CM9 - Les mutations des structures sociales en France au XIXe siècle (1815-1914)

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering social groups, key historiographical concepts, and social transitions in 19th-century France.

France des notables

The elite alliance of aristocrats and high bourgeois who held all political, administrative, and economic levers of power in France starting in $1815$.

Stalemate society (société bloquée)

A concept developed by Stanley Hoffmann ($1963$) and Michel Crozier ($1970$) describing France between $1880$ and $1930$ as paralyzed by petite bourgeoisie protectionism, weak state authority, and a lack of civic associations.

Société d'ordres

A social structure, theorized by historian Roland Mousnier, where an individual's rank and rights are defined by legally established birth status and privileges rather than economic wealth.

Comité des forges

An influential employers' organization representing the iron and steel industry in France, in which noble elites retained prominent board positions ($5$ out of $11$ directors as late as $1914$).

Bourgeois privacy model

A domestic lifestyle centered on the home that emerged around $1830$, built upon a double spatial separation: distinguishing public representation (the salon) from private family life, and family quarters from domestic servant circulation.

Classes laborieuses, classes dangereuses

A contemporary 19th-century formula highlighted by historian Louis Chevalier denoting the bourgeois fear that assimilated working classes with criminality, deviance, and danger.

Petite bourgeoisie

A growing social stratum comprising artisans, shopkeepers, independent professionals, and civil servants who distinguish themselves from the proletariat by possessing material or immaterial capital (such as diplomas or technical skills) deployed via their own labor.

Couches nouvelles

The new political and social layer of small property owners, shopkeepers, and independent workers announced by Léon Gambetta at Grenoble ($1872$) and Auxerre ($1874$) as the social backbone of the Third Republic.

Indemnité parlementaire

The official salary introduced in $1848$ (raised to $15\,000$ francs per year in the early 20th century) designed to enable citizens without independent rentier wealth to serve as deputies.

Domestic system

A decentralized proto-industrial production method where manufacturing work was performed at home across the countryside, sustained in France by peasant land ownership and worker multi-activity.

Saint lundi (Holy Monday)

An informal practice among traditional urban and craft laborers who took an unpaid day off on Mondays, which was suppressed by employers enforcing strict factory discipline during the $1880\text{s}$.

Ouvriérisation

The structural consolidation of a distinct industrial working class around the $1880\text{s}$, driven by the spread of mechanization, loss of craft autonomy, rigid factory discipline, and the growth of working-class suburbs.

Comices agricoles

Local agricultural societies and competitions founded starting in $1832$ by conservative landowners and notables to encourage modern agricultural improvements and techniques.