Book squee! Found in Carnavalet of course.

[tenlittlebullets]

Currently reading 1830: Le Peuple de Paris: Révolution et représentations sociales. It is incredibly shiny. It's an examination of, not only the role of the working classes in the July Revolution, but images and representations of The People and their place (real and perceived) in society--just before, during, and just after July, so about 1825-1831 with a special emphasis on 1830. There's a heavy emphasis on primary sources rather than academic infighting, which means my wish list of "stuff I would jump on if the Bibliothèque Nationale weren't a bunch of elitist dickwads" is growing exponentially. And the author dives straight into the question of "what does 'people' mean, exactly?" Is it the entire population of a country? If we're narrowing it down to the "popular," i.e. working classes, are we talking everyone or just the ones in abject misery? And from there it jumps straight into the divide between the Faubourg Saint-Antoine (the traditional, 'honest' working class neighborhood) and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel (abject misery, on the margins of society), or at least the perceived divide, because there's a bunch of stuff about the economic crisis that lasted from 1827 to 1832 and how it drove the working classes into a more marginal position. There are useful and scary facts and figures: at the end of the Restoration, the average worker's wage was about 1.5 francs a day. In the early 1820s bread was at about 60 centimes for a four-pound loaf; around 1829 or 1830 it was at 90+ centimes. Assuming a family to support, that's two-thirds of your daily wages going to bread.

Sources being used include the usual press stuff, caricatures, "studies" of Parisian life, etc., but also police reports (with a few grains of salt), popular songs, and theatre.

In conclusion, this book is awesome. And I'm like 40 pages into it.