Everyday Political Objects: From the Middle Ages to the Contemporary World 2020056153, 9780367706616, 9780367706609, 9781003147428

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: useful things
2 Rings of power: the interpretation of early medieval objects of adornment
3 The practical and symbolic uses of the medieval horn: from power object to common instrument
4 A history of domestic disorder: the French royal household in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
5 The prince and his coffer: the material functions and symbolic power of an everyday political object at the end of the Middle Ages
6 Teapots, fans and snuffboxes: the portable politics of gender and empire in eighteenth-century Britain
7 Wooden shoes and wellington boots: the politics of footwear in Georgian Britain
8 The fan during the French Revolution: from the elite to the people
9 Resisting with objects? Seditious political objects and their ‘Agency’ in restoration France (1814–1830)
10 A sonorous politics of everyday objects: coal workers’ charivaris during the Anzin strike of 1884
11 Political fashion: elegance as subversion in the Congos of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
12 ‘Citizen Browning’: the banality of a revolutionary object, c.1905–c.1912
13 Bringing audible propaganda into the everyday: the politicization of the phonograph record from its origins to the SERP, 1888–2000
14 Image, voice and voivodes: communist diafilm in Romania (1950–1989)
15 The trajectory of a spear: the materiality of an everyday political object
Bibliography of secondary material
Index

Citation preview

EVERYDAY POLITICAL OBJECTS

Everyday Political Objects examines a series of historical case studies across a very broad timescale, using objects as a means to develop different approaches to ­understanding politics where both internal and external definitions of the political prove inadequate. Materiality and objects have gradually made their way into the historian’s toolbox in recent years, but the distinctive contribution that a set of methods developed for the study of objects can make to our understanding of politics has yet to be explored. This book shows how everyday objects play a certain role in politics, which is specific to material things. It provides case studies which re-orientate the view of the political in a way that is distinct from, but complementary to, the study of political institutions, the social history of politics and the analysis of discourse. Each chapter shows, in a distinctive and innovative way, how historians might change their approach to politics by incorporating objects into their methodology. Analysing case studies from France, the Congo, Burkina Faso, Romania and Britain between the early Middle Ages and the present day makes this study the perfect tool for students and scholars in the disciplines of history, art history, political science, anthropology and archaeology. Christopher Fletcher is a Chargé de recherche (Associate Research Professor) with the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) affiliated to the University of Lille. He specializes in late medieval political culture and the history of masculinity. His books include Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics, 1377–99 (2008) and The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe (2018).

EVERYDAY POLITICAL OBJECTS From the Middle Ages to the Contemporary World

Edited by Christopher Fletcher

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Christopher Fletcher; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Christopher Fletcher to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Fletcher, Christopher David, editor. Title: Everyday political objects : from the Middle Ages to the contemporary world / edited by Christopher Fletcher. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: LCSH: Political customs and rites—Case studies. | Political culture—Case studies. | Object (Philosophy)—Case studies. Classification: LCC GN492.3 .E84 2021 | DDC 306.2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056153 ISBN: 978-0-367-70661-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-70660-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-14742-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of figures vii List of contributors xi Acknowledgementsxiv   1 Introduction: useful things Christopher Fletcher

1

  2 Rings of power: the interpretation of early medieval objects of adornment Julie Renou

13

  3 The practical and symbolic uses of the medieval horn: from power object to common instrument Luc Bourgeois

30

  4 A history of domestic disorder: the French royal household in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Gil Bartholeyns

48

  5 The prince and his coffer: the material functions and symbolic power of an everyday political object at the end of the Middle Ages Jean-Baptiste Santamaria

62

vi  Contents

  6 Teapots, fans and snuffboxes: the portable politics of gender and empire in eighteenth-century Britain Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding

81

  7 Wooden shoes and wellington boots: the politics of footwear in Georgian Britain Matthew McCormack

104

  8 The fan during the French Revolution: from the elite to the people Mathilde Semal

120

  9 Resisting with objects? Seditious political objects and their ‘Agency’ in restoration France (1814–1830) Emmanuel Fureix

135

10 A sonorous politics of everyday objects: coal workers’ charivaris during the Anzin strike of 1884 Adrien Quièvre

151

11 Political fashion: elegance as subversion in the Congos of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Manuel Charpy

170

12 ‘Citizen Browning’: the banality of a revolutionary object, c.1905–c.1912209 Éric Fournier 13 Bringing audible propaganda into the everyday: the politicization of the phonograph record from its origins to the SERP, 1888–2000 Jonathan Thomas

219

14 Image, voice and voivodes: communist diafilm in Romania (1950–1989)237 Alexandra Ilina 15 The trajectory of a spear: the materiality of an everyday political object Laurence Douny

256

Bibliography of secondary material 274 Index292

FIGURES

2.1 Ring with woven shank in copper alloy, white metal alloy and glass paste. Unearthed in sepulchre 31 during excavations at Saint-Martin Priory, Niort (Deux-Sèvres). 2.2 Gold ring dating from the fourth century. 2.3 Proportion of women and men buried with rings during the early Middle Ages in southwest Gaul. 2.4 Ring in white metal alloy with a missing head. Discovered in sepulchre 84 during excavations at the Priory of Saint-Martin, Niort (Deux-Sèvres). 3.1 Earthenware horn, eleventh century. Pineuilh (Gironde), La Mothe. 3.2 The Moot Horn of Winchester (Hampshire). Copper alloy, between 1187 and the beginning of the thirteenth century. 3.3 Horn from the treasure of the cathedral of Saint-Maurice, Angers. Byzantine workshop, twelfth century. Probably brought back from the Near East by Bishop Guillaume de Beaumont (1202–1240). Elephant ivory. 3.4 Konrad, Ruolandes liet, Allemagne, c. 1180–1190: the pagans sound the horn. 3.5 Horn blower in a tower. Graffiti in the clock tower of Saint-Martin de Moings (Réaux-sur-Trèfle, CharenteMaritime), twelfth century. 3.6 Deer hunt, detail. Angoulême (Charente), cathedral of Saint-Pierre, portail, c. 1118–1119. 3.7 The banquet at Hastings. Bayeux Tapestry. Probably Canterbury, c. 1080.

16 19 21

24 31 32

32 33

34 35 37

viii  Figures

3.8 Gregory the Great, Liber pastoralis, Saint-Amant, third quarter of the twelfth century. 43 4.1 This is the ordinance of the household of King Saint Louis made in the month of August in the year of Our Lord one thousand CC LXI, manuscript of the Chamber accounts, 1316. 50 5.1 The payment of taxes to the lord. Valerius Maximus, Faits et dits. France, fifteenth century. 63 5.2 A striking illustration of the complementarity of writing and money. While his servants handle treasure, the king takes note and records. Psalterium romanum, Mantova, c. 1430. 64 5.3 Alexander distributes the treasure of Philip of Macedon. Johannes de Columna, Mare historiarum, Anjou, 1447–1450. Maître de Jouvenel and his assistants. 70 5.4 King Arthur sleeping under his tent with his coffers. Songe d’Arthur. Mort le roi Artu. Poitiers, around 1480. 71 5.5 The beheading of Thedebert II in the treasure room on the orders of Thierry II in 613. Grandes chroniques de France. Brittany, end of the fifteenth century. 76 6.1 Trade card of Esther Burney, fan-maker, 1749–1751 Anonymous, British, late eighteenth–early nineteenth century. 82 6.2 Fan, painted vellum with pierced ivory sticks and guards, mid-eighteenth century; pastoral scene. 84 6.3 William Hogarth, Royalty Episcopacy Law.88 6.4 A rectangular, jewelled gold-mounted mother-of-pearl snuffbox, the cover chased with Mars, Venus and Cupid at the Temple of Love. 91 6.5 The Excise Fan. 97 6.6 Jacobite fan. 98 6.7 Tortoiseshell box and cover with inset miniature of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720–1788) late eighteenth century. 99 6.8 Josiah Wedgwood & Sons, Abolition Teapot, c. 1760. 100 7.1 Men’s silk brocade shoes (1730). 106 7.2 ‘Welladay! is this my son Tom’ (1774). 110 7.3 James Gillray, ‘Un petit soupèr a la Parisiènne, or A Family of Sans-Culotts refreshing after the fatigues of the day’ (1793). 112 7.4 Clogs, early nineteenth century. 113 7.5 Wellington boots, 1800–1825. 116 8.1 Folding fan, 1781. Gouached silk on ivory frame. 123 8.2 Folding fan, 1788. Gouached paper on wooden frame. 125 8.3 Brisé fan ‘Le retour de Necker,’ 1788. Gouached and varnished wood. 126 8.4 Folding fan, 1790. Printed paper on rosewood frame. 127 8.5 Folding fan, 1792. Printed paper on wooden frame. 128

Figures  ix



8.6 8.7 9.1 9.2

9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 11.1

11.2

11.3

11.4 11.5

11.6 11.7 11.8

Folding fan, 1790. Printed paper on ivory frame. 130 Folding fan, 1787. Printed paper on rosewood frame. 130 ‘Elixir de Sainte-Hélène.’ Seditious liqueur label. 138 Traces left by a seditious gingerbread showing the effigy of the Jesuit-King, seized in Metz in 1827. 140 Indian ink and paper copy of a coin debasing the effigy of Charles X, found in Loudun (Vienne) in 1827. 141 Piece of seditious fabric seized by the police in Bas-Rhin in 1824. 141 Seditious statuette with a dual effigy of Louis XVIII and Napoléon. 143 Seditious fleur-de-lys drawn on folded paper and seized in Toulouse, 1819. 144 Le mineur à table (around 1900). The postcard shows a family of miners inside their home. 156 Le mineur à table (detail). Various kitchen utensils, including pans and tong. 157 La toilette du mineur (around 1900). 158 Abscon. La fosse ‘La pensée’ (around 1900). Children posing with their hoops. 159 Denain. Un groupe de cafus (around 1900). Women wearing their work clothes and clogs. 160 ‘Jean Roy de Congo, à la tête de ses armées et le premier fait Chrétien. Taken from l’Histoire des Voyages’ in Recueil d’estampes, représentant les grades, les rangs & les dignités, suivant le costume de toutes les nations.171 ‘Une curieuse tombe moderne . . . d’un “civilisé” ’ [A curious modern grave . . . of a ‘Civilized’ person], Katanga, Belgian Congo, November 1933. 174 ‘Un roitelet africain’ [An African petty king], from Henri-Nicolas Frey and Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (illus.), Illustrations de Côte occidentale d’Afrique: vues, scènes, croquis (Paris: Marpon et Flammarion, 1890). 178 Chief with a medal: ‘Grand Chef des Bekalelwe.’ Yakaumbu, Kabinda (Belgian Congo), Postcard, 1910s. 180 Couple converted to Christianity. ‘Un jeune ménage à Brazzaville, Congo français’ [A young married couple in Brazzaville, French Congo], 1890s. 181 Monseigneur Augouard in full regalia in Brazzaville, c. 1900. Fonds Augouard, Congo. 183 Catalogue of La Belle Jardinière, Paris for French and foreign colonies, 1921. 184 Club of ‘evolved people,’ amateur photograph, c. 1930, Boma (?), Belgian Congo. 185

x  Figures

11.9 ‘Congo Brazzaville. Boys Loango habillés à l’Européenne’ [Loango ‘Boys’ dressed in European style], postcard, Vialle photographer, Brazzaville, printed in France by Meyrignac et Puydebois, c. 1905. 11.10 Congo français. Le contre-maître Casinga à Tuba (Rivière Kouilou), [French Congo. The foreman Casinga in Tuba (Kouilou river)], postcard, printed by Albert Bergeret et Cie, in Nancy, France, 1907. 11.11 Party in the ‘native village’ (village indigène) in Brazzaville, amateur photograph, 1920s. 11.12 Loanda. Carnival of Cabindas, Angola, 1910s. 11.13 The Sapeur Bachelor on the Boulevards of Paris, end of the 1970s. 14.1 Dănilă Prepeleac. Adaptation of the story written by Ion Creanga (1955). 14.2 Censored sequences in the script of the diafilm ‘Feudal castles in our homeland’ (1958). 14.3 Mihai Voievod Viteazul (1975). 14.4 Frame from ‘The peasant revolt of 1907.’ 15.1 The copy of the original spear is made of a double head: a flat pointed head fashioned in an unidentified metal and a long and flat metal head used as a hoe to hunt animals in their burrows.

187

189 191 195 199 244 245 249 252

259

CONTRIBUTORS

Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding is Maître de conférences (Associate Professor) of Eight-

eenth-Century British Studies and a member of the Centre d’Études en ­Civilisations Langues et Littératures Étrangères (CECILLE: EA 4074) at the U ­ niversity of Lille. Her research focuses on eighteenth-century British art and cultural history, visual and material culture, the fashion for chinoiserie and the ­representation of the Orient in British art. She is the author of Les voyages du capitaine James Cook, 1768–1779 (2020) and La Chine dans l’imaginaire anglais des Lumières, 1685–1798 (2016). Gil Bartholeyns is Maître de conférences (Associate Professor) at the University of Lille and a member of Institut de Recherche Historique du Septentrion (IRHiS: UMR 8529) specialized in medieval visual culture and in the material culture of pre-industrial Europe. He is joint editor-in-chief of Techniques and Cultures and an active member of several editorial boards, including Entre temps (Collège de France), Modes pratiques and Terrain. His publications include Image et transgression au Moyen Âge, with Pierre-Olivier Dittmar and Vincent Jolivet (2008), Politiques visuelles (2016) and, recently, a novel, Deux kilos deux (2019). Luc Bourgeois is Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of CaenNormandy (Centre Michel de Boüard-CRAHAM). He is editor of the journal Archéologie médiévale and of the collection Publications du CRAHAM (Presses universitaires de Caen). His research is primarily focused on the habitat and symbolic objects associated with medieval elites. Manuel Charpy is a Chargé de recherche (Associate Research Professor) with

the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Director of the research institute InVisu (USR 3103). His research concerns the links between

xii  Contributors

material cultures and social identities during the industrial age, in France, the UK, the USA and western and central Africa. Laurence Douny is an anthropologist and research associate at the Humboldt Uni-

versity, Berlin. Her work lies at the intersection of the history and anthropology of techniques, the indigenous science of materials, and design. She is the author of Living in a Landscape of Scarcity: Materiality and cosmology in West Africa (2014) and co-authored with Urmila Mohan The Material Subject. Rethinking Bodies and Objects in Motion (2021). Christopher Fletcher is a Chargé de recherche (Associate Research Professor) with the CNRS, affiliated to the research centre IRHiS (UMR 8529), University of Lille. He specializes in late medieval political culture and the history of masculinity. He has so far published Richard II: Manhood, youth and politics, 1377–99 (2008), G ­ overnment and Political Life in England and France, c. 1300–c. 1500 with Jean-Philippe Genet and John Watts (2015) and The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe with Sean Brady, Rachel E. Moss and Lucy Riall (2018). Éric Fournier is a Maître de conférences (Associate Professor) in the social

and cultural history of nineteenth-century France at the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne). He is the author of Paris en ruines. Du Paris haussmannien au Paris communard (2007), Cité du sang (2008), La belle juive: D’Ivanhoé à la Shoah (2011), La commune n’est pas morte: Les usages politiques du passé de 1871 à nos jours (2013) and most recently La critique des armes: une histoire d’objets révolutionnaires (2019). Emmanuel Fureix is Professor of Contemporary History at the Université de

Paris-Est, Créteil. He works on the political and cultural history of the nineteenth century, with a particular interest in images, emotions and gestures. He has published La France des larmes. Deuils politiques à l’âge romantique (2009), which won the Prix Chateaubriand, La modernité désenchantée. Relire l’histoire du XIXe siècle français, with François Jarrige (2015), and more recently L’oeil blessé. Politiques d’iconoclasme après la Révolution française (2019). Alexandra Ilina is Lecturer in the French department, University of Bucharest, Romania. Her main research focus is on medieval literature, with a penchant for French Arthurian texts and their visual dimension, heraldry and medievalism. Her PhD thesis was recently published by Classiques Garnier: La hiérarchie: entre texte et image dans le Tristan en Prose (2020). Matthew McCormack is Professor of History and Head of the Graduate School at the University of Northampton. His books include The Independent Man: Citizenship and Gender Politics in Georgian England (2005), Embodying the Militia in Georgian England (2015) and Citizenship and Gender in Britain, 1688–1928 (2019).

Contributors  xiii

Adrien Quièvre is a PhD candidate in history and musicology at the research

centre IRHiS, University of Lille. His research focuses on the uses of sound and music during strikes and workers revolts in nineteenth-century France. He recently published an article on the political spaces of the soundscape in the collection Paysages sensoriels: approche pluridisciplinaires, edited by Véronique Mehla and Laura Péaud (2019). Julie Renou recently completed her PhD in archaeological sciences at the Univer-

sity of Bordeaux Montaigne, specialized in the analysis of material cultures of the early Middle Ages through the observation of metallic artefacts, specifically ornamental objects. Through the study of jewellery she investigates power and gender relations, the question of representations and the circulation of so-called ‘precious’ goods during this period. Jean-Baptiste Santamaria is Maître de conférences (Associate Professor) in Medi-

eval History at the University of Lille, affiliated to the IRHiS research centre. On the basis of sources from Artois and the lands of the late medieval dukes of Burgundy, he explores the different ramifications of princely government, from the mastery of technical knowledge to the daily life of the court. He recently published Le secret du prince. Gouverner par le secret (2019), which won the Prix de la Dame à la Licorne and the Prix du Livre d’histoire du Sénat. Mathilde Semal is a PhD candidate in the history of art at the Université

Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She dedicated her master’s thesis to the cultural and social history of eighteenth-century fans. Her PhD thesis now plans to study the issues and representations of exoticism in the visual arts of the southern Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She is interested in particular in the decorative arts and is concerned with combining stylistic, iconological and sociological, and anthropological approaches. Jonathan Thomas is a PhD candidate at the Centre de Recherche sur les Arts et le Langage (CRAL) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. He works on the political uses of phonograph records and, more generally, the audible dimension of political practices, in an approach which combines history, anthropology and musicology. He has published his work on the political uses of music, song and records in the journals Volume!, Analitica and Transposition, and has recently published his first book La propagande par le disque. Jean-Marie Le Pen, éditeur phonographique (2020).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Objects, things or materiality is now such a well-established theme in the social sciences that when I suggested to one of the contributors to this volume that a footnote introducing Actor-Network Theory might be helpful for the uninitiated, his first reaction was that this risked seeming ridiculous: ‘As if to say, “Heh, you know, it’s Latour, John Law, Bloor.” There has been absolutely no sociological theory better known in the last thirty years.’ Yet although the material turn now seems to bestride the world, or at least the social sciences, triumphant, its influence on political or social history, as opposed to cultural history, is perhaps not as clear as this might imply. This is partly a result of the incomplete or at least relatively recent victory in these sub-disciplines of the assumed pre-existing hermeneutic: that of semiotics and language-as-a-system. As a political historian, interested in both the effects of language on action and on the social history of politics, it seemed to me, at least, that historians had only recently started to integrate discourse, ideas and culture into their account of past societies, and that the material turn was even less advanced in its influence. After a little friendly discussion, we put in an explanatory footnote. This book is the result of a project involving primarily historians but also archaeologists, anthropologists and politologues, to investigate what focusing on everyday objects can contribute to an historical understanding of politics. It provides a series of case studies which re-orientate our view of the political in a way distinct from, but complementary to, the study of political institutions, the social history of politics and the analysis of discourse. It was made possible by generous support from the University of Lille and from the Institut de Recherche Historique du Septentrion (IRHiS), a mixed CNRS-University of Lille research unit (UMR 8589). The majority of the cases studied are drawn from France, between the early Middle Ages and the twentieth century, although individual chapters also consider the Congo, Burkina Faso, Romania and Britain. The University of

Acknowledgements  xv

Lille funded the initial three-year project ‘Everyday Political Cultures’ (2017–19) of which ‘Everyday Political Objects’ was one thematic strand. Together with IRHiS and the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, the university also provided generous support towards translating the 8 out of 16 chapters which were originally written in French. This translation was undertaken by Adrian Morfee and Anita Conrade. Most importantly of all, however, IRHiS provided the opportunity to develop this project in an intellectually stimulating environment, which is, moreover, far from being an ivory tower, tightly entangled as it is with a hard-working, public university. This book could not have existed without the scientific input of Gil Bartholeyns, Laurent Brassart, Manuel Charpy, Esther Dehoux, Elodie LecuppreDesjardin, Matthieu de Oliveira, Thomas Golsenne, Sylvain Lesage and Mathieu Vivas, nor without the benevolent oversight of Stéphane Michonneau and Charles Mériaux, and the technical support of Christine Aubry, Martine Duhamel and Julie Lemoine. Thanks are also due to Karen Harvey, and to the four readers for Routledge (including Rebecca Spang and Jonathan Spangler) for their incisive comments at crucial moments. Christopher Fletcher Lille, November 2020

1 INTRODUCTION Useful things Christopher Fletcher

This book aims to show how everyday objects play a certain kind of role in politics, which is specific to material things. It hopes, in the process, to show how this helps us to understand what politics is. Materiality in general and objects in particular have gradually made their way into the historian’s toolbox since the 1990s. So far, however, the distinctive contribution that methods developed for the study of objects can make to our understanding of politics has yet to be fully realized. Much stimulating work, for example, has been devoted to the way that everyday objects and forms of dress become symbols of the bearer’s or the wearer’s political beliefs; how they can display demands for change, or opposition to change, in forms of government and social organisation.1 Research on the cusp of cultural, economic and political history has examined how changing political regimes inflected the relationship between political power and furniture design, for example, or the tension between perceptions of the value of money and the material forms it takes.2 Following the lead of economists and anthropologists, historians have tracked the flow of commodities for interactions, which since they concern power relations, sometimes on a global scale, might be thought of as political.3 In all this work, however, the meaning of the political has been taken for granted in a way which limits its usefulness for more distant periods and beyond Western Europe. It also risks introducing an element of teleology even when dealing with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century West. This is a pity, since historians of politics have much to learn from the study of objects, and even more from the study of everyday objects. If we talk about politics in terms of our common-sense understanding of it, we tend to focus on phenomena which seem to us self-evidently political in a way which risks anachronism.4 In the present day, politics is usually understood either in a ‘narrow sense’ as denoting the world of politicians, public policy and the state, or else in a ‘broad sense’ denoting competition for control over any human grouping. Both have their advantages and their limitations as tools for studying past

