Comparing combination acts: French and English papermaking in the age of revolution

In 1796, both France and England banned combinations among paperworkers. Most notably, these measures read as if they issued from a single pen. The twin efforts outlawed the coalitions and covenants that enabled the journeymen to organize strikes and walkouts, influence wages or output quotas, restrain the manufacturers’ latitude in hiring, and burden, even fine, unco-operative masters. By linking the lived experience of the labour process and the law, this article explores the real grit of comparative history. In doing so, it reveals the risk of emphasizing national industrial culture in the age of manufactures and nascent mechanization. It also suggests the shortcomings of Foucauldian analysis and metaphors when they are brought to the ground, that is, the actual shopfloor struggles and everyday relations of papermaking. Moreover, this article contends that authorities in Paris and London brewed a subtle blend of intervention and retreat in the governance of the trade. In the end, however, the effective regulation of papermaking, from below, survived the sister combination acts. Mechanization tipped the balance in favour of the manufacturers, but the workers’ tactics and habits of resistance persisted into the new era.