A Shifting Shore: Locals, Outsiders, and the Transformation of a French Fishing Town, 1823–2000 9781501727207

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Maps
Introduction
PART I. THE COLONIZING IMPULSE
1. Hideous Virginity, or Beautiful Maps on Annonay Paper
2. A Site of Contention: The Pres Sales of La Teste
3. To Suspend the Ocean
4. Oceano Nox
PART II. TAMING THE SHORE
5. An Emotional Tableau
6. Movement and Life: The Bordeaux-La Teste Railway Line
7. The Pacific Conquests of Hygiene
8. Whistles and Pickets, or Dejecta of All Sorts
9. A Magnificent Panorama
10. Posing for Posterity
Epilogue: Other Occupations
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

Citation preview

LOCALS , OUTSIDERS, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF A FRENCH FISHING TOWN, 1823 - 2000

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

This publication is supported by a grant from the Research and Graduate Studies Committee, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne. Copyright © 2005 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2005 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Design by Scott Levine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Garner, Alice, 1969A shifting shore : locals, outsiders, and the transformation of a French fishing town, 1823-2000 I Alice Garner. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8014-4282-6 (cloth : alk. paper) I. Arcachon (France)-History-19th century. 2. Arcachon (France)-History-wth century. 3· Arcachon (France)Economic conditions-19th century. 4· Arcachon (France)Economic conditions-2oth century. 5· Arcachon Basin (France). I. Title. DC801.A675G37 2005 944'·714--dc22 2004015588 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing

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9 8 7 6 5 4 3

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TO GENEROUS HOSTS, EVERYWHERE

One cannot help but recall a wonderful, paradisiacal description of Fenelon's with which he delighted his royal pupil, when admiring the sun-kissed freshness of Arcachon, its jaunty, smiling villas, its chilly chalets nestled under the pine trees, the liveliness of its little provincial streets, the feeling of calm which emanates like a fragrance of forgetting, the richness of its caravanserai, the fertility of its hothouse plants, the soothing quality [lenitude] of its enchanting climate, and the poor little sick ones who will soon be angels, and the rugged mariners of the Atlantic who wish to tame the sea.

-P. A. de Lannoy, Guide aux plages girondines,

1900

ListoJMaps Introduction

lX

PART I. THE COLONIZING IMPULSE

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Hideous Virginity, or Beautiful Maps on Annonay Paper 2. A Site of Contention: The Pres Sales of La Teste 3· To Suspend the Ocean 4· Oceano Nox PART II. TAMING THE SHORE

5· 6. 7· 8. 9·

An Emotional Tableau Movement and Life: The Bordeaux-La Teste Railway Line The Pacific Conquests of Hygiene Whistles and Pickets, or Dejecta of All Sorts A Magnificent Panorama IO. Posing for Posterity Epilogue: Other Occupations

Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index

85 99 Il4 138 160

175 195 213 215 251

275 279

France, showing Paris, La Teste, and Bordeaux Bassin d'Arcachon Compagnie Agricole holdings Evolution of the morphology of the passes The passes, mapped by Wissocq, 1839 Bordeaux-La Teste railway line Arcachon: the Ville d'hiver and Ville d'ete

101

Ponts et Chaussees proposed division of the Arcachon beach, 1893

151

125

INTRODUCTION

Heri solitudo, hodie vicus, eras civitas. Yesterday solitude, today a town, tomorrow a city. -Lamarque de Plaisance, mayor of Arcachon, r86o

In August 1844, a well-to-do family takes a two-hour train trip from Bordeaux to the Arcachon bay, for a seaside cure. At the La Teste railway station-at the end of the line- they are surrounded by local women who compete to offer them a boat ride to the desirable Eyrac beach, where the best hotels are situated. They choose a guide, who leads the visitors to the foreshore, wades fully dressed through the shallows to deposit their luggage in a rowing boat, and returns for each family member. She heaves the tourists one by one onto her back and carries them to her vessel, so that they may keep their shoes, skirts, and trousers dry. She then rows the family westward toward Eyrac, a quiet, sandy beach that will eventually become the center of a new town, Arcachon. 1 Today, Arcachon is a popular, highly developed seaside resort with its own railway station and freeway connection. The bay, or Bassin d'Arcachon, a large, triangular body of water, lies some sixty kilometers (thirty-seven miles) west-southwest of Bordeaux, in France's Gironde department. The Bassin's capacity alters dramatically with the tides, its surface area dropping from 155

2

INTRODUCTION

to 40 square kilometers (about 6o to 15 square miles) as the water ebbs out through treacherous narrows, or passes, into the Atlantic Ocean. Bordered by shifting sand dunes, and fed by the Leyre River, this is a constantly changing environment, whose edges have nevertheless become home to a permanent population of oyster farmers and fishing families, a seasonal population of vacationers, and, more recently, retirees from the Bordeaux area. The oblong hump of the town of Arcachon juts up from the southern shore of the Bassin. Situated at the eastern end of its beach is one of Europe's largest marinas, built in 1964: a floating city of pleasure craft jostling a fishing fleet whose foothold is gradually being pried away by the combined forces of tourism, declining fish stocks, environmental degradation, and European regulations governing every aspect of their work. This book tells the story of that prying away. Arcachon is now only forty-five minutes from Bordeaux by train, making daily commuting a possibility. It is often recommended as a day trip to tourists staying in the Girondin capital. In summer Parisians can make the trip on the Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV), or High Speed Train, in less than four hours. They are advised to sample the Bassin's oysters, visit the Dune du Pyla, the tallest dune in Europe at 114 meters (374 feet), and stroll through pine forests that meet the town's edges. Guides recommend a ferry trip to Cap Ferret, the peninsula opposite Arcachon, beaten by the Atlantic on one side and lapped by the Bassin on the other, and a boat tour of the Bassin reveals the Ile aux Oiseaux (Bird Island), where houses on stilts hover over the water, as well as a front-row view of Arcachon's most impressive shorefront villas. 2 Visitors can stay in one of the many hotels or serviced apartment buildings, or-for those seeking a more "picturesque" experience-in one of the mansions in the Ville d'hiver (Winter City), perched among the pines high above the town center. Arcachon is a young town by French standards. It became a municipality only in 1857. For an Australian historian like me, there is something familiar and comforting about its mid-nineteenth-century beginnings, its mixture of fanciful holiday architecture and more recent-and mostly ugly-overdevelopment. Stepping out of the small railway station at the end of the line from Bordeaux, the visitor has little immediate sense of Arcachon's past. Arcachon trades on nearby natural beauties-the sea, the dunes, the pine forest-rather than on historic atmosphere. The streets leading from the station to the water are recently paved, their storefronts revealing little of what the place might once have been like. Holiday apartment blocks built in the 1980s overshadow the few pretty villas remaining in the commercial center.

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