2  Christopher Fletcher

societies. Focusing on the nearest equivalents to the former in past societies carries the clearest risk of anachronism. The search for the origins of the ‘modern state,’ useful as it has been for comparative purposes, risks privileging certain institutions over other social phenomena which were at least as important at the time.5 The solution frequently offered is to take up contemporary terminology: what actors in past societies called politics. One problem with this move, however, is that today and in the past, much which might be identified as politics has not been described by participants or contemporary observers as such. In the modern West, political scientists note the phenomenon of ‘avoiding politics’ in which agents actively avoid using language or raising issues considered to be ‘political,’ even when they deal with matters which raise questions of general import and even when they seek to influence government policy.6 In late medieval Western Europe, by comparison, the division between ethics, economics and politics was a commonplace of Latinate expert discourse after the twelfth century re-discovery of Aristotle, but it did not become at all common in the vernacular until the fifteenth century. ‘Politics’ was discussed in terms of negotiating common or mutual interest in a way which did not involve a specific, specialized, ‘political’ vocabulary.7 As this and other historical examples demonstrate, it would be wrong to limit our inquiry by only considering phenomena to be political if participants or contemporary observers describe them as such, especially as one common political tactic is to deny that one is acting politically. Falling back on the second, ‘broad sense’ definition, however, risks losing ‘politics’ some of its descriptive usefulness, for one of two very different reasons. On the one hand, a ‘broad sense’ conception of politics might be used to justify external intervention in areas which had been kept aside from politics in a certain society at a certain moment. One example of this is the feminist dictum ‘the personal is political,’ another the environmentalist claim to intervene in decisions which had been treated as solely scientific or technical.8 Indeed, in the sophisticated development of such a view of politics fitted for the present-day West, some political theorists have taken the identification of common interests and the raising of these interests to a general level as the marker of true politics.9 Politics, or rather politicization, is the act of introducing new areas of contention into a political sphere with a definite institutional existence in the modern West. In fact, such definitions are somewhere in between a ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ sense, since they are themselves intended as political moves which seek to mark certain areas of human life as explicitly conflictual and hence legitimate areas for intervention. As such, they are not easy to adapt as a way of providing a means of discussing politics in past societies, although they do have the merit of underlining the permeability of this sphere. A more general, vernacular broad definition of ‘politics’ as competition for influence in any human grouping is certainly more adaptable, and hence less distorting of past realities, but it risks becoming so general as to lose the specifics of the political. In expressions such as ‘office politics,’ or in moves by social historians to broaden the use of this term to include all kinds of manifestations of ‘the social distribution and use of power,’ what seemed to be specific about politics in our

Introduction  3

usage is largely lost.10 If all human conflict and competition is politics, then politics loses a large part of the usefulness it possessed when used more narrowly, becoming an adaptable but consequently rather loose label for conflictuality, competition and strategic behaviour in any human grouping. Yet if politics should not be described in our own terms, and cannot be identified in all cases by the terms participants used, it is difficult to see how else it can be defined. Despite repeated efforts by political philosophers over the past two centuries to provide a broader definition of politics which is not centred on the state; it has proved difficult to provide one which commands general acceptance. The liberal or ‘Weberian’ conception of politics as competition to secure control of the state, and especially its monopoly of legitimate violence, has often been put into question, but each new approach to politics then proposed tends to retain the mark of the particular historical circumstances for which it was developed.11 Politics among those, like most historians, who are not political philosophers, is still most often conceived either in a ‘narrow sense’ with reference to the state, or in historical societies those institutions which seem to resemble it, or else in a ‘broad sense’ as the enterprise of securing influence within any human grouping. It is here that everyday political objects come in. Everyday political objects help to reveal the articulations between the ‘narrow sense’ and ‘broad sense’ politics, in part because they frequently migrate between state politics, the specialized political sphere or what most closely resembles it in a given society, and other arenas which can be taken to be political latu sensu – labour relations; the family; religion; and various kinds of face-to-face communities – or which simply do not appear to be political at all. A case drawn from recent history, which emerged whilst this project was in progress, gives a first idea of how these propositions might be put into practice. On 30 July 2008, the French government issued a decree modifying the Code de la route to specify, among other things, that drivers must equip themselves with a reflective triangle and a hi-visibility jacket for use in the case of a breakdown or emergency stop.12 In practice, this meant that all drivers were supposed to buy these items and to place the jacket, in particular, somewhere convenient within their vehicle: the article specified that it should be ‘to hand’ (à portée de main). From then on, it was not unusual to see this item displayed prominently in more modest or utility vehicles, often over the passenger seat, in a way which quickly incurred condescension on internet forums and beyond.13 Ten years later, however, this everyday object suddenly acquired an enormous political charge. Between October  2017 and October 2018, the price of petrol increased by 15% and that of diesel, which had previously been much cheaper as a result of a preferential tax rate, by 23%.14 Between May and November 2018 an online petition launched against the rise in fuel prices received over a million signatures.15 Far from giving ground in the face of this protest, in September 2018 the French government announced its intention to increase energy taxes by 11.5% from 1 January 2019.16 As a result, the movement hardened, and in the course of October calls for a national blockade beginning on 17 November spread quickly through the internet and increasingly through

4  Christopher Fletcher

conventional media. It was during the build-up to this movement that the gilet jaune or high-vis jacket made its first political appearance. On 24 October, Ghislain Coutard, a 36-year-old maintenance technician, posted a video in which he took his hi-vis jacket from the seat next to him, apparently at random, and suggested using it as a sign for the movement: ‘That will motivate [people] and say: “Putain, we’re going to see ‘gilets jaunes’ everywhere on the dashboards, it’s a sign, it will maybe really move. It’s not just words in the air.” ’17 In the months that followed, the gilet jaune became the uniform of those participating in regular Saturday blockades at roundabouts across the country, and in the unlicensed demonstrations in major cities which accompanied them. It would also become the name of the participants themselves: they were the gilets jaunes. For the early twenty-first century historian or cultural critic, it might seem that what we have here is a semiotic intervention, an attempt to do politics by manipulating the system of signs (‘it’s a sign’), comparable to the role of discourse and language in many political contexts.18 Yet, quite apart from the reaction we might imagine this provoking from the gilets jaunes themselves, with their contempt for ‘words in the air,’ closer analysis reveals that this is not the whole story. The gilets jaunes show instead how a familiar object, primarily characterized by its use value, might acquire a new meaning and a distinctively political use. Hi-vis jackets did have symbolic connotations before the autumn of 2018, and these definitely contributed to their usefulness as a new political symbol. But it was ultimately the fact that such jackets were technically conceived to be seen from a distance, and that all drivers were legally obliged to own one, which suggested its new use and hence its new symbolic value. In terms of cognitive psychology, it was the ‘perceived affordances’ of this object, the things that it could apparently be used for, which suggested its new, political use and hence its new, political meaning.19 We can further assert, using terms which have become widespread amongst anthropologists, archaeologists and more recently historians, that with its political appropriation the ‘biography’ or ‘cultural biography’ of this particular object entered a new phase.20 This phase was distinctively ‘political’ in our terms, in that it involved intervention in what is assumed in modern Western societies to be ‘politics’ in the narrow or strict sense: the world of public policy and the action of the state. The gilets jaunes made this intervention, paradoxically, by insisting that they were exterior to the institutionalized political sphere, a characteristic which aligned them with the contemporary category of ‘populism.’ Indeed one of the characteristics of the movement of the gilets jaunes was how the leaders which emerged were violently rejected the moment they sought institutional legitimacy or agreed to attend negotiations with the government, even though many of them subsequently remained public figures.21 The case of the gilets jaunes is a useful starting point for considering a number of questions which have come to concern the historical profession in recent years as well as the contribution these might make to historical understandings of politics. In some circles, the steadily increasing interest in materiality, the study of objects and material culture in recent decades has been seen as a means of putting

Introduction  5

into question the ‘linguistic turn’ conventionally dated between the 1980s and 1990s.22 A ‘material turn’ has been proposed as one of the means to move beyond an alleged academic orthodoxy in which language is supposedly conceived of as both an all-encompassing and, rather contradictorily, infinitely flexible structure which must be negotiated prior to understanding any past society.23 In fact, the ‘material turn’ and the interest in objects is better considered as complementary to the ‘linguistic turn’ rather than superseding it or cancelling it out.24 Nonetheless, it does have to be recognized that focusing on the perceived affordances and biography of objects, for example, and, more radically, on their ‘agency’ does involve a more fundamental revision of our models for conceiving historical processes than is sometimes allowed.25 Objects and materiality cannot simply be incorporated into existing models of interpretation developed for the analysis of language and discourse. Objects, like images, are something different, and we need a different set of methods to understand them. This, too, has an important contribution to make to how we historicize past phenomena, including politics, in a fundamentally different fashion from discursive approaches, in a way that contributes in a modest way to understanding comparable phenomena today. The contributions to this volume examine a series of historical case studies, using objects as a means to develop new approaches to understanding politics. A number of themes emerged organically in the course of the presentation, discussion, translation and revision of these chapters. These themes are independent of any pre-existing theoretical schema, even if they draw on and adapt a number of existing theoretical currents. One of these, close to the notion of the ‘biography’ of objects, is the social mobility of everyday objects. Another, recalling ‘perceived affordances,’ is the primacy of use, and the different way an everyday, functional object might be political than a more exclusively symbolic one. Many of the objects discussed here were familiar both in elite and in ‘popular’ contexts, either simultaneously, since the objects were useful for a number of different social groups at the same time, or at different periods, as objects which were once associated with particular social groups were taken up and re-used by others. A number of the authors also draw on Alfred Gell’s theorisation of ‘agency’ as the capacity for social action ascribed to an object, even of the extent to which some objects may be considered to be veritable ‘persons,’26 but what is perhaps more marked across the volume is the affiliation of almost all the contributors with Gell’s project of demonstrating the limits of semiotics as a way of understanding the social efficacy of objects. Although some objects, especially art objects, might be conceived of by both artists and recipients as a means of transmitting messages through the mastery of a common system of interpretation, Gell insists that the symbolic value of an object is rarely if ever determined solely by its position in a system of signs.27 Similarly, in the chapters which follow, use is something independent of meaning, a product of particular techniques, social practices and specific historical circumstances, which can, however, influence and provide new meaning. In the process, useful objects provide both specific means of overtly exercising political power and also ways of exerting political influence while obscuring or denying the desire to do so.

6  Christopher Fletcher

The political consequences of the social mobility of everyday objects can be considered from the point of view of the biography of a single object, or of the typical trajectory of a particular kind of object, or else as the biography of a type of object over the long term. Considering a broad category of objects over the long term in the longest chapter in this volume, Manuel Charpy begins by examining how the practice of reselling second-hand European clothes in the colonial Congo initially made their recipients seem absurd and inferior in Western eyes, as clothes were, from a colonial point of view, used in a way which seemed to misunderstand their symbolic value. How the political significance of Western clothing changed emerges as Charpy expands his perspective to the biography of this category of objects between the nineteenth century and the present day. From a marker of submission to colonial norms, high levels of expenditure on imported European clothing became a means to wrong-foot and undermine those who positioned themselves as their superiors. Applying comparable methods to the coloniser, Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding offers an explicitly political reading of the flow of commodities in the context of eighteenth-century British colonialism. She considers how objects such as porcelain tea things included teapots, tea tables and also fans with oriental themes were appropriated in eighteenth-century Britain, often by women, in a way which inscribed colonial politics in the everyday. AlayracFielding, in considering a broad category of objects, considers themes which run through these chapters, including the agency which could be ascribed to objects, such as fans and snuff boxes, perceived not merely as a tools but as an extension of the person who used them, conditioning in turn what they could do. In a theme which recurs throughout this volume, she notes the way that portable objects combined intimacy and familiarity with a potential for concealment and revelation, which made them particularly effective as a means of mobilizing political sentiments that found themselves marginalized. Moving the focus to a more restricted category of objects yields revealing comparisons about how the use value of an object inflects its political meaning in different ways as it is used by different social groups. Luc Bourgeois considers horns used as musical instruments, which also migrated between social groups in the course of the Middle Ages. At first associated with the aristocratic pursuits of war and hunting, and with the sounding of the alert on the walls of fortifications or on ships, horns were an important symbol of noble power in the central Middle Ages. A horn might be used, for example, to symbolize the gift of privileges of liberties from a lord to a town, with the original object or a copy of it being preserved and regularly sounded in certain towns into the modern era. Yet this symbolism marked a fossilization of past use, since with the return of metal trumpets and other more sophisticated instruments in the later Middle Ages, the horn no longer served to symbolize aristocratic power, becoming instead the instrument of pilgrims, shepherds and tradesmen. Julie Renou, meanwhile, considers a class of objects, rings, whose use and meaning could change over a human being’s lifespan, or over several lifetimes, as they were passed from one owner to another, accruing meaning with each step. Rings have tended to be classed in terms of the expense of the materials

Introduction  7

they were made from, ascribing high status materials to high status individuals, and cheaper stones and metals to lesser folk. Yet Renou demonstrates the social mobility of these objects. Rings made with copper alloy or with a blue-tinted glass paste ‘jewel’ could serve comparable functions of creating or strengthening social ties and power relationships for the noble women who feature in Gregory of Tours, or for the lesser individuals who were interred with comparable objects. In a study of the social mobility and political resonance of a particularly revealing type of object, Mathilde Semal examines the case of women’s fans in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France. An object with a simple use value as a means of cooling down its owner, fans had also long served functions as a tool of seduction and self-presentation strongly associated with the aristocracy, while also providing a decorative ground which could relay news and political messages. With the simplification of methods of production at the time of the Revolution, the fan, after a brief eclipse, returned as a means of transmitting a far broader range of messages, first pro-Revolutionary, and then counter-Revolutionary. In this case, use in itself did not dictate the message, but the fan evolved with the aims and tastes of its different owners. Even here, the fan’s technical composition as something which could be opened or closed, wholly or in part, which could be seen close to or from a distance, meant that its materiality inflected how it could be used, and what messages could be delivered, to whom and with what effect. Alongside the biography of an object, a recurring theme in this volume is the way an object’s use value and ‘perceived affordances’ suggest possibilities for the exercise of power and dominance, which in turn inflect its meaning, in a way which is not fully understandable from a purely semiotic perspective. Jean-Baptiste Santamaria, for example, considers how the political resonance of the coffer or chest as a symbol of princely or noble power in the later Middle Ages was inflected by its everyday use. Coffers served to stock money, which primarily meant silver or gold coin, or objects made of these metals, in a way which evaded paper accounting. Coffers thus served the prince as a reserve of power which no underling could regulate, and it was for this reason that the image of the prince dipping into his coffer to reward his followers was so powerful. Yet at the same time, this object’s use made it ambiguous and a source of tension, standing both for good management and the prince’s miserliness. Laurence Douny examines another charged political object, chosen for its ‘perceived affordances,’ which although it was initially mobilized to reinforce the dominance of the powerful, nevertheless invoked and continues to invoke the compromises and controversies which underlie their power. Drawing on interviews in the field, she analyzes the political resonances of a Fulbe spear in the village of Douroula in western Burkina Faso from the seventeenth century to the present day. Initially taken as a trophy by a Marka archer from a Fulbe horseman he had killed with a poisoned arrow, the spear was of a type adapted for the slave hunting that they practised, designed to intimidate or immobilize their prey. This particular spear, adopted as part of the symbolic property of Douroula at its founding, regularly used in collective rituals, became an ambiguous symbol after the Marka founder of the village was killed by his own brother, who seized

8  Christopher Fletcher

power in alliance with the Fulbe. Even after its replacement by a copy at an undated but acknowledged moment in the past, the spear has been used in regular sacrificial ceremonies which enact the political tensions and the political constitution of Douroula, in a manner which is inseparable from the spear’s original use. More simply, focusing on the everyday use of objects which acquire political meaning assists historians in their most fundamental task: understanding what was going on. Éric Fournier examines the seemingly arbitrary use of the Browning gun in the socialist newspaper La Guerre Sociale in the early 1910s to characterize ‘Citizen Browning,’ an initially mysterious socialist figure, perhaps a man or perhaps the weapon itself, who provides cool-headed resistance to the violence of police or strike-breakers. Fournier shows how after the generalization of the right to bear arms after 1885, coupled with the development of mass industrial production in France and Belgium, firearms became a mundane object for the last time in French civilian life. The Browning gun was both readily available, was advertised to have a firepower which surpassed that of the police, and could be easily smuggled in from Belgium if the import of guns was banned at some future point. It was this mundane context which made the figure of ‘Citizen Browning’ effective. Also with the aim of understanding what was ‘at stake’ in a particular conflict, Adrien Quièvre analyzes the use of mundane and familiar objects in mine workers’ charivari on the margins of a major strike in the Anzin coalfields, near Valenciennes, in 1884. Although this strike was marked by a degree of union organization which minimized the more spontaneous outbreaks of contestation or violence which had marked earlier movements, on a number of occasions miners who returned to work were targeted by charivari or ‘rough music.’ Drawing on the emerging field of sound studies, Quièvre analyzes the objects used to make the noise which accompanied these events. He demonstrates how, although their affordances as means of creating noise were important, the everyday uses of the objects chosen carried their own messages. In particular, they used objects associated with the domestic life of miners and their families in a way which reintroduced miners’ wives, sidelined by the new, exclusively masculine organization of the labour movement. Cauldrons, pans and clogs served to make noise whilst reintroducing women, challenging the division between paid work and the unpaid labour, which enabled it, and which was closely regulated by the mine company in its role as landlord. Footwear, indeed, has often provided powerful political objects in different contexts, again with clearly gendered connotations, notably by the way that the material existence shaped the body of the wearer, the way they moved and held themselves. Matthew McCormack examines the complex structure of political meanings attached to different kinds of shoes in Georgian England. Fashionable French footwear for men, which often had wooden soles, shaped how the wearer walked, or rather did not walk very much. Like female footwear for the well-to-do, which in this period consisted of delicate pumps with a limited lifespan, these wooden or part-wooden shoes were impractical for walking over anything but a short distance. Leather boots, on the other hand, were adapted primarily for riding, making the wearer mobile over the countryside or on the road but to a limited extent on

Introduction  9

foot. They were thus excellently adapted markers of rough, i­ndependent ‘country’ masculinity. As male leather footwear for the better-off developed, it became more practical for walking in town. McCormack suggests that this produced a more gendered form of footwear, which marked the moral and even physical superiority of Englishmen of the propertied or professional classes, over the French-influenced court, women and the bulk of the population who largely wore ill-fitting wooden footwear, or footwear with wooden soles, regardless of sex. In mine workers’ homes, in a protester’s pocket, on a man’s feet or in a woman’s tea set, political objects drew their power from the way they mixed with the everyday, the way they were familiar, ordinary, even anodyne. This characteristic of political objects extends to everyday things which might at first seem to be simple devices for the transmission of political messages which could be reduced to language or discourse but which turn out to have a particular material and even bodily aspect. Alexandra Ilina analyzes how the use of still film strips or ‘diafilm’ in communist Romania served to transmit messages which the historian can analyze as translating the changing nature of state ideology in the 1970s and 1980s, as Ceausescu’s regime gradually adopted a nationalist ideology tinged with medievalism in place of earlier more orthodox Soviet propaganda. Yet to focus on the message without taking into account the everyday medium loses much of their power, since these film strips had no associated audio: the script was read aloud, usually in a family environment, often by an adult to children, in a way which made them less aggressive and more immersive than a newsreel would have been. Jonathan Thomas likewise describes how the changing uses of recorded audio, notably in the form of vinyl records, inflected the way it was used by groups and parties seeking political influence in the ‘narrow’ sense, first on the left, and subsequently on the far right. While records were initially used to deliver political speeches, requiring conscious listening and engagement by the audience, politicized record companies increasingly made use of music as a means of transmitting messages to a less attentive audience. Initially used by groups close to the Socialist and Communist Parties, after the Second World War similar methods were adopted by the Société d’Etudes et de Relations Publiques (SERP), a record company directed by the far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. Musical recordings associated with the Third Reich or colonial Algeria were published as historical documents, themselves submerged in a catalogue of political recordings more acceptable in mainstream politics. The aim was to make extreme right messages seem anodyne or at least commonplace in a period in which they were politically marginalized. The biography and social mobility of objects, their use value and perceived affordances, the way that they mix with the everyday and familiar, shaping bodies as well as minds: all these factors give them a political power which is stronger for not being uniquely political. Indeed, the way in which everyday objects seem self-­evidently apolitical or even anti-political makes them particularly effective as a means to intervene in the specialized political sphere or politics in the ‘narrow sense.’ As we saw in the case of coffers or a captured spear, everyday objects mediate agency in a way which obscures its originator. Faced with the same objects, multiple

10  Christopher Fletcher

possibilities present themselves for the interpretation of where the demands they make might come from. As Gil Bartholeyns discusses in the case of the household regulations of the king of France in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, human beings could easily be placed at the service of objects: drinking vessels, tableware, bedding and hunting boots. In a way comparable to but not identical with written regulations, the objects of the royal household carried an agency which might be perceived to originate with the king, since it was in his service that they were supposed to act. Yet as often in royal or princely rule, the king’s agency was considerably less immediate and even real than that of the officers, laws or objects which were held to made it manifest. Even in the case of the ‘seditious objects’ from the Restoration (1814–1830) analyzed by Emmanuel Fureix, there is nothing self-­ evident about ascribing the agency behind them to the human being who made them, the ‘artist’ in Gell’s terms. These objects, according to the police at least, had the power to provoke political movements and riots at the mere sight of a coin defaced to portray Charles X in Jesuit robes or a liqueur bottle decorated with the image of Napoleon. Here the ascription or ‘abduction of agency’ is very much the work of the police, even when the objects in question were clearly constructed with political intent: a statuette of a portly Louis XVIII, for example, where the top could be removed to reveal the bust of Napoleon.28 Such objects were deliberately mixed by the shopkeepers with royalist objects, or were kept to the back of the shop, so that they could argue that the agency was somebody else’s. Indeed, they were clearly sometimes in good faith, as is demonstrated by the sometimes highly imaginative misinterpretations of objects which fell into police hands, giving them a seditious agency which was neither the doing of the maker nor of the vender. This book thus examines a series of historical case studies across a very long time scale, using objects as a means to develop different approaches to understanding politics where existing definitions of the political prove inadequate. A number of themes emerge clearly. The first is the way that the biography of an everyday object or category of objects, and especially the way they can migrate from one social, geographical or political context to another, can make them important recipients of political meaning. Many of the objects discussed here were familiar both in elite and in ‘popular’ contexts, either simultaneously, since the objects were useful for a number of different social groups at the same time, or at different periods, as objects which were once associated with particular social groups were taken up and re-used by others. A second is the way that the use value of objects confers on them political significance and political meanings which are not just a function of discourse. Each chapter in this book demonstrates in a variety of ways that an object’s use is distinct from its meaning: use is a product of particular techniques, social practices and specific historical circumstances which are not reducible to language or discourse. But they also each show how use can influence or create new meaning, new symbols and new discourses. In the process, useful objects provide both specific means of overtly exercising political power and also ways of exerting political influence, while obscuring or denying the desire to do so. The everyday objects studied here acquired part of their political power precisely from

Introduction  11

being ordinary, familiar and taken for granted. Their very banality or obviousness invited an inattentiveness and even an intimacy which facilitates the denial or the avoidance of politics. These qualities could be used by dominant groups, by nobles, conquerors and the winners of earlier conflicts, but they also allowed them to fulfil a role often neglected in analyses of politics. Everyday objects can be powerful receptacles for the possibilities for political action on the part of losing, dominated or marginalized groups, those who are not supposed to take part in politics, or who refuse or reject the political.

