The Margins of City Life Explorations on the French Urban Frontier, 1815-1851 [Hardcover]

The Margins of Urban Lifebrings to life the floating worlds of the periphery in nineteenth-century French cities--the world of beggars, the most miserable prostitutes, ragpickers, casual labor, and unwanted people; the location of slaughterhouses, gas factories, tanneries, and, increasingly, even executions. The men and women of the suburbs and faubourgs were long identified by urban elites and government officials with the turbulent dangerous classes who might one day fall upon the wealthy quarters of the center. Merriman analyzes and evokes the social, class, neighborhood, cultural, and political solidarities--the shared sense ofnotbelonging--that made the marginal people in peripheral places emerge as contenders for political power. His investigation explores the world of the Catalan agricultural laborers, the textile workers of the high town of Reims, the bitter rivalry between Catholic and Protestant workers in the faubourge of Nimes, the haven for under- and unemployed proletarians in Ingouville, above Le Havre, and France's strange frontier town, Napol?on-Vend?e.

A rich book, a treasure trove of intriguing finds. --American Historical Review

Refreshing and important. --The Historian

For those interested in cities, the book brings many useful messages: the continued importance of agriculture in urban economies; the power of state regulations and institutions to shape the occasions of conflict; the tight linkage between alcohol, workers' sociability, and political dissent; and the uneven integration of neighborhoods into a functioning urban polity. Most important, the book expands our awareness of French urbanization by blurring the boundary between town and country. --Journal of Modern History

A fascinating reinterpretation....Merriman gives us the most complete and sophisticated portrait of this world now available....A major contribution to urban history and the histl,