Insurgent Identities

By focusing on the less turbulent years in between the social upheavals of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the 1848 Revolution, Gould reveals that while class played a pivotal role in 1848, it was neighbourhood solidarity that was a decisive organizing force in 1871. Baron Haussmann's massive urban renovation projects between 1852 and 1868 dispersed workers from Paris' centre to newly annexed districts on the outskirts of the city. Residence rather than occupation quickly became the new basis of social solidarity. Drawing on evidence derived from trial documents, marriage certificates, reports of police spies and the popular press, Gould demonstrates that this fundamental rearrangement in the patterns of social life made possible a neighbourhood insurgent movement; whereas the insurgents of 1848 fought and died in defence of their status as workers, those of 1871 did so as members of a besieged urban community.