Notes 1 See e.g. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture and the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Richard Wrigley, The Politics of Appearances: Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002); Leora Auslander, Cultural Revolutions: The Politics of Everyday Life in Britain, North America and France (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009). 2 Leora Auslander, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Rebecca L. Spang, Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 3 Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (eds.), The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World (London and New York: Routledge, 2016); John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). 4 For a brief discussion of the general problem, see Christopher Fletcher, ‘Manhood, Freedom and Nation in Later Medieval England’, Edad Media: Revista de Historia, 21 (2020), 81–111, pp. 82–84. 5 For a thorough-going critique, see R. R. Davies, ‘The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?’ Journal of Historical Sociology, 16 (2003), 280–300; Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, Le royaume inachevé des ducs de Bourgogne: XIVe-XVe siècles (Paris: Belin, 2016). 6 Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 7 Christopher Fletcher, ‘Politics’, in Jackson W. Armstrong, Peter Crooks and Andrea Ruddick (eds.), Using Concepts in Medieval History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). 8 For the latter, see esp. Bruno Latour, The Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Andrew Pickering, ‘Material Culture and the Dance of Agency’, in Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 191–120. 9 Camille Hamidi, ‘Éléments pour une approche interactionniste de la politisation: Engagement associatif et rapport au politique dans des associations locales issues de l’immigration’, Revue française de science politique, 56 (2006), 5–25. 10 For a useful discussion of ‘office politics’ along these lines, see Michael Dobson and Deborah Dobson, Enlightened Office Politics: Understanding, Coping with, and Winning the Game – Without Losing Your Soul (New York: AMACOM, 2001). For the latter citation and discussion, see Keith Wrightson, ‘The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England’, in Paul Griffiths, Adam Fox and Steve Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), pp. 10–46. 11 For an early challenge, see Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), esp. p. 20. Hamidi, ‘Éléments pour une approche interactionniste’, p.  10 surveys various propositions from the 1970s to the early 2000s, stressing variously an appeal to general values, rights and justice, identity as a group and conflictuality, notably: Jean Leca, ‘Le repérage du politique’, Projets, 71

12  Christopher Fletcher

(1971), 11–24; Hanna Pitkin, ‘Justice: On Relating Public and Private’, Political Theory, 9 (1981), 327–352; William Gamson, Talking Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 12 Décret no. 2008–754, art. 19, modifying the Code de la Route, art. R. 416–419. See . 13 See e.g. dated 14/8/2008; dated 23/1/2010 [Consulted May 2020]. 14 For what follows, see in general Laurent Jeanpierre, In Girum: Les leçons politiques des rond-points (Paris: La Découverte, 2019), esp. pp. 62–72. 15 ‘Gilets jaunes: la pétition de Priscillia Ludosky’, Le Parisien, 29 November 2018. 16 Jeanpierre, In Girum, p. 62. 17 Christopher-Cécil Garnier, ‘Le gilet jaune: d’un siège passager aux rues européennes’, Slate, 10 December  2018. : ‘Ça va motiver et dire: “Putain, on va croiser des ‘gilets jaunes’ partout sur les tableaux de bord, c’est un signe, ça va peut-être vraiment bouger. C’est pas que des paroles en l’air” ’. 18 Consider for example the analysis of the use of yellow by the gilets jaunes offered by the historian Michel Pastoureau in interviews given in November 2019 on the launch of his book Jaune: histoire d’une couleur (Paris: Seuil, 2019). See, for example, consulted November  2020. Pastoureau was here answering a journalist’s questions, his research project preceded these events, and he himself also offers non-semiotic, functional explanations for the use of yellow hi-vis jackets. Yet the ‘ready-made’ explanation he offers (yellow had not been used yet in [French] politics) does suggest the limitations of purely semiotic analysis to explain the force of everyday political objects. 19 Donald A. Norman, The Psychology of Everyday Things (New York: Basic Books, 1988). 20 Igor Kopytoff, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commodization as a Process’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 64–91; Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall, ‘The Cultural Biography of Objects’, World Archaeology, 31 (1999), 169–178; Ludovic Coupaye and Laurence Douny, ‘Dans la trajectoire des choses: Comparaison des approches francophones et anglophones contemporaines en anthropologie des techniques’, Techniques et Culture, 52–53 (2009), 12–39. 21 Jeanpierre, In Girum, pp. 63–65, 68. 22 See e.g. Randolph Starn, ‘A Historian’s Brief Guide to New Museum Studies’, American Historical Review, 110 (2005), 68–96, p. 80; Leora Auslander, ‘Beyond Words’, American Historical Review, 110 (2005), 1015–1045. 23 For a critique, see Caroline W. Bynum, ‘Perspectives, Connections and Objects: What’s Happening in History Now?’ Daedalus, 138 (2009), 71–86, pp. 73–74. 24 Ibid., pp. 78–80; Tom Johnson, ‘Medieval Law and Materiality: Shipwrecks, Finders, and Property on the Suffolk Coast, ca. 1380–1410’, American Historical Review, 120 (2015), 407–432. 25 Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) is the approach which most influences the chapters in this volume. 26 Gell, Art and Agency, pp. 8–9, 15–16, 22, 67–68. 27 Ibid., p. 66. 28 For abduction of agency, see Gell, Art and Agency, pp. 14–16.

2 RINGS OF POWER The interpretation of early medieval objects of adornment Julie Renou

Early medieval jewellery made from gold, silver and precious gems is commonly perceived as the appanage of the powerful, of chieftains and kings. Sporting objects of adornment, whether for everyday use or for grand occasions, was one way an individual, family, or even social group could display wealth. Studies of textual sources have shown the importance of belongings, including jewellery, and of assets more generally, in aristocratic praxis. The accumulation, exhibition and redistribution of jewellery participated in the social processes that marked and confirmed the position individuals and families held in community groups.1 As Laurent Feller observes: ‘belongings and assets are part of wealth. Owning belongings which in large quantities constitute assets amounts to being wealthy.’2 If wealth goes hand in hand with power, the display of precious goods was instrumental in generating and consolidating the strategic positions of the elites. This chapter considers how personal ornaments were deployed in the ‘broad-sense’ politics of power struggles between and within aristocratic groups. Jewellery and clothing were convenient movable goods which could be displayed to express one’s wealth in a day-to-day context, outside the more highly charged ceremonies of early medieval social life such as betrothal, marriage and burial, all while playing an important role in these, too. Given that texts provide few descriptions of clothing and adornment, however, another approach is necessary to study the appearance of the powerful. Specialists of the early Middle Ages can instead turn to the material record, basing their discussion on what are generally regarded as the most prestigious tombs, thanks largely to the quantity and the materials of the objects found there. Archaeology has mainly addressed the difficult topic of the power of elites through study of funereal contexts. Yet although ways of analyzing the material record, especially necropolises and funereal practices, have evolved over the past 20  years, belongings have remained trapped in an interpretive dead-end, based on debatable assumptions. Power is said to be expressed by the ‘wealth’ of the

14  Julie Renou

objects – by the materials, techniques and depositional practices used. Yet closer observation of the objects themselves reveals precious clues for renewing our conception of objects of power during the early Middle Ages, alongside the analysis of the specificities of the sepulchral contexts in which they were found.3 This chapter sets out some lines of enquiry into the implicit messages objects of adornment may communicate, focusing on the example of rings, a small, discreet accessory worn by both women and men.4

‘Precious’ belongings In France, interpreting objects from the early Middle Ages has been based on an ideal, modern image of personal belongings, the legacy of an otherwise superseded historiography of ‘fine objects.’ Although the sources say little about objects of adornment, analysis of objects has been grounded in scattered references to socalled precious metals and pieces of jewellery gleaned from textual sources. The resulting picture has been focused on materials, and at times on production techniques, seeking to fill in the gaps left by early medieval authors. This has resulted in a normative analytical framework based on a series of dualisms – expensive versus cheap materials, original objects versus poor quality copies, and so on. Gold, silver and gems are associated with elites, while copper alloys and glass paste stones are ascribed to the lowly. While this is not wrong per se, it is an extrapolation which needs qualifying if we are to account for the variety of practices archaeology can reveal. Rings, and bronze possessions more generally, are presented as a residual background noise from those with a standard of living below that of the elite, unable to acquire well-made objects and/or objects made from precious materials.5 Textual sources do indeed demonstrate the importance of gold, silver and gems, all of which were highly prized for their prestige in early medieval societies. Copper alloys, meanwhile, were regarded with suspicion.6 Nonetheless, the material evidence allows us to sketch out another part of the picture. Copper objects do occur among objects of adornment belonging to elites, but not to the most powerful, such as royal figures. Although some copper alloy artefacts were manufactured with great care, they are cursorily undervalued in studies in comparison to discoveries in gold or even silver, despite the fact that the latter were far rarer and are not to be found at all among the items found in certain necropolises. When a tomb yields only a few objects, this is promptly interpreted as proof that the interred were poor. This leads to a distorted interpretation of the material evidence, focusing on exceptional finds which monopolize scholars’ attention, to the detriment of more modest yet clearly present clues. Copper alloy items are often described as copies, imitations or else as having been produced for individuals of lesser status. They are, however, sometimes unique examples presenting major formal and decorative variations which are indicative of the technical prowess that went into their manufacture.7 The skill of the metalworker needs to be taken into account in any analysis of such an object. This includes the mastery of copper alloy recipes to make colours resembling the

Rings of power  15

aspect of gold, together with the work on any settings or decorations. The fact that metalworkers held a privileged position in early medieval societies is in itself suggestive. In Gaul, such workers enjoyed protection and tax advantages, and their production was monitored and structured by royal power.8 Their skill in metalwork gave them an important role in competition between elites, and hence in the production of a category of prestige goods. When Gregory of Tours relates that King Chilperic presented him with a basin made of gold and gems, he attributes the following words to him: ‘I made that to honour and ennoble the nation of the Franks; but I  shall make many more things if I am granted life.’9 It was long believed that this basin was actually made by Chilperic, but recent studies suggest this basin was probably commissioned by him, which would also have allowed him to present it as his personal work.10 We may view this episode as showing a powerful figure asserting his capacity to draw on the skills and metals of a qualified worker to fashion an object. The sole purpose the basin has in this instance is to exhibit the wealth and power of the person who commissioned it. In a similar way, we might posit that commissioning a jewel could be a highly symbolic act, even if the object was only an undecorated bronze ring. Individuals and families commissioned metalworkers, whose production was controlled and prized by elites. Irrespective of whether they were fashioned in gold, in copper alloy, in white metal alloy or in several different materials, their value was conditioned in advance, in part by the position the metalworker held in wealth competition among the elite. The estimated economic cost of an object and the quantitative study of artefacts deposited with the person interred are thus not enough to estimate their social status or level of wealth. Such approaches disconnect the object from its context and from the social framework in which it was produced and handled, which are precisely what constituted its value. For Maurice Godelier, precious objects must bestow and symbolize power, ‘materialize wealth . . ., independently of their various forms and actual raw materials.’11 Thus, the material characteristics of an item do not suffice to grant it the status of precious object, nor to endow it with power. The sociologist Thierry Bonnot sets out another potential line of enquiry: ‘there is no intrinsically valuable object; rather, objects are conditioned by actions – appropriations, exchanges, and practices – and by evolving judgements which depend on the context and history.’12 The value of an object may thus fluctuate, depending on the social framework of appraisal. Above all, it is not indexed on forms and materials. The characteristics of what constitutes preciousness have been fixed too rigidly due to the normative framework used by archaeology of the early Middle Ages for interpreting belongings. To get out of the interpretative impasse, it is necessary to look at the whole trajectory of the artefacts, from the origin of their materials to their deposit in the burials, including their daily use. The first difficulty is to get beyond the current appearance of artefacts when analyzing them. Unfortunately, the objects in question have by now corroded, and the alloys have lost their original colour and brilliance. All too often, the appearance of a jewel is submitted to peremptory judgement, whereas detailed analysis

16  Julie Renou

FIGURE 2.1 Ring

with woven shank in copper alloy, white metal alloy and glass paste. Unearthed in sepulchre 31 during excavations at Saint-Martin Priory, Niort (Deux-Sèvres). Now held by the Musée de Niort.

Photo: Julie Renou.

enables us to determine the materials used, to deduce their recipe, and so to try and reconstruct the object’s original appearance. Jewellery from the Merovingian period can also show severe traces of wear and tear, which may lead to the arguably hasty conclusion that it was of poor quality. A ring discovered during excavations at the Priory of Saint-Martin, Niort (Deux-Sèvres) raises questions about our way of perceiving objects (Figure 2.1). This ring was discovered in sepulchre 31, dating from the sixth or seventh century, together with earrings in white metal alloy and glass cloisonné, and glass beads associated with twisted copper alloy wire, all of which was found at the level of the neck of the buried person. An iron buckle, another ring in copper alloy and a wild boar tooth were also discovered in the lower part of the sarcophagus.13 The composite ring had been made with particular care. A bright blue domed glass stone is mounted on a shank of woven rushes in copper and white metal alloys. The strands making up the shank were corroded, altering the colours of these metals, but the alternating silver and gold must have emphasized the depth of colour of the glass paste. The materials used are not those traditionally considered high status, yet this is clearly an accomplished piece of work. It is common to devalue jewels decorated with glass stones in comparison to those mounted with gems. Although it is true that gems would have involved greater economic cost to procure, this analysis needs to be qualified. Presenting glass stones solely as cheaper alternatives forestalls the interpretation of objects,

Rings of power  17

hindering debate by enclosing it in binary terms. Certain important aspects of this material are thus ignored. A more promising approach has been recently suggested in discussion of the materials used in certain beads of blue glass. In many cases, their colouring was obtained using zaffre, an oxide obtained by calcinating cobalt, which has been extensively studied by François Delamare.14 These glass pastes are an intense deep blue, like that on the ring from the Priory of Saint-Martin, Niort. By comparing textual, archaeological and archaeometric data, Delamare has documented the use of cobalt blue glass from the beginnings of its fabrication until production ended in the nineteenth century. He proves that the blue glass used in Western Europe up until the twelfth century was imported from the eastern Mediterranean, from what is now the Syrian and Palestinian coast.15 For the early Middle Ages, this blue glass was thus imported or else recovered from items imported earlier. Much the same can be said of beads and garnets from what is now India and Pakistan.16 In addition to showing that these products were imported from the Syrian and Palestinian coast, study of cobalt blue glass beads also indicates that these ‘zaffre stones’ were viewed very positively during the Middle Ages.17 In writings attributed to the monk Theophilus Presbyter, descriptions of Byzantine blue glass draw on vocabulary evoking gems and sapphires, and combining various materials ‘indeed the Greeks make with the same sapphire stones precious chalices for drinking, decorating them with gold in this way.’18 For Grodecki, this refers to ‘zaffre’ blue glass employed to ‘imitate gems.’19 Writing in around 1145, Abbot Suger likewise described the stained glass installed at Saint-Denis as follows: ‘[these stained-glass panels] are very precious due to the marvellous execution of the painted glass and to the material of the zaffres.’20 Suger thanked God for having allowed him to procure sufficient quantities of this blue glass. For the early Middle Ages, it is possible that workers obtained glass by recycling old objects, as Theophilus’ remarks suggest, but it is also possible that they were imported from the Syrian and Palestinian coast. As with garnets and beads from the Indian subcontinent, obtaining such products relied on expensive organization and distant contacts. In this context, it is difficult to argue that the use of blue glass pastes, and glass paste objects more generally – including beads – were merely low-cost alternatives for more valuable materials. The mounting of a bead from India on a ring discovered in sepulchre 89 at Chasseneuil-sur-Bonnieure (Charente), dating from the fifth or sixth century, suggests we should adopt a different perspective on glass objects.21 The position of the bead is not, as might be expected, connected to other beads around a necklace. It was thus mounted for some other purpose. Whether or not it was used to replace a missing element, it was positioned in such a way as to exhibit its function as a bead, since the perforation is visible. It should be noted that it is unlikely that this position was due to a mistake by the jeweller, for the object is of undeniably good quality. It might be a bead that had particular affective meaning for the person who had it mounted. But equally, it might be a bead evoking the individual’s wealth. This component thus had a strong symbolic value, due to its origin or history, leading it to being mounted on a ring that acts as its setting. The limitations of existing

18  Julie Renou

reductive paradigms for analyzing precious objects found in studies of personal belongings suggests we need to take our enquiry further, looking particularly at the web of social practices in which they were placed.22

For an analysis based on the cultural biography of things One fertile approach for studying material culture is to situate bodily display in the theatre of early medieval social representations. Rings were associated with rituals to create or strengthen social ties and power. If added to the pommel of a sword, a ring could evoke the place of the owner in a social hierarchy or mark the lines of fidelity linking domini and their affiliates. Rings also publicly announced the creation of a union in the Roman Catholic marriage tradition.23 When the sign was understood by all, this probably led to the emergence of various types of recognizable ring. In any event, the choice of the type of object to materialize a ritual was probably made so that this jewellery could be worn and displayed in all circumstances. Whether in everyday life within the family group, or outside the group in any social interaction. In this context, we can introduce the question of the management of personal space by individuals when they wore ornamental objects. By applying the grid of proxemic analysis proposed by Edward Hall onto the study of social groups in the early Middle Ages, we raise interesting points about the display of objects.24 This approach takes the individual’s management of personal space as a cultural product, allowing us to pose the question of how ‘objects are lived,’ to paraphrase Jean Baudrillard: the gestures attached to an object, the awareness that the wearer has of the jewel when he or she wears it.25 Although we are ignorant of certain key facts, here, such as people’s postures or the evocative sounds of objects, we may try to piece together the mosaic of practices involved in wearing rings during this period. For example, at what time of the day were rings worn, or on the contrary, were they sometimes removed? On which social occasions where they intended to adorn the hands? Were some rings only worn within the family group, in public, or outside the immediate community? Taking into account the wide range of practices that may have varied between socio-cultural groups, we can see that rings, which are small objects, present many advantages, such as the fact that they can be easily removed or put back on again, depending on the context and the occasion. It is also easy to imagine that a ring made of a shiny material might easily perceived by seen by the wearer’s interlocutors, even at a distance from them. Byzantine betrothal rings, from the Roman Catholic tradition, are a telling example of what can be analysed from this perspective. The documented artefacts date from late antiquity, but this type of ring was probably still worn at the very beginning of the Middle Ages in highly Romanized areas such as the south of the Gaul.26 The head of the ring bears portraits of the betrothed, as in this example found in Bordeaux in the nineteenth century (Figure 2.2). The shank of this gold ring bears an inscription picked out in niello, NEMFYDI VIVAS, which may be taken as NYMPHIDIUS VIVA, thus corresponding to the

Rings of power  19

FIGURE 2.2 Gold

ring dating from the fourth century. Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux.

Photo: by Lysiane Gauthier, Mairie de Bordeaux.

name Nymphidius followed by viva (in deo).27 Its polygonal shape surmounted by the portraits, is clearly inspired by Byzantine engagement rings. Note that when the ring was worn, the inscription was not visible, as it was partly hidden by the wearer’s fingers. Traces of wear and tear on Byzantine examples tend to prove that they were worn over long periods of time: the wearing of these rings was therefore not reserved for the engagement rite. The object became a permanent sign of the commitment which lead to its creation. The heads of these rings could have a sigillary function: if they were worn by the wife, it was probably a copy of the seal of the husband.28 For some signet rings, it is doubtful how far such a ring could actually have been used for the purposes of applying a seal. It perhaps served more as an evocation of the capacity to apply a seal, rather than as a functioning tool-jewel. Although Roman and Germanic marriage traditions apparently co-existed in the early Middle Ages, this type of ring dropped out of use in southwest Gaul over the course of the fifth century. Inscriptions, in particular, were no longer displayed on the body of the ring, but were instead located on its head, clearly visible when the object was worn – although they could still be hidden if necessary, by turning the ring. Moreover, no ring discovered in Gaul from this period bears an inscription on the inside of the shank – the circular body of the ring. The development of messages in this hidden location apparently appeared later. The fact that these were usually intimate messages, for example expressing devotion and love towards a person, must certainly be understood as a function of the secret aspect of this location, hidden from indiscreet glances. The first description of the Christian marriage rite in Gaul dates from the eleventh century, but does not mention a ring.29 The practice of giving a ring during the wedding rite, as opposed to on betrothal, has not

20  Julie Renou

been dated, but it apparently became established during the Carolingian period, as attested by textual allusions to wedding ceremonies.30 Being endowed with no legal significance, the components and forms of the rite were left to custom, depending on who was getting married, on the clergy involved or on the region. It was not until the thirteenth century that descriptions of Christian betrothal rites mention the gift of a ring.31 It was during this period that the church extended its authority over matrimonial unions, asserting a legal monopoly over the rite and instating the gift of a ring as one step in the ritual.32 Archaeology allows us to observe the adoption of the ring as part of the marriage rite through the analysis of sepulchres. In southwest Gaul, men and women were buried with rings. We are, however, unable to ascertain their function since the position where these objects were deposited does not provide any conclusive evidence, and nor do variations in form between these rings.33 Indeed, it is plausible that this type of ring may have figured among gifts offered during betrothal festivities in both the Roman Catholic and the Germanic tradition. The ring could thus represent the union of two families, with the display of high-quality jewels on the hands of the betrothed couple serving to evoke the emerging power of the two groups. The same could also be said of rings offered during the marriage rite. In this case, the form and materials might vary depending on the owners, with the object becoming a way of claiming a particular social status – be it coveted, in the process of being acquired, or attained – and not merely a sign publicly announcing the commitment as desired by the church. This leads to a question which is worth pursuing further. In such contexts, it seems difficult to imagine that such objects could be exclusively reserved for women.

