Ibid.

26. Le Cri, 13 November, 1887.

27. Le Révolté, 26 February,–4 March, 1887.

28. Le Cri, 9 May, 1886.

29. Le Révolté, 19–25 November, 1887.

30. Avrich, , 390–98.Google Scholar