Were rings for women? Rings discovered in funereal contexts are commonly presented as feminine objects, on the grounds that they are often associated with personal belongings that we think of as being the appanage of women during the early Middle Ages. Sometimes indeed, it has been suggested that if a ring was discovered at the level of the left hand, then it signified the deceased’s matrimonial undertaking. Depending on the materials from which objects of adornment are made, the sepulchre might then be described as the rich tomb of an aristocratic lady. On the other hand, when the ring is not associated with attributes thought of as masculine, such as swords, there is a reluctance to see it as a symbol of power. Instead, it is seen merely as an expression of wealth, except in exceptional cases, such as that of sepulchre attributed to Queen Aregund (d. c. 380), wife of Chlothar I and mother of Chilperic I.34 Once again, only sepulchres considered to belong to the most powerful individuals receive particular attention, and in other cases archaeological clues tend to be neglected. It would thus be interesting to reconsider the common idea that rings were primarily reserved for women. The reality is apparently less marked than the historiography might suggest. Recent studies advocate systematically comparing data

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from observations of biological anthropology with those from analysis of belongings. But at times it can be difficult to apply this method due to the state of conservation of the bones, and a fortiori for older data from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. For southwest Gaul, what analysis of gender primarily reveals is the large number of gaps in the data, due to the absence of gender diagnosis and/ or the poor state of conservation of the skeleton (Figure 2.3). Putting aside these caveats, it is however possible to consider the available data for individuals deposited, adorned with rings, and those for whom objects were placed with the corpse in the sepulchre illustrated in figure 2.3. It can be seen that men were buried with rings at the level of their hands, just like women. It should be noted that rings are rarely found on phalanxes, and so the ring may have been deposited in or near the hand of the deceased. In all cases, it may or may not have been a gift to the interred. The observed proportions of men and women buried with objects of digital adornment rules out the possibility that rings were used exclusively by women. Furthermore, observation of belongings found together in sepulchres tends to suggest that objects were deposited in greater number and variety in women’s tombs than in men’s tombs. Whereas archaeology does not allow us to go further in the gendered interpretation of objects of adornment, the textual sources do provide some clues. Observation of the various rites marking the life of an aristocratic woman reveal the importance of precious goods used for adornment, including clothing and clothing accessories, both for the woman as an individual and for the image of her family. The life of an aristocratic woman was punctuated by various rites during which she obtained, displayed and redistributed her jewels, depending on the status being acquired or lost.35 We have already looked at betrothals, in which objects of

Renou 2018, proportion of women and men buried with rings in southwest Gaul 23

7

119

Women FIGURE 2.3 Proportion

Men

Indeterminate

of women and men buried with rings during the early Middle Ages in southwest Gaul.

22  Julie Renou

adornment played an important role, since it was a matter of proving the family’s power to the future spouse. Isabelle Cartron has documented the role adornment played in constructing the aristocratic aesthetic during the early Middle Ages, and its omnipresence in the various stages and rites marking an individual’s life. In this group at that time, when a woman was widowed, she lost her status as a spouse and was socially marginalized, ‘in a state of symbolic death.’36 The wife of the Frankish dux Rauching (d. 587), for example, on being informed of her husband’s death by one of his servants, gave away her jewels and took refuge in a basilica.37 Casting off belongings was a characteristic both of widowhood and of entering a convent. A woman had to abandon her finery on leaving secular life to devote herself to prayer, passing from the protection of her family to that of a religious community.38 A widow, too, might be deprived of some of her goods, which could be confiscated, and lose the protection of her kin.39 After a certain lapse of time, the length of which is hard to determine, she was then able to return to society and remarry. Ultimately, the woman, protected by her kin and/or by the institution of wergeld, was an asset for families, since she provided a convenient way to display their power and wealth – actual or aspired to – and of protecting precious goods entrusted to her. In a social frame which was intrinsically bound up with and indissociable from the economic frame, objects and especially jewels for display played a role in establishing hierarchies between individuals. Elites used various means to define themselves. Female adornment was a convenient way of reinforcing the ties between protagonists in a social group which stood out for its wealth – or the possibility some had of evoking this wealth – by facilitating their identification within this group, while at the same time differentiating them from the rest of the community. As the sociologists Boltanski and Thévenot note, discussing social frames where an object’s economic value does not determine its social value: ‘objects are not apprehended in their specific grandeur, as is the case in the industrial world, but mainly as partaking in establishing hierarchical relationships between people and as enabling their grandeur to be recorded, thereby facilitating their identification during encounters.’40 This seems to fit the social use of objects of adornment in the contexts we are concerned with here: it is not just economic value that counts, but an object’s capacity to mark and even to establish hierarchical relationships between individuals and groups. What matters is thus not so much the gender of the object as the use of the object by a specific gender during occasions that were part of elite practices. Adorning a woman with signs evoking power and wealth was a way of displaying, consolidating or laying claim to the right to these privileges. Hence, this interpretation provides a different way of thinking about jewels deposited in sepulchres, as funerals are just one among many rites marking the various changes in a woman’s status. This ceremony was as important to her as it was to her family, as it offered a way of displaying power and ambition.41 While it is not certain that fewer men wore this type of jewel, it is plausible that depositing their rings in sepulchres did not bear the same symbolic value or interest for them as it did for women.

Rings of power  23

Objects with a past: the memory of ancestors Aristocratic women did not just wear objects of adornment; they were placed in charge of part of the family treasure. These objects were vectors of memory, forming a bond with ancestors whose memory was vested in them and assiduously maintained. A  memory object keeps time at bay. Its materiality represents the family’s origin myth together with its power rooted in successive generations. They were thus personal jewels whose sentimental value was additional to their economic value and to their capacity to demonstrate power, where this included not only the family’s power but also that of the woman wearing the object. Sylvie Joye has worked on the notion of the power of aristocratic women and how it could be actualized.42 Adornment is one such instrument of power, and part of the construction of the feminine aristocratic aesthetic. Williams and Hamerow have demonstrated this for southern England, emphasizing the importance of memory objects entrusted to women’s keeping.43 When placed in a sepulchre near a deceased woman, these objects asserted the family’s power, as Cristina La Rocca has shown for the region of Lombardy.44 Study of the material record in southwest Gaul supports these observations, particularly thanks to hitherto largely neglected clues, namely the wear on objects and any alterations or repairs prior to being deposited. In an article about the sepulchre he attributes to Queen Aregund, Michel Périn discusses the state of objects deposited in the tomb near the deceased,45 insisting on marks of wear, ‘clumsy repairs,’ the presence of ‘fake’ objects, and missing components on certain jewels which lacked garnets on being deposited.46 He dismisses the hypothesis that it was economic reasons which led the deceased’s family to deposit her with these ‘mismatching’ and damaged objects, first because he thinks that it is a royal sepulchre, and second because the deceased was buried in luxurious clothing. He thus imputes these aesthetic anomalies to the queen’s decision: ‘It would thus seem that Aregund simply chose to be buried with jewels that were dear to her and that she had worn a lot.’47 This remark, which deserves critical attention, is representative of how repaired and damaged jewels are generally interpreted on the rare occasions when they are even mentioned. Proportionally, rings in southwest Gaul were repaired less frequently than fibulae, buckle plates, or aglets.48 Out of the 200 rings in documented archaeological contexts, 21 were deposited in incomplete or fragmented form. Only one ring discovered at Sergeac (Dordogne) shows proven signs of repair. Such rings are thus a promising field of enquiry. It should be noted that 18 rings were still functional when deposited, with only three missing such extensive parts that they could no longer be placed around a finger. Despite this, the rings were deposited at the level of the hands. The disrepair was of various types: in four cases the shank of the ring was broken, seven had gaps in the setting, and ten had no head, despite this being the most visible part when someone wears a ring (Figure 2.4). Although this ring has completely lost its upper part, the copper alloy solder is still visible. These two solder points once secured the head to the shank. The head

24  Julie Renou

FIGURE 2.4 Ring

in white metal alloy with a missing head. Discovered in sepulchre 84 during excavations at the Priory of Saint-Martin, Niort (Deux-Sèvres). Held by the Musée de Niort.

Photo: Julie Renou.

was not discovered during excavations, suggesting that the ring was deposited in this state. It should be noted that in certain cases organic parts might have disintegrated due to various taphonomic mechanisms following their interment. On the other hand, certain rings discovered in excavation do show traces of proven wear, visible repairs and missing parts. Much like the sepulchre said to be Aregund’s (and hence a royal burial), sepulchres seen as less prestigious do also contain fragmented objects deposited in them. Since this practice can be observed at all levels of the social hierarchy, it seems less clear that such deposits were simply motivated by economy or by the attachment of the deceased to the jewels, among people for whom these objects would have been precious economically as well as for other reasons. There are also reasons to doubt that visible repairs to these jewels should be attributed simply to the inexperience of the worker who made them, since repairs too had an economic cost. It is surprising that studies of personal belongings are based on lists of wealth in textual sources but rarely refer to the importance of old objects handed down. In the present day, damaged objects, if not thrown away, might be repaired or recycled. The aim of such interventions is to transform an object and/or to remove the marks left by the passage of time. But this would not have been the case for precious objects crystallizing a status, alliance, social rank or power during the early Middle Ages. This ties in with Régine Le Jan’s observations in 2003 about the precious nature of Constantine’s crown, given by the pope in 816 to Louis the

Rings of power  25

Pious: it ‘is not precious solely because it reputedly belonged to the first Christian emperor, but because the latter and all the popes who subsequently owned it were still present in the object.’49 Hamerow and Cartron have demonstrated the importance such objects had in building family memories and the role that women played in conserving them.50 It may thus be envisaged that they were perceived differently from modern perceptions of repairs, in ways forged by the conservation practices of their socio-economic framework. Traces of ‘clumsy’ repairs observed on objects might be explained by the desire to maintain the object in a functioning state. It was not the aesthetic aspect of the object which mattered but maintaining its function, although there are admittedly many instances of fibulae being deposited without any fastening, rendering the object non-functional.51 Yet, on the other hand, the cost of repairing objects of adornment would have involved an expensive outlay that could not be afforded. Why not melt the material down to manufacture another object or recover the metal? No doubt because the jewel was too precious to lose its form and structure. Missing parts were an insufficient reason to destroy the object. Quite the contrary, broken elements revealed the great age of the object, any repair or alterations over time and its contribution to the family myth. Such objects handed down over several generations gave material form to family memory and any mythical figures in the generational construct – and continued to do so until the family decided to entrust it to a deceased member. Once again, we need to envisage the possibility that the object may have been altered prior to being deposited by the family, for a fragment removed from the deceased’s object could be a way of prolonging their symbolic presence, particularly if the fragment was then inserted on a new piece of jewellery. We are thus dealing with cherished objects but also objects which illustrated a family’s power. So the mismatching and fragmented jewels of the deceased person presented as Queen Aregund were no doubt markers of the royal family’s power entrusted to her keeping.

Conclusion These lines of theoretical enquiry show how early medieval archaeology could benefit from moving beyond well-trodden paths of interpretation. Displays of an individual’s or family’s power may be detected in revealing clues swept aside by the literature. We thus urgently need to reassess our interpretations of copper alloy belongings, together with objects decorated with glass paste, which were sometimes unique objects of great technical complexity. These raw materials may have been difficult to acquire, particularly glass paste coloured with zaffre blue. The sizeable volume of beads from India discovered in sepulchres in Gaul should no longer be seen as an authoritative argument for viewing these objects as ‘mass market’ jewels which anyone could afford. Rings, studied as everyday political objects, allow us not only to redefine the contours of elite groups but also to investigate the broad sense politics of the power struggle between aristocratic groups.

26  Julie Renou

In political competition among the elite, women played an important role by keeping safe objects deemed precious on account of both their materials and their symbolism. By factoring in the entire history of these objects – their wear, alterations, repair, transmission, fragmentation and so on  – as evidenced by contextual data, archaeology may take on the thorny question of how power may be expressed. For this, sepulchres are particularly interesting, because, indeed, they are not mere reflections of everyday life, even if the objects interred in them may once have served quotidian functions, as well as having played a role in earlier rites. Over the past 20 years, sepulchres and necropolises more generally have been viewed as places for displaying power, and hence where the living stage the deceased. They are places for displaying and laying claim to social statuses and ranks, both those which have been acquired and those to which families aspire. By applying such a perspective to the study of personal belongings, we may envisage new lines of interpretation for jewels, particularly the little studied cases of fragmented and visibly repaired objects. Without denying the straightforward pleasure the owners of these jewels may have felt on wearing objects which were dear to them, it is equally important to avoid overly hasty interpretations. We should thus no longer think of objects of power solely in terms of their materials but also envisage their entire history, from the social framework in which they were created, through the alterations, repairs and fragmentations they underwent, until finally being placed in the ground.

Notes 1 Jean-Pierre Devroey, Régine Le Jan and Laurent Feller (eds.), Les élites et la richesse au haut Moyen Âge. Actes de la 7e rencontre de Bruxelles des 13, 14 et 15 mars 2008 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). 2 Laurent Feller, ‘Introduction: formes et fonctions de la richesse des élites du haut Moyen Âge’, in Devroey, Le Jan and Feller (eds.), Les élites et la richesse, p. 7. 3 The reflections set out here are grounded in observation of a corpus of objects dating from the early Middle Ages discovered in various contexts in southwest Gaul. See Julie Renou, ‘Le pouvoir des anneaux: essais sur la parure digitale du haut Moyen Âge. Approche archéologique des objets du Sud-Ouest de la Gaule’, unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Bordeaux Montaigne, 2018. 4 Luc Bourgeois, ‘L’objet archéologique comme source d’histoire sociale (IXe-XIIIe siècle): quelques réflexions’, in Luc Bourgeois and Christian Rémy (eds.), Demeurer défendre et paraître: orientations récentes de l’archéologie des fortifications et des résidences aristocratiques médiévales en Loire et Pyrénées, Actes du colloque de Chauvigny 14–16 juin 2012 (Chauvigny: Association des Publications Chauvinoises, 2014). 5 On this topic, the reader is referred to Nicolas Thomas, ‘Le long Moyen Âge. De la commande à la production de masse’, in Michel Pernot (ed.), Quatre mille ans d’histoire du cuivre. Fragments d’une suite de rebonds (Pessac: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2017). 6 See for example the anecdote related by Gregory of Tours. To take revenge against the conceited King Ragnacaire, Clovis corrupted his noblemen by offering them bracelets and baldrics made from bronze imitating the colour of gold. Once Ragnacaire was dead, the noblemen realized they had been tricked, to which Clovis responded: ‘one deserves . . . to receive such gold when one leads one’s master to his death of one’s own

Rings of power  27

volition’; Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs, ed. Robert Latouche (Paris: Belles lettres, 1965), II, XLII. 7 Renou, ‘Le pouvoir des anneaux’. 8 Ibid. 9 Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs, VI, II. 10 On jewelers’ signatures, see Emilie Mineo, ‘La voix de l’artiste. Signatures épigraphiques et manifestations d’identité des artistes en France aux XIe-XIIe siècles’, unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Poitiers, 2016. 11 Maurice Godelier, L’énigme du don (Paris: Fayard, 1997), p. 222. 12 Thierry Bonnot, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un objet précieux? Au sujet d’un roman de Louise de Vilmorin’, Ethnologie française, 36 (2006), 723–733, p. 723. 13 I thank the Bernard d’Agesci Museum for having received me and provided this precious information, which is hard to obtain. The excavations were conducted in 1968 by Boisset and the Deux-Sèvres archaeological society, and the archaeological documentation is patchy and dispersed. 14 François Delamare, ‘Aux origines des bleus de cobalt: les débuts de la fabrication du safre et du smalt en Europe occidentale’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 153 (2009), 297–315. 15 The first seams of cobalt to be mined in Europe were discovered in the late twelfth century in Freiberg. See Ibid. 16 On the subject of garnets, see Patrick Périn, Thomas Calligaro, Françoise Vallet and Jean-Paul Poirot, ‘Contribution à l’étude des grenats mérovingiens (Basilique de SaintDenis et autres collections du musée d’Archéologie nationale, diverses collections publiques et objets de fouilles récentes)’, Antiquités nationales, 38 (2006–2007), 111–144; on beads, see Constantin Pion and Bernard Gratuze, ‘Made in India: des perles en verre provenant d’Asie du Sud en Gaule mérovingienne’, Bulletin de liaison de l’Association française d’archéologie mérovingienne, 37 (2013), 69–71; Constantin Pion and Bernard Gratuze, ‘Indo-Pacific Glass Beads from the Indian Subcontinent in Early Merovingian Graves (5th – 6th century AD)’, Archaeological Research in Asia, 6 (2016), 51–64. 17 See Renou, ‘Le pouvoir des anneaux’, p. 365. 18 See Theophilus Presbyter, On Divers Arts, trans. John G. Hawthorne and Cyril Stanley Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), XIII: ‘Graeci vero faciunt ex eisdem saphireis lapidibus pretiosos scyphos ad potandum, decorantes eos auro hoc modo’. 19 Louis Grodecki, ‘Le chapitre XXVIII de la Schedula du moine Théophile: technique et esthétique du vitrail roman’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 120–122 (1976), 345–357, p. 350. 20 Abbot Suger, ‘De administratione’, in A. Lecoy de La Marche (ed.), Œuvre complètes (Paris: Renouard, 1867), ch. XXXIV, p. 206, cited and trans. in Grodecki, ‘Le chapitre XXVIII du moine Théophile’, p. 350: ‘Unde, quia magni constant mirifico opere sumptuque profuso vitri vestili et saphirorum materia’; and Suger, De administratione, ch. XXXIII, pp. 191–192. 21 I have not been able to examine this object, but there is graphical documentation of it in S. Poignant, ‘Chasseneuil-sur-Bonnieure (Charente): la nécropole de Saint-Saturnin’, in Luc Bourgeois (ed.), Wisigoths et Francs autour de la bataille de Vouillé (507). Actes des XXVIIIe Journées internationales d’archéologie mérovingienne, Vouillé et Poitiers (Saint-Germain-en-Laye: Association française d’archéologie mérovingienne, 2010). 22 Recent findings from archaeometric research projects and from comparing the perspectives of the archaeology of proto-historical periods suggest a new interpretation of these objects, see Pernot, Quatre mille ans d’une histoire du cuivre, esp. Thomas, ‘Le long Moyen Âge’. 23 Svante Fischer, Jean Soulat and Teodora Fischer, ‘Sword Parts and Their Depositional Contexts: Symbols in Migration and Merovingian Period Society’, Fornvännen, 108 (2013), 109–122. 24 Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension (New York: Anchor Books, 1990).

28  Julie Renou

2 5 Jean Baudrillard, Le système des objets (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). 26 See Renou, ‘Le pouvoir des anneaux’. 27 Morgane Uberti, ‘Regards sur les inscriptions funéraires: pratiques, mémoires, identités entre Loire et Pyrénées (IVe-VIIIe siècle)’, unpublished PhD thesis, Université ParisSorbonne, 2014. 28 Paul Corby Finney, ‘Images on Finger Rings and Early Christian Art’, Studies on Art and Archeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Washington, DC: Dunbarton Oaks, 1987), pp. 181–186; Alicia Walker, ‘A Reconsideration of Early Byzantine Marriage Rings’, in Corinne Pache et al. (eds.), Between Magic and Religion (Totowa, NJ: Row-man and Littlefield, 2001), pp. 149–164. 29 Jean Gaudemet, Le mariage en Occident: les mœurs et le droit (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1987), p. 227. 30 Gaudemet, Le mariage. See the ceremony of the union of Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald, and Aethelwulf, King of Wessex in October  856, when he reputedly said: ‘accipe anulum, fidei et dilectionis signum atque conjugalis vinculum ut non separet homo quos conjugit Deus qui vivit et regnat in omnia sæcula sæculorum’. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Capitularia regum Francorum, vol. 2, no. 296, pp. 425–426. 31 Gaudemet, Le mariage, p. 169. 32 Ibid., esp. ch. VI. 33 Renou, ‘Les anneaux du pouvoir’. 34 Patrick Périn, ‘Portrait posthume d’une reine mérovingienne. Arégonde († c. 580), épouse de Clotaire Ier († 561) et mère de Chilpéric Ier († 584)’, Settimane di studio della fondazione centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 62 (2014), 1001–1073. 35 On familial strategies during the early Middle Ages, see Régine Le Jan, La société du haut Moyen Âge: VIe-IXe siècle (Paris: Colin, 2003). 36 Emmanuelle Santinelli, Des femmes éplorées? Les veuves dans la société aristocratique du haut Moyen Âge (Lille: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2003), p. 109. 37 Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs, I.III. 38 Isabelle Cartron, ‘Variation autour d’un objet: la ceinture des femmes du haut Moyen Âge’, in Laurent Jégou, Sylvie Joye, Thomas Lienhard and Jens Schneider (eds.), Splendor reginæ. Passions, genre et famille, mélanges en l’honneur de Régine Le Jan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). 39 Santinelli, Des femme éplorées? 40 Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, De la justification: les économies de la grandeur (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), p. 207. 41 Bonnie Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2003); Anne Nissen, ‘La femme riche. Quelques réflexions sur la signification des sépultures privilégiées dans le Nord-Ouest européen’, in Devroey, Le Jan and Feller (eds.), Les élites et la richesse; Isabelle Cartron, ‘De la restitution des funérailles à l’organisation des espaces funéraires: stratégies, représentation, mémoire (IVe-XIIe siècle)’, unpublished HDR thesis, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, 2010. 42 See esp. Sylvie Joye, ‘Les élites féminines au haut Moyen Âge. Historiographie’, unpublished paper (2003). . 43 Helena Hamerow, ‘Furnished Female Burial in Seventh-Century England: Gender and Sacral Authority in the Conversion Period’, Early Medieval Europe, 24 (2016), 423–447. 44 Cristina La Rocca, ‘Rituali di famiglia: Pratiche funerarie nell’Italia longobarda’, in François Bougard, Cristina La Rocca and Régine Le Jan (eds.), Sauver son âme et se perpetuer. Transmission du patrimoine et mémoire au haut Moyen Âge (Rome: Publications de l’École française de Rome, 2013). 45 Périn, ‘Portrait postume d’une reine’. 46 Ibid. The term ‘fake’ object is reductive and derogatory, being based on an appraisal of the mastery of techniques to fashion materials and on the copper content in jewels,

Rings of power  29

which is higher for objects perceived as fakes. We need first to take into account variations in the malleability of metals as their copper content increases, before re-examining the negative perception of this metal, which may be traced largely to textual sources. On this topic, see Thomas, ‘Le long Moyen Âge’; Renou, ‘Le pouvoir des anneaux’. 47 Ibid., p. 1045. 48 Renou, ‘Le pouvoir des anneaux’. A break at the level of the shoulder has been repaired by inserting gold. 49 Le Jan, La société du haut Moyen Âge, p. 261. 50 Hamerow, ‘Furnished Female Burial’; Isabelle Cartron, ‘Ostentation ou humilité? Réflexions autour du vêtement du défunt et du dépôt d’objets dans les tombes au cours du haut Moyen Âge’, in Les vivants et les morts dans les sociétés médiévales, Actes du XLVIIIe Congrès de la SHMESP (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2018). See also Syvlie Joye and Régine Le Jan (eds.), Genre et compétition dans les sociétés occidentales du haut Moyen Âge (IVe-XIe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). For discussion of the question of gender in archaeology, see Caroline Trémaud (ed.), Genre et archéologie (Paris: Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2015). 51 Renou, ‘Le pouvoir des anneaux’.

3 THE PRACTICAL AND SYMBOLIC USES OF THE MEDIEVAL HORN From power object to common instrument Luc Bourgeois

Although arguably not the most melodious of musical instruments, the medieval horn has long been recognized as an object charged with symbols. It has been the subject of an abundant literature, although most analyses have drawn on only a single category of sources at a time: extant objects, literary references, pictorial representations, but not two or more at the same time. In the present chapter, I aim to combine these different approaches to discuss more broadly the multiple meanings of the horn in medieval Western Europe. The horn is both a political object and an everyday one insofar as it was long part of the category of ‘objects of distinction,’ which allow elites to mark their status and express their power. From the ninth to the twelfth century, it largely escaped from the functions which it commonly had, to acquire new practical and symbolic uses, leading to the construction of original biographic narratives. Beyond the constant association of a panoply of objects displayed by elites in the context of their lifestyles, for a few centuries it became part of the category of everyday political objects, as an instrument of legitimation for princely and urban powers, as proof of feudal rights to land, the emblem of certain officers, and as a means of announcing the decisions of power. Sometimes, the horn escaped from the everyday to become part of church treasures. In so doing, it became part of memorial constructions around elites and relics. In its different uses, it participated in the materialization of both ‘narrow sense’ and ‘broad sense’ politics. Thereafter, gradually from the end of the twelfth century, the medieval horn has followed the same social trajectory as most of the attributes chosen by the elites, devalued as soon as they are adopted by the lower levels of society. By becoming commonplace, it gradually lost its status as a political object.

The hierarchy of materials The materials used and the quality of manufacture fixed a very clear hierarchy between the different functions and users of horns. At the bottom of the scale,

Uses of the medieval horn  31

the horns of domestic mammals, which gave their name to the instrument, are generally not preserved in an archaeological context; only texts and images provide information on horns in our sense made from these materials.1 When the ruminant was uncommon or exotic, however, it acquired additional prestige, such as the buffalo horn with a gilded silver mount found in Anne de Bretagne’s inventory (1499).2 Medieval literature also mentions the existence of wooden horns,3 although the only surviving example is a yew horn from the eighth or ninth century, found in the Elne River in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.4 Despite the modesty of their raw material, earthenware horns, which appeared between the second half of the tenth century and the beginning of the thirteenth century in many archaeological contexts, were for a long time confined to elite contexts. These heavy and fragile instruments then appeared only south of a line joining the centre west of France to Alsace (Figure 3.1).5 From the beginning of the thirteenth century, some earthenware horns were made with more differentiated forms according to their function, ranging from very short hunting horns to instruments nearly a metre long, slightly curved and probably imitating the busines, the copper trumpets which were by then fashionable.6 Copper alloy horns, which are unique objects founded in single-use wax moulds, were ranked higher in the hierarchy of values. The surviving examples, mostly found in the British Isles,7 date no earlier than the beginning of the thirteenth century (Figure 3.2). Only the iconography attests to their earlier existence, such as the horn of the psalmist Asaph in the first Bible of Charles the Bald (SaintMartin de Tours, 845–846).8 It was, however, oliphants that enjoy the greatest prestige, because of the relative rarity and exotic origin of their material. Almost all the known examples come from church treasures. The ivory used may have come from elephant tusks, which was worked in the Islamic world but also on the northern shore of the Mediterranean, especially in southern Italy and Sicily in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Figure 3.3).9 Tusks taken from walruses, mammals which were mainly hunted on

0

FIGURE 3.1 Earthenware

5 cm

horn, eleventh century. Pineuilh (Gironde), La Mothe.

Source: Catherine Ballarin/Inrap.

32  Luc Bourgeois

0 cm

10 cm

FIGURE 3.2 The

Moot Horn of Winchester (Hampshire). Copper alloy, between 1187 and the beginning of the thirteenth century. Winchester City Museum.

Source: J.-C. Fossey, Craham.

FIGURE 3.3 Horn

from the treasure of the cathedral of Saint-Maurice, Angers. Byzantine workshop, twelfth century. Probably brought back from the Near East by Bishop Guillaume de Beaumont (1202–1240). Elephant ivory. Angers, Musée des Beaux-Arts.

Source: Musée d’Angers/ P. David.

Uses of the medieval horn  33

the Greenland coast,10 were also used for horns made further north in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, mostly in Britain and Scandinavia.11 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a modest production of elephant ivory horns re-emerged in present-day Sierra Leone, in a style that combined African traditions and Portuguese influence. They were quickly included in a new form of Western ostentation: the first cabinets of curiosities.12

War and its simulacra: to command and communicate Aside from the hierarchy of values associated with the material from which they were made, it was the socio-political uses associated with these objects that increased or decreased their prestige. Here literary sources come to the fore. The many battle descriptions in epic literature allow us to list the different functions of the horn in mobile warfare. In all these cases, the horn is used as an instrument of command, whether to gather the troops, as in the Chanson de Guillaume (‘Thirty horns on the hill sounded the gathering, and seven hundred men climbed the mound’);13 to call for help, as in the famous scene of the horn of the Chanson de Roland (Figure 3.4);14

Ruolandes liet, Allemagne, c. 1180–1190: the pagans sound the horn. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Pal. Germ. 112, fol. 80v.

FIGURE 3.4 Konrad,

Source: Heidelberg Universitätsbibliothek.

34  Luc Bourgeois

or to sound the charge, as in the 14 horns used in Raoul de Cambrai.15 In this last text, the instrument also makes it possible to avoid the accusation of attacking the enemy treacherously by stealth: ‘Sound your horn at length, let it resonate throughout the country: I do not want to attack without warning.’16 Indeed, in eleventh-century Norman custom, the declaration of war was announced by putting on one’s chain mail, waving a banner and blowing a horn.17 Victory was sounded at the end of the battle. In 1088, Bishop Odo of Bayeux, besieged at Rochester, pleaded in vain with William Rufus not to further humiliate him by blowing the horn when he surrendered.18 The use of the horn at sea is also occasionally although rarely documented. The horn-bearer in the crow’s nest of a ship in a mosaic in the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, Ravenna probably recalls the naval battle led by the Venetians in Constantinople in 1204. In the ‘chanson de geste’ Guillaume d’Angleterre, this warning function is perhaps recalled by the horn hanging from the mast of a merchant ship, which Queen Galienne recognizes as belonging to her husband Guillaume.19 Inside a fortification, too, the horn was linked to the watch and the sounding of alert, as shown by an abundant iconography, particularly in the twelfth century. A horn blower at the top of a tower appears, for example, on a capital of the abbey of Moûtiers-Saint-Jean (Côte-d’Or, c. 1125–1130),20 on a graffiti in the Church of Moings (Charente-Maritime) (Figure 3.5) or in a collection of ancient authors

FIGURE 3.5 Horn

blower in a tower. Graffiti in the clock tower of Saint-Martin de Moings (Réaux-sur-Trèfle, Charente-Maritime), twelfth century.

Source: J.-C. Fossey/Craham.

Uses of the medieval horn  35

made around 1200.21 Such figures are also frequent in literature. ‘The watchmen sound the horn in the tower’ (Les guaites cornent en la tour) the Roman de Thèbes tells us.22 These watchmen could also trigger the opening of doors when travellers arrived, as when Tristan and his squire enter the city of Lancien.23 In the late Middle Ages, these watchers, now salaried for this specific task, were sometimes called Turmmusiker in the Germanic Empire and Wait musicians in the English archives.24 The last reminder of this practice is the horn of Ripon, North Yorkshire which is still used each evening at nightfall to announce that the city is safe.25 In the archaeology of fortified sites, the location of the fragments of clay horns sometimes corroborates these uses. In Andone (Charente), a residence of the counts of Angoulême around 1000 CE, these objects are particularly numerous around the main gate.26 Similarly, the excavation of the immediate surroundings of the tower built at Essertines (Loire) around 1200 CE yielded a concentration of horn fragments.27 The horn was also present in all those activities which took the place of war among the pastimes of medieval elites. It was indispensable for hunting in groups over large areas. This highly social activity has also left a rich iconographical record (Figure  3.6). Different codes of horn soundings (‘modes’) were used to signal the location of the hunted animal, to mark each stage of the hunt, as well as to

FIGURE 3.6 Deer

hunt, detail. Angoulême (Charente), cathedral of Saint-Pierre, portail, c. 1118–1119.

Source: L. Bourgeois.

36  Luc Bourgeois

command the dogs. The author of De arte bersandi, a hunting treatise from the middle of the thirteenth century, makes it clear that sounding the horn in all the appropriate modes was part of the knowledge that a hunter must master.28 As in mobile warfare, the horn rhythmed each stage of this activity, from the hunters’ reveille to their return home. In the Chace Dou Cerf, a Picard treatise of the second half of the thirteenth century, a horn is thus used 11 times in the course of a hunt.29 A precise vocabulary and syntax developed during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with the more and more marked ritualization of large game hunting. On the other hand, these signals do not seem to have been universal, since they vary significantly from one hunting treatise to another. The horn was not used indiscriminately for all game. The Art of Venery, composed in England in the early fourteenth century, specifies that it should only be used for deer, wild boar, wolves and she-wolves (the only female for whom a horn was used) before adding fallow deer and hares to this list.30 The capture of hares was rarely sounded with horns, however, even though they were much valued as game. The animal enjoyed an ambiguous status in the Middle Ages, particularly because its sex was considered to vary, whereas only the hunting of a male ought to be sounded. On the other hand, the use of the horn in hare hunting already appears in the Chanson de Roland.31 The horn was thus a symbolic accessory only for the noblest hunts and was predominantly considered to be a male attribute. In such a context, it is not surprising that this object became the attribute of hunting saints such as Saint Eustache, Saint Julian the Hospitaller and Saint Hubert.32 It was on the symbolically laden occasion of a hunt that these three aristocrats passed from the secular state to sanctity. The Visions of Saint Eustache in the cathedral of Aosta (c. 1040) or in the abbey of Vézelay (between 1120 and 1140) bear early witness to this, and several ‘Hubert’s horns’ were kept in church treasures.33 By extension, the horn was also the symbol of practices of the secular aristocracy which ecclesiastical authors considered rather vain. The noisy passage of hunters and dogs was not unanimously appreciated, especially when it disturbed the quietude of a monastic community. We might consider, for example, the terms of the agreement concluded in the mid-twelfth century between the lord of Nogent and the monks of La Crète (Bourdons-sur-Rognon, Haute-Marne), which prohibited shouting and sounding horns (clamitando vel bucinando) in the vicinity of the abbey.34 The instrument also appears as a minstrel’s attribute in the many variations on the theme of the condemnation of jongleurs, probably more as a symbol of secular music opposed to ecclesiastical music than as a commonly occurring instrument.35 Indeed, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Occitan troubadour Guiraut de Calanson specifically excluded the horn from the many skills a juggler had to master.36 On the other hand, some literary testimonies suggest an early use of the horn by jongleurs, notably when they acted as heralds on the occasion of those other substitutes for warfare: jousting and tournaments. Around 1200, the instrument appeared in this context in Renaut de Beaujeu’s Le Bel inconnu.37

Uses of the medieval horn  37

The horn and the courtly world The horn was also introduced into some of the practices of courtly sociability. The most common of these elite practices was the handwashing ceremony at the beginning of the meal. These had close links with the purification rituals of Christian worship and used the same objects: the aquamanile or water jug, the basin and the towel. The horn was added in the secular setting, when the host had ‘the water sounded’ by servants: ‘The trumpeters were ordered to sound it with horns;/They sat down together at supper’ (A trompeors ont l’ave fet corner; / Communement s’asieent au souper).38 It was at this moment that the the table was set.39 The horn player portrayed at the meal at Hastings in the Bayeux Tapestry probably refers to this practice (Figure 3.7).40 This theme appears very early in the iconography related to banqueting. Horn bearers are already depicted in a banquet scene in the Utrecht Psalter (c. 830),41 and in a late ninth-century representation of Intemperance at feast.42 In the banquets described by medieval texts, the possibility of transforming a horn into a drinking horn by closing its lower end led to multiple ambiguities between the two objects, which were further increased by the symbol of the horn of plenty or cornucopia. Their interchangeable character is already found in the Chanson de Roland, when Turpin uses the oliphant for the dying hero to drink from.43 But this transformation is much more common in the literature of northern Europe, where the drinking horn also had a long tradition. In a twelfth-century Anglo-Norman text, Le Lai du cor, an ivory horn is brought by a young man to a banquet hosted by King Arthur. The inscription specifies that this magic horn was made by a fairy and that no man will be able to drink from it if he is cuckolded by

FIGURE 3.7 The

banquet at Hastings. Bayeux Tapestry. Probably Canterbury, c. 1080.

Source: © Bayeux Museum.

38  Luc Bourgeois

his wife or if he is jealous. Only Caradoc passes this purity test while the other participants finish the meal soiled by the wine.44 We shall also see later in this chapter how the transformation of a horn into a container could be one of the forms of ‘conversion’ that prestigious instruments underwent in a religious context. It might, of course, be argued that a horn that sounded just two notes and could be heard several kilometres away was perhaps not the instrument best suited to courtly love. That said, apart from the horn trial we have just invoked, many other magical horns were used in chivalric romances.45 They were mostly used to free a young lady imprisoned in a castle, which brings us back to the warlike uses of this instrument, and to its association with the control of fortified doors.46

Manifestations of power In a variety of narrative and literary texts, the horn symbolized the power and legitimacy of the prince. This identification, attested early on, between the ruler and this instrument derived from the luxury of the object but also, and above all, from the particular sound that only its owner could produce from it. Thus, in 888, King Eudes, learning of the arrival of Norman horsemen shortly before the battle of Montfaucon-sur-Argonne, asked for his horn: ‘The instrument he put in his mouth soon awakened all the echoes, . . . nothing surprising in this since . . . it is from a royal head that this thunder came.’47 In the epic literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the horn and the particular sound that its owner could bring forth from it were used several times by a disinherited prince to have his rights to rule recognized. This motif is at the heart of the legend of Havelok, for example, as it was developed by Geffrei Gaimar in his Estoire des Engleis, as well as in the ‘chanson de geste’ Lion de Bourges.48 The identification between the horn and the ruler also explains why this instrument was exhibited by its owner during his or her travels. It could be worn by a servant to mark the nobility of his master but also of his mistress. At the end of the twelfth century, Marie de France described the oliphant carried by a lady’s squire.49 The horn might also be entrusted to an individual to honour it, as in Gottfried of Strasbourg’ Tristan, in which King Mark charges Tristan with his spurs, weapons and a golden horn.50 The use of a horn was also granted to certain officers as part of their official functions, in particular foresters or the hunt officials we have already encountered. The horn symbolizing the office of the wardens of Savernake Forest (Wiltshire) still survives. Made of elephant ivory, it is attributed to the twelfth or thirteenth century. The fourteenth-century ring that reinforces its opening is decorated with a frieze of animals surrounding a king, a bishop, and a forester blowing a horn.51 Although such objects could mark a hereditary function, they were used especially often to give material form to a vassalic link. The horn thus appears among the many symbolic objects used during land transfers or investiture rituals, and are sometimes referred to in an English context as charter horns.52 Thus, the Hungerford horn (Berkshire) is said to have been given by John of Gaunt when he granted a fishery to the inhabitants of that place.53 The chronicle of Croyland

Uses of the medieval horn  39

Abbey, Lincolnshire perhaps mentions this kind of horn among the symbols used during land transfers during the time of William the Conqueror, unless the word cornu here refers to a drinking horn, since the next object on the list is a container (cratera).54 The oliphant of York Minster, if we believe the tradition that has surrounded it since the fourteenth century, was given as a symbol of a transfer of land to the church.55 The confusion between drinking horns and horns as musical instruments occurs here too, since this instrument was ritually used in the seventeenth century to drink wine in front of one of the altars of the sanctuary.56 An oliphant offered to Carlisle cathedral by Henry I (d. 1135) is recorded in an inventory of 1272–1277 as a symbol of a donation in the Inglewood Forest.57 It is therefore likely that some horns now preserved in church treasures gave material form to land grants, in particular concerning forests. A legendary passage from the Italian chronicle of Novalese is on the fringes of this aspect of the possible uses and symbolism of a horn: it describes how a fiefdom was given by Charlemagne to a Lombard musician, specifying that all the men who heard his horn would belong to him.58 In this feudal context, it is not surprising that the horn became a relatively common heraldic motif, often chosen as a symbol of their office by vassals guarding a forest or a town or city gate. But it also appears in the arms of some prominent noble families, leading to some far-fetched interpretations of their meaning. The choice of this symbol by the family of Les Baux, princes of Orange, for example, who claimed to be descended from William of Orange, results from the distortion of an episode of the literary legend of William, who had his nose cut off in battle (hence Guillaume au court nez, who became Guillaume au cornet).59 These instruments also give material form to grants of town charters. The current copper alloy horn of Ipswich, Suffolk described as the ‘Great Court Trump,’ is said to replace the instrument offered by King John in 1200 when he granted the town its charter.60 Other instruments may remind us of the counterpart due to the one who granted a gift, such as the cattle horn of Bradford, West Yorkshire which was sounded on Saint Martin’s Day, the time an annual rent was due to the king, until the end of the nineteenth century.61 The sounding of a horn might also be part of judicial procedures carried out by order of authorities with the droit de cri, the right to proclaim public acts or transmit news. In the ‘Uses of Barcelona,’ the masters of the city had a horn sounded to summon both nobles and non-nobles to assemble.62 The Winchester horn – made between 1187 and the beginning of the thirteenth century – was used by the city’s watchman for warning purposes but also to summon members of the newly created civic assembly (Figure 3.2).63 The Hungerford horn was used on the second Monday after Easter to summon the tenants to a meeting. Later, other English examples, called the borough horn, burghmote horn or wakeman’s horn, were used in a similar way.64

The ‘conversion’ of the horn The horn was first introduced into the Christian universe when it was used as a substitute for the many trumpets mentioned in the Bible, during the long eclipse

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of the latter instrument which lasted until the thirteenth century. The introduction of this eminently profane instrument on the margins of the liturgical space (that is, always outside sacred space)65 was undoubtedly facilitated by these iconographic uses. While the horn sometimes seems to have been used in Carolingian times to signal the beginning of mass, especially in the eastern part of the Empire, its use was later limited to announcing services during the last three days of Holy Week (triduum), when it was forbidden to ring the bells. This practice is attested for the oliphants of Auch, Angers (Figure 3.3) and Brunswick.66 It continued in the south of France until the first half of the twentieth century.67 The use of the horn in a religious or funereal context seems to have been particularly marked in the eleventh century, especially in the Mediterranean region. The horn was used during processions, as shown in one passage of the Miracles of Saint Foy of Conques in which a familiaris of the monastery was responsible for blowing a horn during the translation of the relic,68 and in a miniature of Monte Cassino from 1022–1035.69 The instrument also appears at the funerals of members of the knightly class, a use illustrated by a miniature of the Bible of Saint Peter of Roda.70 Only Jewish liturgical practice directly uses the horn, the ram’s horn or chofar being used for various feasts.71 On the other hand, within the Christian sanctuary, the presence of the horn was more often a consequence of different objectives. The horn is best understood in this context as part of the profane ‘conversion of objects’ analysed by Philippe Buc72 and, more recently, by Philippe Cordez.73 In this case, we are once more dealing with political objects. The horns preserved in church treasures are all luxury items, most of them made of ivory, some of them of copper alloy. Aside from their intrinsic quality, they acquired additional value through the change of function and the construction of memory discourses that remind (or invent) a glorious origin, linked to princes, great figures in the church, heroes or saints. Some Anglo-Saxon and Germanic sources mention the existence of horns in churches as early as the ninth to eleventh centuries,74 although it was not until the twelfth century that their destiny becomes better documented as part of church treasures.75 Like other objects of secular origin, the horn could be converted into a reliquary. The two oliphants given between 1014 and 1024 by the Emperor Henry II to the abbey of Saint-Vanne of Verdun are thus filled with relics.76 Horns could also be the relics themselves, such as the horn of the abbey of Saint-Hubert (province of Luxembourg, Belgium), considered to be a relic of this holy hunter and associated with the donation to this monastery of three ivory horns by Duke Godfrey the Bearded in the mid-eleventh century.77 The genealogy of these horns sometimes changed in response to the need to provide legal evidence during a conflict or to the desire to attribute the object to a saint or a famous donor, whose prestige would reflect on the community. Two examples are sufficient to illustrate these rewritings of the past. The ‘horn of Roland’ of Saint-Seurin de Bordeaux, an instrument that definitely did not predate the eleventh century, is described by the Chanson de Roland as a container filled with gold, donated by Charlemagne upon his return from the Spanish campaign

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of 778.78 It is known that the oliphant in Angers cathedral was brought back from the Near East by Bishop Guillaume de Beaumont (1202–1240). In the 1255 inventory of the treasure, it is described as an ‘ivory horn containing the relics of four patriarchs . . ., fragments of the Last Supper and several other relics.’ Shortly afterwards, however, the canons of Angers felt the need to manipulate this biography to adapt it to the political context of the moment. They described this horn as the instrument used in the ninth century to warn of the arrival of Viking ships during a raid on the monastery of Saint-Florent-le-Vieil. The reason for this change of ascription is clear: we know that they were claiming ownership of this institution at that time.79 Aside from these changing rhetorical needs, we have seen how horns in church treasures could be veritable legal instruments or instrumenta, symbolizing an agreement reached between a donor and a religious institution. More generally, they served to commemorate these donors over the long term, as well as providing a reminder of the relationship of subjection or control of their heirs over the community. Thus, the horn filled with relics given in 1199 by the Landgraf of Alsace to the Swiss abbey of Muri (Aargau) is probably meant to remind us of the role of protector of the monastery and his lineage, who had founded it and whose descendants continued to act as its patron or advocatus.80

The horn becomes ordinary From the Carolingian period to the beginning of the thirteenth century, the horn found in texts and in treasures was thus closely linked to the aristocracy and to power, whether in secular use or after its donation to churches. Similarly, and despite the modesty of their raw material, earthenware horns discovered in archaeological contexts of the tenth to twelfth centuries come exclusively from elite sites. As a counterpoint to the generally high value ascribed to the horn by elites, the instrument appeared very early (but also only very occasionally) as a signal imposed on people who were rejected at the margins of society. In Germanic regions, it allowed lepers to report their presence,81 and Wihtred’s Anglo-Saxon code (from the end of the seventh century) required foreigners – and especially merchants – to announce themselves with bells or horns as soon as they left the main road to approach an inhabited place.82 This last usage may have been perpetuated in England, to judge by the late-eleventh-century horn found in the homes of merchants and craftsmen of Milk Street, London.83 If we put these early and relatively rare allusions to one side, the place of the horn in general can be seen to have followed a certain trajectory from the thirteenth century onwards. Apart from the status it retained for hunting, in the later Middle Ages, the horn increasingly began to appear more as the instrument of identification and as the working tool of secondary agents of power than as a strictly aristocratic symbol.84 The contempt in which the elites now regarded this old instrument is well illustrated by letters patent of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, of 1434, addressed to the civic elite of Dijon. The duke allowed them to

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make their announcements with a trumpet, because the horn they had been using until then, ‘which is a coarse object and gives a rough sound’ (qui est rude chose et rude son), seemed too rustic to them.85 Even if some castellans still used the horn for giving the alert in the fourteenth century, the outdated character of the instrument in its warlike uses is at the same time underlined by Jean Corbechon, who evokes a ‘small trumpet made of horn or wood or bronze which one used to use to give signals against enemies.’86 The multiplication and prestige of metal trumpets from the thirteenth century onwards seems to play a decisive role in the relegation of the horn. It was now with this instrument that the openings of banquets or the entry of princes into a city were sounded.87 But if the horn had lost its status as an ‘object of distinction,’ it is mainly because it had escaped the elites to invest in other fields of the society. At the end of the fourteenth century, Eustache Deschamps pointed out the diffusion of this type of instrument to the people in the envoi of one of his ballads, which exploits the homonymy between trumpet (trompe) and cheating (tromperie). Now everyone from cattle dealers to church sergeants could announce their presence with the help of a horn.88 Both iconography and archaeological evidence show how horns gradually became ordinary. From the mid-twelfth century, for example, the horn appears as an attribute of the Nativity shepherds (e.g. Figure 3.8).89 The instruments represented, always of short length and probably made of horn, became more numerous from the 1220s onwards, without totally dethroning the flute, the pan pipe or the bagpipe, which were believed to help keep the herd calm.90 A little later, this trivialization was also marked by a new use adapted to the common people: the horn as an object of pilgrimage. The appearance of the instrument in the Pilgrimage of Human Life of Guillaume de Diguleville (1330–1331) makes it seem likely that horns were already well established in this role in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Archaeological examples dating from this period, made of copper alloys and earthenware but also glass, now served in some pilgrimage centres as simple signs or reminders of devotion, like the other sound objects acquired for the same reason: hand-bells, jingle-bells or whistles.91 By the seventeenth century, Dutch painting associates the instrument with the baker, who sounded it when the bread was made.92 By this stage, the horn had been definitively devalued, completely removed from the realm of politics, except for the folk traditions maintained in a few English cities. Today, it retains its prestige only as an accessory to noble hunting or as a support for a certain chivalrous nostalgia, from the myth of Roland to the multiple (and often mediocre) copies of medieval horns used by current re-enactment associations. In the course of its career between the early and the later Middle Ages, the horn came to serve as an example of the complex multiplicity of meanings which could be attached to a medieval object. To understand its polysemy, we need to bring together all the necessary sources, and not be content with the formal analysis and single functional definitions which characterize the readings still most often offered by present-day positivism. By considering both the hierarchy and the symbolism

Uses of the medieval horn  43

FIGURE 3.8 Gregory the Great, Liber pastoralis, Saint-Amant, third quarter of the twelfth

century. Valenciennes, Médiathèque Simone Veil, Ms. 512, fol. 100v. Source: Bibliothèque municipale de Valenciennes.

of raw materials and the quality of the workmanship deployed, by examining the ‘entanglement’ of these objects with their successive owners and the contexts of their use, it is possible to identify the phases through which they passed, playing the role of political markers or even of political actors.93 Progressively demoted in favour of more valuable objects, they left the field of distinction and of the political to diffuse more broadly throughout society.

Notes 1 For example: Apocalypse figurée, Northern France, ninth century (Valenciennes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 99, fol. 8) and Gregory the Great, Liber pastoralis, Saint-Amant, 1150–1175 (Valenciennes, BM, MS 512, fol. 100v) (see Figure 3.8). 2 Victor Gay, ‘cor’, in Glossaire archéologique du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance, vol. 1 (Paris: Picard, 2nd edn., 1929), pp. 423–424. 3 ‘Cil [Polynice] ait o sei un cor de pin;/ Quatre feiz le sont en la tor’, in Francine MoraLebrun (ed.), Le Roman de Thèbes (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1995), ll. 3473–3474. This material is also mentioned in 1372 by Jean Corbechon in his Propriétaire des choses. 4 Catherine Homo-Lechner, ‘Cors et trompettes en céramique: objets domestiques, instruments de pèlerins, ex-voto’, in Marcel Otte (ed.), Sons originels: Préhistoire de la musique (Liège: Université de Liège, 1994), pp. 207–217. 5 Luc Bourgeois, ‘cor’, in Encyclopédie du mobilier médiéval, vers 750-v. 1200 (forthcoming).

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6 Jean-Pierre Pelletier and Isabelle Ganet, ‘Les trompes de Faudon’, in Terre de Durance, céramiques de l’Antiquité aux temps modernes (Digne-les-Bains: Éditions Narration, 1995), p. 85. 7 Nina Crummy, John Cherry and Peter Northover, ‘The Winchester Moot Horn’, Medieval Archaeology, 52 (2008), 211–229. 8 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1, fol. 215v. 9 See the differing attributions proposed by Ernst Kühnel, Die islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1972); Avinoam Shalem, The Oliphant. Islamic Objects in Historical Context (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004). 10 Else Roesdahl, ‘L’ivoire de morse et les colonies noroises du Groenland’, Proxima Thulé, 3 (1998), 9–48. 11 Otto Von Falke, ‘Elfenbeinhörner: I. Ägypten und Italien’, Pantheon, 4 (1929), group C, pp. 511–517. 12 Peter Mark, ‘Portugal In West Africa: The Afro-Portuguese Ivories’, in Jay A. Levenson (ed.), Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th & 17th Centuries (Washington, DC: The Smithsonian Institution, 2007), pp. 131–149. 13 La Chanson de Guillaume, ed. François Suart (Paris: Garnier, 1999), verse XL. 14 La Chanson de Roland, ed. and trans. Ian Short (Paris: Librairie générale française, 1990), verses CXXIX–CXXXVIII. 15 Raoul de Cambrai, ed. and trans. William Kibler and Sarah Kay (Paris: Librairie générale française, 1996), l. 2192. 16 Raoul de Cambrai, ll. 4006–4008. 17 Charles Homer Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), appendix D, section 4. 18 Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), vol. 4, pp. 132–135. 19 Guillaume d’Angleterre, ed. and trans. Christine Ferlampin-Acher (Paris: Champion, 2007), ll. 2442–2444. 20 Cambridge, MA, Fogg Art Museum, inv. 1922.17. 21 Œuvres de Virgile, Stace, Lucain et al. in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7936, fol. 53v. 22 Roman de Thèbes, l. 3526. 23 Béroul, Le Roman de Tristan, ed. Ernest Muret (Paris: Champion, 4th edn., 1947), ll. 2453–2456. 24 Martine Clouzot, Images de musiciens (1350–1500). Typologie, figurations et pratiques sociales (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), p. 137. 25 Crummy, Cherry and Northover, ‘The Winchester Moot Horn’, p. 226. 26 Luc Bourgeois (ed.), Une résidence des comtes d’Angoulême autour de l’an Mil: le castrum d’Andone (Caen: Publications du CRAHM, 2009), pp. 313–316. 27 Françoise Piponnier, Le château d’Essertines, Loire (Lyon: Alpara, 1983), p. 89. 28 Guicennas, De arte bersandi, ed. Gunnar Tilander, Le plus ancien traité de chasse de l’Occident (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wilksell, 1954), pp. 20–21. 29 La Chace dou cerf, ed. Gunnar Tilander (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1960). 30 William Twiti, L’art de vènerie, ed. and trans. Gunnar Tilander, Le plus ancien traité de chasse écrit en Angleterre. La version anglaise du même traité et Craft of Venery (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1956), ll. 94–96 and 9–11, 149–150, 162–163. For a recent edition, see The Middle English Text of the Art of Hunting by William Twiti, ed. David ScottMacnab (Heidelberg: Winter, 2009). 31 La Chanson de Roland, l. 1780. 32 Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien (Paris: PUF, 1955–1959), vol. 3–1, pp. 230–231, 346–347, 469–470, vol. 3–2, pp. 661, 768. 33 Albert Lemeunier, ‘Le “cor”, la crosse et le peigne liturgique dits de saint Hubert’, in Alain Dierkens, Jean-Marie Duvosquel and Nathalie Nyst (eds.), L’ancienne église abbatiale de Saint-Hubert (Namur: Ministère de la région wallonne, 1999), pp. 186–189.

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34 Hubert Flammarion, ‘Le sceau du silence: sigillographie et pratiques seigneuriales au xiie siècle entre Marne et Meuse’, in Sylvain Gougenheim, Monique Goullet and Odile Kammerer (eds.), Retour aux sources. Textes, études et documents d’histoire médiévale offerts à Michel Parisse (Paris: Picard, 2004), pp. 99–113. 35 For example, the churches of Anzy-le-Duc (Saône-et-Loire) and Châtel-Montagne (Allier). 36 www.trobar.org/troubadours/guiraut/ [Consulted on 16 April 2019]. 37 Renaud de Beaujeu, Le Bel inconnu, ed. Michèle Perret (Paris: Champion, 2003), l. 5240. 38 Le Charroi de Nîmes, ed. Duncan McMillan (Paris: Klincksieck, 1972), ll. 810–811. 39 Gaydon, ed. and trans. Jean and Andrée Subrenat (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), ll. 9857–9858. 40 David Mackenzie Wilson, La Tapisserie de Bayeux (Paris: Albin-Michel, 1985), plate 47. 41 Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32, p. 54. 42 Prudence, Poésies in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 8085, fol. 61v. 43 La Chanson de Roland, ll. 2222–2226. 44 Robert Biket, ‘Le Lai du cor’, in Nathalie Koble (ed.), Le Lai du cor et Le Manteau mal taillé. Les dessous de la Table ronde (Paris: Éditions rue d’Ulm, 2005), pp. 19–20, 27, 39. The trial of the horn in the medieval literature has been the subject of a synthesis: Christine Kasper, Von miesen Rittern und sündhaften Frauen und solchen, die besser warren: Tugendund Keuschheitsproblem in der mitteralterlichen Literatur vornehmich des deutschen Sprachraums (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1995). 45 Ásdis R. Magnúsdóttir, La voix du cor. La relique de Roncevaux et l'origine d'un motif dans la littérature du Moyen Âge (XIIe-XIVe siècles) (Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998), p. 145. 46 Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide, ed. and trans. Jean-Marie Fritz (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1992), ll. 6136–6139. 47 Abbon, Bella Parisiacae urbis, II, ll. pp. 510–518, ed. and trans. Henri Waquet, Le siège de Paris par les Normands. Poème du ixe siècle (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1942), p. 104. 48 Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. Ian Short (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 21–47; Geffrei Gaimar, Lion de Bourges, ed. William W. Kibler, JeanLouis Picherit and Thelma S. Fenster (Geneva: Droz, 1980). On this topic, see the analysis of Magnúsdóttir, La voix du cor, pp. 78–112. 49 Marie de France, ‘Lanval’, in André Crépin (ed.), Lais de Marie de France (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1990), l. 582. 50 Gottfried of Strasbourg, Tristan, trans L. Gravigny (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 2008), p. 94. 51 John Cherry, ‘Symbolism and Survival: Medieval Horns of Tenure’, Antiquaries Journal, 69 (1989), 111–118, p. 112, plate 18a. 52 The list of objects symbolizing gifts and investitura provided by Charles Du Cange in Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, vol. 4 (Niort: Favre, 1883–1887), col. 414a, s. v. ‘Investitur’, would benefit from a fresh analysis. 53 Crummy, Cherry and Northover, ‘The Winchester Moot Horn’, p. 227. 54 S. Pegge, ‘Of the Horn as a Charter or Instrument of Conveyance’, Archaeologia, 3 (1775), 1–12, pp. 1–2. 55 T. D. Kendrick, ‘The Horn of Ulph’, Antiquity, 11 (1937), 278–282. 56 Shalem, The Oliphant, p. 122. 57 Kühnel, Die islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen, p. 85, nr. 6. 58 Cronaca di Novalesa, ed. G. C. Alessio (Torino: Einaudi, 1982), lib. III, cap. 14. 59 Alice M. Colby-Hall, ‘L’héraldique au service de la linguistique: le cas du ‘cor nier’ de Guillaume d’Orange’, in xe Congrès international de la Société Rencesvals pour l’étude des épopées romanes (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1987), pp. 383–397. 60 Crummy, Cherry and Northover, ‘The Winchester Moot Horn’, pp. 226–227. 61 Ibid., p. 224. 62 ‘Facerent cornare, ut nobiles et ignobiles venirent’, in Charles Giraud (ed.), Usages de Barcelone, c. 124, Essai sur l’histoire du droit français au Moyen Âge (Paris: Videcoq, 1846), vol. 2, pp. 465–509.

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6 3 Crummy, Cherry and Northover, ‘The Winchester Moot Horn’. 64 Ibid., pp. 211, 220. The decoration of the Winchester instrument shows the two main authorities controlling the city: two bishops and four creeping leopards, emblem of the Plantagenet kings of England. 65 Edmund A. Bowles, ‘Were Musical Instruments Used in the Liturgical Service During the Middle Ages?’ Galpin Society Journal, 10 (1957), 40–56, p. 51. 66 Kühnel, Die islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen, nr. 76; Anne Lombard-Jourdan, ‘Montjoie et Saint-Denis! Le centre de la Gaule aux origines de Paris et de Saint-Denis (Paris: Éd. du CNRS, 1989), p. 297, n. 65; Shalem, The Oliphant, p. 130. 67 Gabrielle Demians d’Archimbaud, Les fouilles de Rougiers (Var). Contribution à l’archéologie de l’habitat rural médiéval en pays méditerranéen (Paris and Valbonne: Éditions du CNRS, 1980), pp. 308–310. 68 Bernard d’Angers, Liber miraculorum sanctae fidis, ed. Luca Robertini (Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2010), p. 175. 69 Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis in Monte Cassino, Cod. Casin. 132, p. 274. 70 Danielle Alexandre-Bidon, ‘Gestes et expressions du deuil’, in Danièle Alexandre-Bidon and Cécile Treffort (eds.), À réveiller les morts. La mort au quotidien dans l’Occident médiéval (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1993), pp. 129–130. 71 Encyclopedia Judaica (Farmington Hills, MI, Gale and Detroit: MacMillan, 2007), vol. 14, col. 1442–1447. 72 Philippe Buc, ‘Conversion of Objects’, Viator, 28 (1997), 99–143. 73 Philippe Cordez, ‘Objets, images et trésors d’église’, in Jérôme Baschet and PierreOlivier Dittmar (eds.), Les images dans l’Occident médiéval (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 121–130. 74 Shalem, The Olifant, pp. 114–116. 75 A list of occurrences is provided by Kühnel, Die islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen, pp. 85–88, completed by Bernhard Bishoff, Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse, I: Von der Zeit Karls des Grossen bis zu Mitte des 13. Jahrhundert (Munich: Zentralinstituts in Zusammenarbeit, 1967), and by other scattered references. 76 Kühnel, Die islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen, p. 87, nr. 28. 77 Lemeunier, ‘Le “cor” ’, pp. 186–187. 78 La Chanson de Roland, ll. 3684–3686. 79 Kühnel, Die islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen, p. 88, nr. 36. 80 Anton Legner (ed.), Ornamenta ecclesiae: Kunst und Künstler der Romanik in Köln (Köln: Schnütgen-Museum, 1985), 3.90, nr H13. The inscription may be later. 81 This use appears in two illuminations from the Germanic area: a fragment of evangeliary from the Rhineland (third quarter of the 9th cent. Düsseldorf, Landes Stadtbibliothek, MS. B 113, fol. 5r) and the Codex Aureus of Echternach (Trier, 983–991, Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, MS 156142, p. 108). 82 English Historical Documents, c. 500–1042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (London: Eyre et Spottiswoode, 1955), p. 364. 83 Christopher Thomas, The Archaeology of Medieval London (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 2002), p. 114. 84 Michel Pastoureau, ‘Le son du cor dans l’image médiévale’, in Martine Clouzot and Christine Laloue (eds.), Les représentations de la musique au Moyen Âge (Paris: Musée de la musique, 2005), pp. 92–99, p. 94. 85 Marion Challier and Bernadette Caille (eds.), Le Moyen Âge entre ordre et désordre (Paris: Musée de la Musique / RMN, Le Seuil, 2004), nr 61. 86 Bowles, ‘La hiérarchie des instruments de musique’. 87 Mémoires d’Olivier de la Marche, maître d’hôtel et capitaine des gardes de Charles le Téméraire, ed. Henri Beaune and Jules d’Arbaumont, vol. IV (Paris: Renouard, 1883–1888), p. 158. Other examples in Bowles, ‘La hiérarchie des instruments de musique’, p. 158. 88 Eustache Deschamps, Œuvres complètes, ed. Gaston Raynaud, vol. VII (Paris: Société des anciens textes français, 1891), pp. 232–233; See Laura Kendrick, ‘Trompes et tromperie

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à la cour d’après Eustache Deschamps’, in Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, Bruno Laurioux and Jacques Paviot (eds.), La cour du prince. Cour de France, cours d’Europe, XIIe-XVe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2011), pp. 359–376. 89 Collegiate San Isidoro, Léon (Spain), ca 1163; Henry of Blois’ psalter (1150–1160, London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero C.IV, fol. 11; Gregory the Great, Liber pastoralis (1150–1175, Valenciennes, BM, ms. 512, fol. 100v); fresco of the church of Saint-Aignan, Brinay (dépt. Cher), 12th cent., etc. 90 Anne-Marie Brisebarre, Le berger (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1980), pp. 54–56. 91 Le Mont-Saint-Michel (13th-16th cent.), Sint-Oedenrode, Brabant (14th-15th cent.), Aachen (15th cent.), Larchant, Essonne (16th cent.?): Françoise Labaune-Jean, ‘De terre, de métal ou de verre, des cornes pour les pèlerins du Mont-Saint-Michel (Manche) (xive-xvie siècle)’, in Yves Henigfeld, Philippe Husi and Fabienne Ravoire (eds.), L’objet au Moyen Âge et à l’époque moderne: fabriquer, échanger, consommer et recycler, actes du xxxe congrès de la Société d’archéologie médiévale, moderne et contemporaine, Bayeux, 28–30 mai 2015 (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2020); Sem A. L. Peters and Ronald J. M. Van Genabeek, Sint-Oedenrode, Mariendael: archeologische bouwbegeleiding (‘s-Hertogenbosch: BAAC, 2004); Günter Mangelsdorf, ‘Das Aachhorn von Greifswald  – ein Beitrag zur mittelalterlichen Devotionalienkunde’, Bodendenkmalpflege in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 39 (1991), 219–225; Catherine Homo-Lechner, Sons et instruments de musique au Moyen Âge (Paris: Errance, 1996), pp. 18–19, p. 119. 92 E.g. works by Job Adriaensz Berckheyde, Jan Steen, Arent Adriaen van Ostade. 93 Ian Hodder, Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships Between Human and Things (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

4 A HISTORY OF DOMESTIC DISORDER The French royal household in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Gil Bartholeyns

Domestic space was often shared and communal in the Middle Ages. It might be said to be ‘political’ in that it instigated rules governing communal life and the use of objects and places: people and objects taken together were thus part of the same ‘order of things.’ This occurred at an early stage in great princely households, and as of the second half of the thirteenth century in the household of the French king. Sovereigns used household ordinances to legislate on a whole series of ordinary and at times surprising matters, such as the quality of bedding, the quantity of food, the possession of certain utensils, access to certain places and so on. As the group in question gets larger, so logistics (food, sleeping arrangements, consumables, storage, travel) become problems in themselves, as well as a financial issue. These internal regulations also seem to have taken shape in response to the need to meet a series of situations and forms of behaviour which were either ‘novelties’ or had become unmanageable, such as theft, trespassing and favouritism. The material routines specified by these documents are at the meeting point of politics in the broad sense, as a mode of living together, and politics in the narrow sense. On the one hand, the management of privileges, of goods and of domestic spaces served to produce and to express hierarchy and each individual’s function. On the other hand, this household was the point from which politics was directed in the sense of the government of the state. Indeed, following the double meaning of this term to denote both domesticity and a place where people lived, the household played a representative role, and each individual, once he left it, also represented his ‘house’ by the livery he wore. The household was a tool of political action since it allowed its master to receive guests, to impress, to travel here and there in an efficient manner. Above all, there was, in these regulations, an explicit link between the scale of the household and the kingdom. This scheme of different levels was indeed developed, between the thirteenth and the fourteenth century, by

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theoreticians of good government: in a word, the good management of the household was the preliminary condition of the good of the kingdom.

Transforming everyday life into a social calculus The prime purpose of the governance of the royal household by day and by night was to regulate each person’s wages and responsibilities. These were set down in writing as a result of the need to manage supplies and, with an ever-growing number of people assigned to the king’s service, to control the movement of people and objects. Household ordinances reveal the extent to which great households were cannily organized. No other type of document provides so much information and such a wealth of details. What interests me here, however, is a secondary effect. Regulations governing practices within the household, known by all, transformed the slightest aspect of daily life into a matter of privilege and a means of control. Once diverted from their natural function, meals and recreation partook in the construction of a political ‘subject,’ and, ultimately, within the context of community life, of the subject per se. These ordinances, in addition to stabilizing domestic life, sought to curb all kinds of behaviour such as the sale of misappropriated goods or forms of favouritism.1 But once established, each rule triggered a series of new attitudes. How might people get around constraints imposed by the rule? How could they turn the rule to their own advantage, where, for example, denunciation was encouraged? These austere yet very concrete household ordinances – from the ordinario of Louis IX in 1261, the first of its kind in Europe to have been conserved in its entirety (Figure 4.1) – provide glimpses of such ‘indirect’ realities.2 As a comparison, the king of Aragon issued a household ordinance of this type in 1276, and Edward I  of England followed suit in November  1279. My analysis of French ordinances will include those up to the measures taken by Philip V (1316–1322). Waste, the sale of stolen goods, dispensations from certain rules, pilfering, negligence and misappropriation are some of the behaviours we may deduce from these laws, which interest me here for two reasons. First, because little is known about such undesirable practices, since they are difficult to find in the sources apart from when they resulted in a judicial ruling, not often the case in forms of domestic mismanagement, which were essentially sub-judicial. Second, such practices show that it was still ultimately a matter for those involved of creating a ‘home,’ either through extra comfort or intimacy, or by establishing good relations with the people they shared their lives with.

‘La desordenance de l’ostel le roy’ Furs for the night, used torches, silver plates, felt hats – a large number of objects disappeared, were mislaid or were sold on by the king’s servants throughout the year, adding up to a major expense. As the opening words of one of these regulations clearly states, it was a matter of finding a remedy to the ‘disorder of the

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FIGURE 4.1  This

is the ordinance of the household of King Saint Louis made in the month of August in the year of Our Lord one thousand CC LXI. Paris, Archives Nationales, registre JJ 57, f. 20, manuscript of the Chamber accounts, 1316.

king’s household.’3 We have to imagine 150 or so people, soon to become several hundred, coming and going in the various residences where the king resided, for the court was still largely itinerant.4 The French royal household became distinct from the curia regis over the course of the thirteenth century, emerging as the institution in charge of organizing the material life of the king and his entourage.5 It was divided into six areas of activity: the paneterie (or pantry), the échansonnerie

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(in charge of the service of drinks), the cuisine (kitchen), the fruiterie (fruitery), the chambre (or chamber, which looked after lodging), and the fourrière (the office in charge of fodder and diverse supplies). For each of these subdivisions, or métiers (trades), certain staff were appointed to look solely after the king, such as the cook or washerwoman ‘par devers le roi.’ Other staff looked after the ‘commons.’ The queen and her children also had their own households in the event that these were not integrated or momentarily ‘reunited’ with the king’s household. But this level of organization was not enough. It was deemed necessary to rationalize all aspects of community life, including eating, sleeping, dress, equipment and the transport of various items. From Saint Louis onwards, French sovereigns used ordinances to fix the wages of each individual, either in money or in kind, from the valet de chambre through to the queen in person. They laid down rules regarding the possession, circulation, distribution and recovery of supplies, such as candles, wine or straw. These texts functioned as user’s manuals for those administrating people and goods. These texts were in all probability consulted frequently, perhaps daily, at various stages over the course of the day, and especially when distributing wages, during meals (to filter those entitled to food from those who were not), and at night-time (for the distribution of bedding, and to check who was allocated to which room and with whom). It was thus in seeking to ward off commotion and desordenance that the ‘minor details’ of existence would become reciprocal material dependencies, acting as signs of distinction which were sometimes subtle but in all cases permanent. Actor-network sociology has demonstrated that things are not simply the setting within which human relations are played out.6 Nor is it sufficient to describe them as an interface. Things, goods and objects are social beings in their own right, which resist, threaten, hinder and underpin how people relate. Their agency may be measured in this singular domestic context by their relative scarcity, or in any case by their rationing, making them coveted. In other words, their value resided in their capacity to enable those in possession of them to ‘exist’ within the group. I will examine the ways in which an object is ‘political,’ in the sense I defined at the outset, by following three successive lines of analysis. First, I will examine forms of behaviour – following a thematic approach – on the basis of one ordinance, in order to remain focused on a single framework; second, the functional, almost instrumental ties between people and goods. Finally, I will consider two key activities, namely meals and bedtime, when objects, arrangements and self-presentation where brought together to fashion a moment.

Control, cronyism, waste and pilfering Philippe IV’s ordinance of 1291 is one of the most coercive.7 It has 23 ‘binding’ articles (17.96% of the total number), as against 15 such articles in that of 1286 (also issued by Philippe IV),8 or 20 articles (18.51%) in Philippe V’s ordinance of 1316.9

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The difference lies mainly in how novel and tough the dispositions were, where this severity is indicative of the type of behaviour of interest to us here. It is worth considering this ordinance in detail to see what types of misappropriation of goods or improper circulation could occur, and how household administrators sought to stop them. The first new element in comparison to earlier regulations was the obligation for the masters of each métier – as set out in the first article of the text – to take an oath to carry out faithfully ‘their offices’ insofar as it lay in their power to do so.10 To this was added the specification: ‘at the lowest charge, cost, and expense they can.’ A certain laxness had no doubt developed, or else the number of people the household provided for had increased and so there was a need to pay more attention. If minor expenditures and routine supplies were allowed to develop uncontrolled, this would ultimately result in increased taxes. Next, all subaltern servants had to swear they would right any wrongdoings they might encounter, and, should they be unable to do so, they were to refer the matter to their superior: ‘if they see the opposite done they will try to undo it, or they will submit it to their masters if they cannot amend it’ (‘se il voient faire le contraire il mettront peine a defaire ou il le mettront a leurs maistres se il ne le povoient amender’). Here, ‘faire le contraire’ (‘do the opposite’) clearly referred to unnecessary expenses and doing what was explicitly denounced by subsequent prescriptions. The third article of the 1291 ordinance requires the masters of each métier not to accept or buy anything out of chalandise, that is, camaraderie, or in other words cronyism. They were to refuse anything resembling a bribe. Various forms of trafficking no doubt occurred, which though beneficial to those involved, did not necessarily benefit the royal coffers. The article further orders that these masters shall not distribute any ‘thing’ (that is the term used) bought or sold by and for the king or queen, without the king being indemnified. The next article requires that no ‘things’ be exchanged inside or outside the household, nor between métiers, without the authorisation of the maître d’hôtel (the officer in charge of the household). The maître d’hôtel thus acted as head inspector. The 1286 ordinance had already required that the maître d’hôtel supervise purchases and replacements, particularly of tablecloths: ‘the maître d’hôtel shall be informed of the number of tablecloths and none shall be changed without his permission, nor shall any be bought’ (art. 3). In the 1291 ordinance, all the household métiers had to pledge not to buy or change anything for their office other than out of necessity, nor ‘without showing it to the said masters or to one of them.’ In the 1306/7 ordinance (art. 28), we can glimpse how objects could be removed. When ‘new’ tablecloths arrived, the old ones were returned. But what happened to them? The December 1316 ordinance provides an answer: they were handed over to the chaplain who distributed them in accordance with usual practice. In other words, objects could vanish on the pretext of charity. But this time, in 1316, ‘for what they shall render . . . they shall take letters,’ that is to say written proof was to be drawn up that they had been replaced (art. 37). The circulation of people entailed the circulation of things through rooms and even outside physical buildings occupied by the household.

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There were several ways of countering the dispersal or disappearance of material. The first appears in several sections of the 1291 ordinance. The masters of each métier were to instruct their subalterns to go and ‘fetch in the bed chambers and throughout the household’ all objects in their charge (art. 6). For pantry staff, this meant ‘tablecloths and serviettes.’ It no doubt also included bread taken by those who did not eat in the communal hall because they had to remain where they worked or, as the ordinance states, because they were ill. The échansons had to fetch bottles, and hence anything left in them. The keus (cooks) had to bring back ‘table dishes and [everything] belonging to their kitchen.’ Another way of controlling goods and how they were used, together with the issuing of individual wages, was to set everything down in written orders. In around 1315, when it was decided to combine the king’s and the queen’s households, it was specified that none of the king’s liveried valets could take anything from the court except if so ‘requested by letters from the king,’ and that they would only be issued with ‘their rights’ on presentation of their document to the chambre aux deniers (the office in charge of the king’s household expenses), which would then inform the heads of each métier of their presence.11 One final way of controlling the movement of goods was to regulate the circulation and presence of people themselves. At meal times, to prevent pilfering in the buildings, or the stables, or any other place, while everybody was eating, the doormen was to ‘empty the court of all outside people and [check] that there is no person in the chambers, gardens, and meadows’: Item [ordinance before All Souls’ Day in 1292, final §] once the cry au queux! is given, all the chambers and ward-robes shall be left as previously stated [in 1291], and nobody shall remain there, except those who must remain there by right. In the same fashion, in 1292, the lads to the gardes and to the valets de chambre were forbidden from passing through ‘the first door,’ from entering ‘a room or chamber or wardrobe’ (art. 22). Such lads were the lowest servants, with the highest turnover of young boys from near and far, and it may be supposed they were the most likely to disappear with equipment or food.

When the object determines the subject In all, 81 different types of goods and foodstuff are mentioned over the course of the ordinances under consideration, from 1261 to 1316, including chests, quivers, candles, cushions, spurs, nets, drinking vessels, letters, mustard, razors, tarts, torches and shoes. Eighty-one might not sound like a lot, but the items range from the most important, such as material for the king’s bedchamber, armour and jewels, to be transported by six sommeliers (1316), to the most commonplace, such as straps, leather laces, or, more surprisingly, flambart, the fat skimmed from the top of the broth to which the souffleurs (the servants in charge of fires) were entitled – but not too much of it, ‘such as not to spoil the soup.’12

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A large number of functions were defined in terms of objects, and of the servants assigned to the management of goods. The garde-manger was in charge of food reserves. The task of a certain Colet was defined in the ordinance of 1261 as being to bring ‘drinking water for the king.’ Further examples can be listed, primarily on the basis of the ordinances of 1286 and 1291. Two valets, placed under the authority of a madrenier, the person in charge of drinking vessels, were required to carry hanapers and glasses. A vaisellier (or scutellarius) looked after the tableware, assisted by five valets. Several people were assigned to the repair of carts and harnesses. The robes of the king and queen required respectively a designated tailor and seamstress  – named in the 1286 ordinance. The royal seal required its own designated bearer (a function fulfilled in 1291 by the archdeacon of Flanders), as did the king’s ­crossbow (the ordinance issued at Lorris in 1317). The writings of Master Pierre de Condé required the service of a bearer.13 The tablecloths had their own ­‘washerwoman,’ and so on and so forth. I have deliberately inverted the order of the formulations, ‘for such things, such servants,’ rather than ‘such servants, for such things.’ The texts give the impression of a subjectivation by things. The social existence of many people depended on services rendered to goods belonging to the court and household: the purest example of this was the role of ‘porter or keeper of carts.’ It was via objects that the king’s subjects were assigned to his service. For all the people in charge of an object or category of objects, a kind of ordinary constraint was exerted over them insofar as their job – we might even say their use value – was determined by goods. It was clearly individuals who both served a function for objects and were at their service. The organ created the function. When the activity required equipment, it was provided for by the regulations. Thus in 1316, the ferret hunter and the fowler, from the nets and traps office, were paid a yearly sum set aside for this purpose. A sum of money was also explicitly allocated for axes and heuses (tall outdoor boots) worn by houndsmen. Saint Louis’ 1261 text stipulates that souffleurs and the garde-mangers were to receive 60 sous for their clothing, with the special mention ‘and for their footwear.’ In December 1316, 2s. 6d. were allocated each month for the shoes of each of the six children in the échansonnerie, the office in charge of everything relating to serving at table. The administrative relationship between people and objects was often determined not by individual status but by the extent to which their work was physically demanding. I pointed out at the beginning of this chapter how the social classification of people flowed from their domestic prerogatives in terms of access, benefits in kind and so on. But the king and his council were also alert to rationales other than hierarchical order and ‘personalism,’ which criteria tend to be emphasized in studying privileges and distributions of items such as livery. In addition to the demands of the work as a criterion for the benefit received, another was simply proximity to the king, and public presence. Looking solely at the allowance for clothing, the 1291 ordinance allocates 30s. to the king’s personal saucier, whereas the saucier for the commons received nothing. The Louis IX’s

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washerwoman received 6 livres (i.e. 120s.) for her robes, while the washerwoman of the paneterie received nothing. The oublier – in charge of preparing wafers and pastry crusts for the king – was granted the highest clothing allowance in the ordinances of 1261 and 1291. This difference was not based on hierarchy. Those whose office involved representing the royal household received larger allowances. Huissiers (ushers) and portiers de salles (doormen) were on display to visitors and court residents. Receiving and communicating was part of their function. Logically enough, it was more common for them to be entitled to a clothing allowance, often larger than the sum allocated to their colleagues. In the 1261 ordinance, they received 100s., the maximum for this type of allowance.

I eat, therefore I am Meals, a recurrent moment in group life, generated the most commotion, and hence their various stages needed defining. The lunchtime meal (dîner or petit diner) and the souper punctuated daily life at court. The first point was that not everyone who wanted to enter the dining room was allowed in. As soon as the cry ‘aus keus!’ had sounded, calling people to come and eat, the lads and sommeliers (porters), who were not allowed to eat in the household, were denied entry. There was no question of giving them any food prior to their departure, either, since it was stipulated in 1291 that ‘nobody shall pass through the door bearing bread, wine, meat, nor any other thing’ (art. 12). The texts of 1306/7 and of December  1316 even specify how to go about turning people back. They were to be handed over to the door valets, then to the doormen who ‘must keep the courtyard empty and hand them over to the roi des ribauds.’ The roi des ribauds was to keep an eye on them in turn. Those who were allowed to eat had to go to the common hall forthwith, ­ensuring that there were no stragglers while the others were being kept at bay. But those entitled to meals (numbering 164 for the king’s household in 1316, and 102 for the queen)14 might try to smuggle food out for a colleague or servant, despite this being expressly forbidden, or else relatively precious tableware. This is suggested by the ordinances of 1306/7 (arts 47 and 48) and of 1316 (art. 68). Was this the result of repeated abuse in this period? Be that as it may, a new kind of measure was introduced for the first time in 1306/7: before washing the dishes, the commons’ saucier had to count them by making notches in a piece of wood.15 And he had to do this in the presence of one of the cooks. The saussier pour le roy, for his part: shall place the silver bowls on a dresser and count them in the presence of one of the cooks and gather them up after eating and not give out any on his own, except to serve for the king in the room and in the chambellans’ chamber, and if any are missing the same shall go and look for them in the rooms and they shall bring the faults back every day to the same maîtres d’hôtel.16

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There was thus an officer specifically designated to carry out several daily tasks: counting the dishes before the meal under the oversight of a third party; and collecting up the cutlery, which was also counted. And this officer would have sworn to give these silver items solely to certain people in certain places, and to alert his masters to any ‘faults’ committed. This very precise chain of actions is in the middle of a description of the advantages enjoyed by this trusted saucier who ‘shall eat at court and have oats for one horse and wages of 4d.’ The paneterie clerk was ‘functionalized’ in a like manner. According to the 1307 ordinance, he was to be present ‘at the reception of bread at the counter, and for all things for the pantry’ (art. 65). Thus, in addition to the maître d’hôtel, a series of people was assigned to the actual management of objects and supplies. We might consider, for example, two houndsmen servants: Crasses Joes, roi des ribauds according to the 1316 act, and Escuier, his assistant. According to the ordinance of 1307, both were to ‘collect silver tableware’ for 2s. per day (art. 81).17 There were thus sworn officers who, in addition to their main functions, were entrusted with watching and tidying away material. Overall, the 1291 ordinance defines a strict routine to prevent all kinds of abuses: waste, excessive consumption, gifts of objects to intimates and even the illicit sale of equipment. Philippe V’s ordinance of 1307 and that of 1316 then went further, instigating what clearly amounted to control procedures.

My bed is better than yours The ‘domestic subject’ was established through meals (access to rooms, distribution, control over items and so on) but also through rest at night. If there is one human activity that is unerringly informative about one’s fellow man, however distant, it is sleep: it is always a matter of sleeping well and in good company. And nocturnal comfort was carefully regulated in the royal household. Night-time represented a sizeable logistical undertaking. Since the ordinance of Louis IX, night-time supplies were controlled, and there was a permanent effort to curb disorder and waste. Four métiers were involved in regulating darkness and lodgings: the chambre (headed by the chambellans), the fourrière (for bedding), the cuisine (at least for the delivery of wine ‘for retiring to bed’ in varying quantities depending upon the person), and the fruiterie (for light, since it was the office in charge of wax). From the text of Louis IX onwards, candles and torches were counted one by one for each servant or group of servants. Nothing was thrown away. Thus, in 1261 the valets de chambre were entitled to ‘an equal share of what remains of candles,’ and ‘Jean de Clichy, fruitier . . ., shall have the rest of the wax which burns at night in the king’s bedchamber and the rest of the candles’ (art. 49). With night came darkness, which gave a certain freedom and particular quality even to anyone with enough light to move around, help others and keep watch. Once again nothing was left to chance. In 1286 the king’s cooks were forbidden from taking torches from the dresser – previously they no doubt did so. Rather, they were to take torches back to the chest (art. 15). It is also stated that 12 ‘large

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torches’ were to be made, eight for the king and four for his brothers. It was specified that they were not to be given to any person external to each service, or to take them out of the household. In 1286, once again, it is stated that tablecloths were to be kept with ‘one torch per four’ (four days or four people), and nine small candles. In 1316, servants from the fourrière were allocated 30 candles ‘to carry out their service.’ They thus had to organize themselves to install the beds within these light and time constraints. The text repeats six times that the ‘stumps’ of the torches were to be returned in the morning.18 They were probably used to make new torches, and it is plausible that certain people objected to seeing torch ends lying around all over the place each morning. The 1291 regulations even specify what constitutes a bed. Apparently, some of the fourriers in charge of distributing bedding tended to allocate too much, others showed favouritism in how much they gave to different people. Thus it was ordered that ‘a mattress, a cushion, and a bale of straw shall be given to those who are to have their bed from the fourrière,’ such as the chaplain or the clerk. The porte-sceau, however, was entitled to more, being allocated two bales of straw and a mattress as the fourriers deemed fit. In 1307 (art. 61), this distribution was performed by the maître fourrier seconded by two valets and eight assistants. These prescriptions were repeated ten years later in the ordinance of December  1316 (art. 92). Those in charge of distributing bedding were to personally carry the straw, mattresses and provisions (food) without any assistance. If they requested outside help, they were to pay for it from their wages. But in no case were they to make the beds, except in the king’s bedchamber. And they were to deliver material to only six bedchambers. The 1286 regulations insist on where each person was to sleep and with whom. It was ordered that ‘nobody shall sleep in the chambre aux deniers’ except a dozen named people with their valets (art. 79); ‘that nobody, neither knights nor anyone else, shall sleep with his wife in madame [the queen’s] household’ (art. 147); and ‘the chaplain and all the clerks mentioned previously shall rest together in one bedchamber,’ followed by a list of those concerned (art. 142). Apparently, the desire was to prevent certain people demanding their bed be made for them, to ensure the fourriers did not leave bedding material behind as they went on their rounds, that people did not disperse to go to sleep, and that they did not take all the best spots.

Serving and helping oneself In parallel to the management of beds, the roi des ribauds, once again, together with the porters, was in charge (in 1316) of forbidding access to the fourrière to any person not working there (art. 98). The same applied to the stable, another strategic place for tools and equipment. Controlling the stables was particularly important as they were frequented by many people, who, however prestigious they might be, were external to the household, passing through or staying as guests. It was from the stable that horsemen (chevaucheurs) went forth or returned carrying letters (1316). No doubt in response to specific circumstances which came to the

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attention of the king, or the clerks on his council, the 1291/2 household ordinance laid down stipulations. Henceforth, it was forbidden to take anything ‘in the stables’ unless it was for the use of ‘the king’s body’ (le corps du roi) (art. 17), for his brother Louis – that is, Louis de France, Comte d’Évreux (1276–1319) – or for two other lords, one of whom was Louis de Clermont (1279–1341), the future Louis I of Bourbon, aged 13 at the time. The 1291/2 ordinance draws up a list of things that ‘none shall take.’ These include saddles, saddle straps and sursangles, horse covers, spurs and hats (art. 18). The following clause stipulates that a single person named by the king shall take and administer ‘smaller articles’ (menues choses) for him. A single person was thus entitled to take equipment in the king’s name and to deliver it to him or have it delivered to him, including notably gloves, headwear and knives. These provisions were no doubt introduced in the wake of a series of objects disappearing or supplies being issued to people who were not entitled to them. People came and left with equipment, claiming it was for the king, saying that the king or such-and-such a lord had sent them to fetch something. Warhorses and packhorses (rounceys) were also subject to close attention as of 1286, concerning their purchase, replacement, departure from the stables and abandonment by the wayside. A similarly close eye was kept on who was entitled to use the forge, who was allowed to use a horse and so on and so forth. The stakes were financial, yet equally clearly, there was a symbolic component to being on horseback or not.

Conclusion: controlling numbers and curbing commotion We need to imagine several hundred people coming and going all day long, on foot or on horseback, eating together, some in their place of work. They often slept in groups in several rooms, or on the contrary, had to lodge elsewhere. But they all periodically moved around in the king’s retinue. All this human activity entailed repeatedly moving large quantities of objects, equipment and supplies in a sizeable logistical undertaking. Equipment needed maintaining and renewing. Many goods were consumables, such as oats for the animals or candles at night. It was thus a matter of permanent foresight and planning for all sorts of supplies. The circulation of men and of things formed a whole. The movement of the one caused or required the movement of the other. It was no doubt to contain this ­desordenance that Louis IX had set down in writing – in the first French royal ­ordinance of this kind in the 1240s, and then again in 126119 – the number of his servants together with their wages in money or in kind.20 He thereby described their way of living – where they lived, where they slept, and with whom. ­Everything is present in the 1261 ordinance, which starts as follows (Figure 4.1): Firstly, chambellans. Their liveries (livraisons) are cancelled, to each 6s. in wages [per day] and three valets eating at court and in the evening a half setier of wine, one torch per seven . . . and twelve small candles and the forge for three horses.

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The barber 1 person, 6d. per day, a provision of oats, one valet eating at court, 100s. for his robes (robes) the forge for one horse, six small candles. In this text, as in those that follow, people and things, objects and victuals go together. It is artificial to consider just objects, or solely the way they were controlled. Servants too were subject to constraints in their access to domestic goods and in how they used them. Objects and individuals, people and animals are thought of in these texts in terms of relations or equivalences. Just as it was stipulated that the tableware was to be counted to prevent any ‘subtractions’ (ditractions) in 1316, the same ordinance stated that when mass was celebrated the servants were to be counted to prevent any defections (art. 106). By establishing these rules for internal use, the king and his council had several objectives in mind. First, they wanted to fix each individual’s rights and duties with regard to essential goods. Second, they wanted to have a record which could be used to manage these goods over time. Third, they wanted to control spending, by checking, limiting, and anticipating expenditure. More generally, it was a matter of organizing everyday life to make royal action more effective and to enhance the royal presence throughout the kingdom, of ensuring representation while avoiding excess. This even concerned the highest level of the household and court: It is ordered by our lord the king that for all almsgiving and oblations [gifts and presents, as stated in a subsequent ordinance] the queen shall have 4 hundred livres parisis and no more, [excepting] the 14 paupers she is to feed each day (art. 1) Item attention will be paid to the expenditures of her household (art. 6).21 Objects and authorized expenditures provide a way of exerting control over people and their lifestyle. This control is particularly clear in the king’s deciding on the annual amount for the livery of a senior officer. It is even a matter of curbing the queen’s ‘generosity’ (her largesce or liberalitas), even though this is of prime importance in demonstrating nobility of character and rank. For a theoretician of royal power like Giles of Rome, this virtue consisted in the balance between two other types of behaviour, on the one hand avarice (avaricia), and on the other prodigality (prodigalitates) or wild generosity (fole largesce).22 There was but a short step from the household to the kingdom, a step which was generally taken by going from the general – the management of the kingdom, and here the sumptuary laws spring to mind – to the particular. But it was clearly on the basis of the household, the model of domestic economy, that princes and those thinking about the state established this style of government, which may be characterized as material government. The proper management of the household was the first step towards the proper management of the king’s domains. Indeed, the household (mesnie) and the kingdom are explicitly linked in the title given in around 1318–1320 to the ordinance issued at Bourges on 16 November  1318: ‘Ordinance for the government of the king’s household and for the good of the kingdom.’23

60  Gil Bartholeyns

Notes 1 On the texts themselves, see Élisabeth Lalou, ‘Les ordonnances de l’hôtel des derniers capétiens direct’, in H. Kruse and W. Paravicini (eds.), Höfe und Hofordnungen 1200– 1600 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1999), pp. 91–101. 2 Paris, Archives Nationales [hereafter AN], JJ 57, ff. 20–25 (ca. 1316). Regulation dated August 1261. Text edited by Jean-François Moufflet, ‘Autour de l’Hôtel de Saint Louis (1226–1270): le cadre, les hommes, l’itinéraire du pouvoir’, unpublished thesis, École nationale des chartes, 2007, annex 1. Translated from French and Latin texts in Sources d’histoire médiévale, IXe-milieu du XIVe siècle, ed. Ghislain Brunel and Élisabeth  Lalou (Paris: Larousse, 1992), pp. 717–723. 3 AN, JJ 57, 2nd part., f. 85v. 4 Moufflet, ‘Autour de l’Hôtel’; Jean Richard, ‘Les itinéraires de saint Louis en Île de France’, in Jean Chapelot and Élisabeth Lalou (eds.), Vincennes, aux origines de l’Etat moderne (Paris: Presses de l’École normale supérieure, 1996), pp. 163–170; Élisabeth Lalou and François Maillard, Itinéraire de Philippe iv le Bel (1285–1314) (Paris: De Boccard, 2007). 5 Élisabeth Lalou, ‘Le fonctionnement de l’hôtel du roi du milieu du XIIIe siècle au milieu du XIVe siècle’, in Chapelot and Lalou (eds.), Vincennes, pp. 145–155. 6 In a vast and vibrant field, one of the most influential sociological currents of the last 30 years, we might nonetheless cite Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). For a brief introductory discussion, see Ian Hodder, Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relations Between Humans and Things (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 91–94. 7 At the bois de Vincennes, the week before Candlemas (26 January and the following days in 1291, new style): AN, JJ 57, f. 10v-18. Philippe IV issued two further ordinances. An undated ordinance in c. 1292: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BNF], ms. lat. 12814, f. 67v-69, and an ordinance of 1306–1307: AN JJ 57, f. 49–55v. Philippe III apparently issued no such ordinances, perhaps using those established by his father Louis IX. 8 At Vincennes, the day after Saint Vincent’s day (January 23, 1286, new style): AN, JJ 57, f. 1–10 and BNF ms. lat 12814, f. 61–67. 9 At Vincennes in 1316: AN, JJ 57, f. 57 sq. The other main ordinances or supplements (creues) issued by Philippe V are as follows. One for the Queen: BNF, ms. fr. 2833, f. 70–75, modern copy. At Lorris on 17 Nov. 1317: BNF, ms. fr. 7855, p. 225–242; BNF, ms. fr. 16600, f. 237; BNF, ms. fr. 2833, 58–68v; BNF, ms. fr. 16199, f. 344–360v. Others at Saint-Germain in July 1316; on a ‘vendredi 24 novembre’ during the Regency; at Bourges on 16 November, 1318. See Ordonnances des rois de France de la troisième race, ed. Eusèbe de Laurière (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1723–41), vol. 1, p. 668. 10 This clause also figures at the end of the 1306/7 ordinance. 11 Ordinance unifying the households of the king and the queen in 1315, ed. num. Élisabeth Lalou, AN, P 2289, p. 384; BNF, collection Clairambault, 832, p. 646; BNF, ms. fr. 2833, f. 89v-91. 12 1286 ordinance issued by Philippe IV, art. 19. 13 Ibid., art. 72. 14 See arts. 1 and 9 in L’abrégé des dépenses for the household of the king, the queen, and children, drawn up in December 1316, after the ordinance drawn up at the bois: AN, JJ 57, f. 44v. 15 See F. Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française (Paris: Bouillon, 1895), vol. 4, p. 500, quoting the ordinance of Dec. 1316. 16 1306/7 ordinance, art. 47. 17 See too the 1317 ordinance issued at Lorris: ‘1 [valet] who keeps an eye on all silver tableware’. 18 Ordinance of Dec. 1316, articles 3, 8, 10, 13, 14, 23.1317 ordinance issued at Lorris, articles 15, 17, passim.

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19 Élisabeth Lalou suggests the date of 1241 for the Ordinario servientium officiorum hospitio regis, preserved in part in AN, J 1028, no. 28 B. See Lalou, ‘Les ordonnances . . .’, p. 95. 20 The tendency was to pay in money. For the ‘liveries’ in Louis IX’s 1261 ordinance, 46% of positions were provided with this type of revenue, as against only 20 people in Philippe V’s detailed December 1316 ordinance. 21 Ordinance for the queen’s household following Saint Louis’s ordinance, AN, JJ 57, f. 24, and BNF, ms. fr. 16199, f. 122. 22 Giles of Rome, De Regimine principum, book ii, part 3 in Aegidii Columnae, De regimine principum libri III (Rome: B. Zannettum, 1607). There is no modern edition for the Latin version. For a thirteenth-century French translation see Henri de Gauchi, Li livres du gouvernement des rois, ed. S. P. Molenaer (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1966). 23 AN, JJ 55, no. 114. See Jean Guerout, Régistres du Trésor des chartes . . . inventaire analytique (Paris: SEVPEN, 1966). Edited in Ordonnances des rois de France, ed. de Laurière, vol. 1, p. 668.

5 THE PRINCE AND HIS COFFER The material functions and symbolic power of an everyday political object at the end of the Middle Ages Jean-Baptiste Santamaria

Among the panoply of objects available to princes, chests or coffers occupy a s­ pecial place. They gave material and symbolic form to a number of essential aspects of the lifestyle of the great. As a piece of furniture for containing things, chests were associated with the ‘inveterate habits of nomadism’ which characterized princes and the high nobility.1 They were used to transport and protect things of value, while also being associated with the more nebulous notion of treasure. Treasure was more abstract, not always referring to a place or an object but also invoking a hazier complex of ideas held together by the coffer’s function: safeguarding what was worth ‘saving,’ on a continuum running from jewels to relics to charters.2 Treasure also had a theological referent, the ‘treasure in heaven’ linked to the economy of grace, as well as a ‘scientific’ or moral meaning, since treasure might be comprised of virtues, like the Treasure of the City of Ladies.3 Treasure, though a central category of the Middle Ages, is thus hard to reduce to a set of concrete referents. Chests or coffers provide a way of approaching treasure on an everyday level, although without this implying something commonplace, ordinary or banal. Indeed, chests were also objects well-suited to giving material form to Christian moral reflection, precisely by the way they concealed riches beneath their modest appearance. On the other hand, they were also ambivalent objects, since they linked two spheres with complex relations: money and power. Chests thus lay at the heart of the ‘economic theology’ which ran through the later Middle Ages.4 They could thus be denounced as symbolizing avarice, since conservation hindered circulation, or else celebrated as a boon for the prudential management of riches, in contrast to the unbridled munificence which led the prince to ruin and caused him to subject his people to taxation.5 Representations of the lord and his treasure sometimes involved brutal evocations of his rapaciousness ­(Figure 5.1). The chest was also the locus of tensions in the management of finances, between the innovative yet far from total recourse to ‘immaterial’ financial

The prince and his coffer  63

payment of taxes to the lord. Valerius Maximus, Faits et dits. France, fifteenth century. BNF, MS Fr. 6185, f. 89v.

FIGURE 5.1 The

tools, which also had to be conserved, and the need to have hard cash readily available, which remained a practical and symbolic necessity for the prince.6 This dimension can also be seen in iconography (Figure 5.2). As part of the everyday life of the prince, the coffer was a familiar object which pointed to the importance of money at the court but also suggested the danger of its very ordinariness. This object takes us to the heart of the prince’s financial power and personal involvement in money matters, long excluded from the picture by a ‘Weberian’ paradigm of the prince as a dilettante progressively dominated by a calculating bureaucratic bourgeoisie.7 As such, the chest is part of politics in a ‘narrow sense’ since it is attached to a person who retains public authority, and must clearly be related to strictly political Aristotelian virtues including magnificence. But at the same time, it shows close connections between politics and more private matters such as economics, in the medieval Aristotelian sense of government of one’s house, and ethics, the government of oneself. As Gil Bartholeyns pointed out in the previous chapter, domestic space is often part of political space. A household, its objects and its people must be kept in order to establish the ability of the king to manage his kingdom. Drawing on archival, literary and iconographic documents, together with consideration of chests or coffers that still exist today, this chapter sets out to understand how this materiality ‘resists’ and subsists. It starts by examining the financial usages of the chest. One of the keys, so to speak, clearly lies in the relationship

64  Jean-Baptiste Santamaria

FIGURE 5.2  A  striking

illustration of the complementarity of writing and money. While his servants handle treasure, the king takes note and records. Psalterium romanum, Mantova, c. 1430. BNF, MS Latin 772, f. 50.

of direct proximity between the prince and his coffer, a relation also to be found with other individuals and other objects, as well as with places of power. This relationship clearly needs to be thought of in both concrete and symbolic terms, the two often going together in the medieval world, whose interpretations rarely functioned solely at the concrete level of texts, animals and things.

The prince’s coffers: an indispensable everyday object Chests or coffers were very complex objects, and a key element in the life of the court. They were linked to the status of the head of the princely house, personally in charge of managing his household, and by extension, his estates. Chests were, first of all, an ‘indispensable piece of furniture,’ perfectly adapted to the princely way of life.8 They figure prominently in the sources, offering a compromise between protection and mobility, and thus an integral component in the material culture of courts. They were not only used by princes but are also to be found in the possession of bishops, money changers and private individuals. Yet princes had numerous

The prince and his coffer  65

chests for a wide variety of purposes, whose existence is attested by archival materials and surviving objects. They frequently figure in inventories or accounts, such as the chest purchased in 1353 for the trousseau of Blanche of Bourbon, Queen of Castile. She brought with her two chests for her chapel, two for her gowns, two for her jewels and six for her wardrobe.9 Various things were placed inside coffers, including sweets, relics, arms and even King Charles VI – ‘the chest where the king was,’ made from boiled leather and walnut wood firmly ‘cemented’ together.10 Coffins were often portrayed as chests. Yet princes’ coffers were also used to store money. Such was the case of a red chest belonging to Countess Jeanne de Chalon in 1360, which contained 1,632 gold coins, weighing more than 5 kilos.11 Chests were sometimes used to store even heftier quantities. In 1394, Charles VI had 50,000 francs – 194 kilos of gold – placed in a chest in the Louvre.12 In bimetallic systems, monetary reserves can take the form of accumulations of coins or of precious objects, without the two always being clearly separated. The division was not clear-cut, as for example in 1468, when Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, had the keeper of his jewels place ‘silver in the jewel chamber.’13 In material terms, chests built to contain money were similar to other types of chest. Charles the Bold purchased chests between 4 and 7 feet long for his finances, called ‘great chests.’14 This corresponds to the dimensions of the largest surviving chests, measuring nearly 2 metres long, such as the Noyon chest.15 There are also references to small chests or caskets being used for finances, existing examples of which measure about 40 cm.16 According to the archives, all such chests for keeping valuables had locks. Such was the case for Charles the Bold’s silver chests. Chests mentioned in the accounts are mainly made of oak, sometimes walnut, assembled with leather and iron. In 1468 he bought four chests, ‘banded with several bands of iron, for placing said money,’ covered in cowhide.17 In this respect, money chests were similar to others, such as those made for chapel ornaments, in oak studded with iron, and chests held at Cluny and Wissembourg.18 Allusions are also to be found to strongboxes, such as that of the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Denis: ‘a very strong chest bound and banded with iron and closed with four silver locks.’19 But the principle seems to have been the same. Their massive oak planks, sometimes 6  cm thick, must have been robust, especially when reinforced with iron bands. This is clearly confirmed by extant objects. The case of the Noyon chest is a famous example, with a wide range of defensive devices, including a double base, and three locks protected against attempts to force them.20 Chests made entirely from metal were apparently rarer. One such chest is now held by the Musée de la Faience, Nevers, although there are virtually no references in contemporary accounts. Their varied sizes and different ways of storing things meant chests were often placed in other chests, as shown by the iconography.21 At her death in 1360, Jeanne de Chalon had a red chest containing a little ‘casket’ and several small bags of coins. The accounts also refer to leather purses containing coins inside chests.

66  Jean-Baptiste Santamaria

The usefulness of chests for managing finances – a dangerous tool of freedom The profusion of chests and coffers suggests we should curb the historian’s natural tendency to overestimate the role of paper and parchment in financial management. An understanding of the latter based purely on paper archives would seriously underestimate the role of chests, leading us to believe that all the prince’s money necessarily passed through the hands of an officer accounting for monies received. In fact, money was sometimes placed directly in chests. The practice is attested for Marguerite de France, who issued receipts for money ‘handed to her.’22 The desire to have liquid assets immediately available independently of all control by officers led to the development of personal caskets kept near the prince. The purpose of such treasure from the king’s savings, known as the ‘so-called savings’ (l’espargne mal nommé), or Philip the Good’s ‘secret treasure’ (onzen heymelicken tresor), was ‘to help us in our sudden and necessary affairs.’23 These simple chests, sometimes called ‘savings’ (épargne), contained a reserve of money. They were sometimes replenished by small sums of a few hundred gold coins levied on various revenues, both ordinary and extraordinary. This was how Countess Marguerite de France proceeded, drawing from her tax receivers ‘for money placed in her chests.’ In 1365 the king regularly took 20,000 francs from his revenue to place in his chests.24 Charles the Bold’s financial ordinance of 8 February 1468 stipulates that the prince had the right to oversee the finance office for sums brought in by the receiver general, which he could place ‘in his chests.’25 Christine de Pizan advised princesses to progressively fill their chests in such manner.26 Windfalls were another way to fill chests, as recommended by ‘mirrors for princes.’ After 1369, a ‘savings chest’ was filled from extraordinary or occasional revenue, notably confiscations from Charles of Navarre.27 Extraordinary taxes (aides) provided Charles the Bold with large inflows of money: in 1469 the treasurer of extraordinary taxes, who was also the guard of savings, acting on the written orders of the duke, placed ‘extraordinary deniers’ ‘into the chests of my said lord.’28 The reason why a princess such as Marguerite de France, Countess of Artois and of Burgundy wished to build up such reserves, was ‘to place them in our chests and to do our will.’29 This is extraordinarily reminiscent of the motto ‘for my sole desire’ (a mon seul desir), which was also that of the figure of Largesse in the tapestry of the Lady and the Unicorn, where the lady in person is shown removing jewels from a chest. Such usages are attested for the court of the Count of Foix, who took money directly from his chests to hand in person to nobles in his chamber.30 In addition to convenience, chests or coffers had the added advantages of secrecy and discretion. In the Roman du châtelain de Coucy et de la dame de Fayel, the lady uses her chest to recompense her go-between, Gobert, her husband’s squire and the friend of her lover, ‘The lady, who does not need to learn (qui n’est à aprendre)/Went to take from her chest (A son coffre est allée prendre)/Deniers, and filled a purse,/Which was in good silk, and expensive,/Placed it in Gobert’s hand.’31 The money in chests was there to circulate.

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Moving funds The other advantage of coffers or chests was their mobility. In vast principalities with many local collectors and receivers of income, where the prince travelled around, funds needed to be transferred. These transfers were not solely written transactions, and gold figured prominently, since the same value could be transported in less weight of gold than of silver.32 Money was needed to finance the household or impatient armies. Chests of money thus sometimes followed the court. In the years 1468–1469, ‘finance chests’ (coffres des finances) circulated as needed between Brussels, The Hague, Bruges and Hesdin, even though not all the available money moved about. Lille was apparently used as the main depository to be drawn on as required.33 Lastly, the military context meant that chests were needed for the troops: during the siege of Oudenaarde by Ghent in 1453, Philip the Good decided to have ‘many deniers and assets taken from his savings to pay his men at arms.’34 Chests could be used to transfer valuables by sea, as the Brugeois did in 1382, who according to Froissart placed ‘thousands of jewels in sacks, caskets, chests and barrels, and had them put in ships and barges to transport them in safety, and went by sea to Holland and Zeeland . . . not a silver spoon was still to be found in all the houses in Bruges.’35 Philip the Good also used kegs, five of which were used to take a large mass ‘in gold, silver, money, and silver plates, about 35,000 pounds’ from Liège to Bruges in 1468. When hundreds of thousands of coins were transported from Brussels to Tirlemont that same year, four chests of between 4 and 6 feet long were placed on two wagons drawn by 14 horses,36 in a manner similar to that shown in drawings from the seventeenth century.37 Chests and baggage were both referred to as sommes (literally, sums),38 and associated with beasts of burden (bêtes de sommes), horses or mules portrayed carrying chests on their flanks in the iconography.39 They were also associated with valets known as sommeliers in charge of objects and the chests containing them.40 These chests were sometimes built into carts, for example, Duchess Margaret of Bavaria’s ‘new cart’ was equipped with ‘two chests which are at the two ends of said chariot.’41 Such a chest may be seen at the back of the chariot illustrating a passage of De mulieribus claris in an early-fifteenth-century Parisian manuscript.42

The materiality of written accounts: chests, money and ‘papers’ The use of chests should not be thought of as a mere archaic practice, opposed to abstract and written forms of money. Importantly, chests could be checked if the prince so desired. The prince might write letters of acknowledgement or receipt for officers conducting transfers to chests, and have movements recorded by a clerk, but such chests were an accounting black hole, at least as far as the administration was concerned. Accounts clerks often alerted their superiors to poorly recorded transfers operating outside any official framework.43 On the other hand, the prince

68  Jean-Baptiste Santamaria

might use similar methods to sovereignly remove his actions from all monitoring. This was the case with the deniers handed to Duke John the Fearless and recorded in the chapter headed ‘Deniers in coin issued to my lord, both to place in his chests, and to do as he pleases and wills for his secret affairs, and to several other people on his orders’ (Deniers bailliez comptans a monseigneur tant pour mettre en ses coffres comme pour faire son plaisir et voulenté en ses choses secrettes et a pluseurs autres par son ordonnance).44 While chests might be subjected to or escape from written control, writing could also be protected by chests. Certain written instruments acquired a status as precious objects, either because they were exchangeable for money, or as material which might give away the prince’s secrets. In 1468, Charles the Bold purchased two chests in which to place ‘papers, estimates, registers, and other things concerning the finances of my said lord,’ in particular an estimate of overall revenue – completely secret documents.45 These financial papers are comparable to letters sent by chest, such as those from the agent ‘Georges l’Aventureulx’ in ‘a chest containing certain deeds, about which the lord wishes no other declaration to be made here,’ or ‘secret writings about doings of the Order of the Golden Fleece.’46 This idea of using chests to enclose valuable writings is also found in iconography, which depicts, for example, the Evangelists placing their scrolls in chests.47 A chest full of money was thus just as indispensable as it was banal, proving that the notion of ‘public money’ was still far from clearly defined at this time. In refusing to forego the advantages chests of money conferred in their daily exercise of power, princes did not seek to use such money shamefully or secretively but on the contrary invested their coffers with a symbolic dimension and political significance, via the words, places, people and gestures associated with them. Monitoring chests was a perilous political exercise of vital importance to the prince. Philippe de Commynes, writing about the army of the Duke of Brittany, emphasizes the link between a prince’s coffers and his power: ‘and it clearly seemed, seeing the company, that the Duke of Brittany was a very great lord, for all this company lived on his coffers.’48 These coffers were an all but magical source of life, and a chest of Louis XI was even described as an ‘enchanter’s box’ (boiste à l’enchanteur).49 Princes were aware of this role, and used their proximity to them for symbolic purposes. They acted as a reserve of value, control of which, via the intermediary of a key, enabled each and every one – from the prince down to the servant – to know where they stood in the world of the court. At the same time, this reserve was also a potential site of contestation, as was the power which came with it.

Chests as a reserve of political values Chests also served as a reserve of political values. Coffers were vested with sacred significance, as iconography makes clear by assimilating them with treasure. A chest could contain the Word of God, it could be the Ark of Covenant, or more familiarly a reliquary.50 Nevertheless, the presence of chests near the prince was part of an ambivalent symbolism drawing on Christian morality, which could denote either vice or virtue. When closed, chests could symbolize avarice, and when open,

The prince and his coffer  69

covetousness.51 The iconography of coffers did not spare the lord, avid for the money of his poor subjects.52 But a closed coffer could also represent financial prudence, keeping a close guard, or else good concealed behind a lowly appearance, in which case it might be associated in iconography with a guard dog.53 An open chest could refer to the largesse often associated with the prince making withdrawals from it.54 Hence the image of the prince was also influenced by the ambivalent object of the chest. The coffer was a difficult thing to use, a matter of striking a happy balance. Still, it was used in a way which made it more than a simple everyday object, given the extent to which chests were associated with intimacy and with public power. Certain chests were, for that matter, exhibition pieces in themselves, such as the ‘cast chests’ enamelled with silver and gold bought in 1316 for the French queen,55 or Charles the Bold’s iron casket inlaid with gold and silver, now held in Munich.56 Others conveyed a political or heraldic message, such as that given by Louis XI to the Collegiate Church of Saint-Aignan, Orléans depicting the 12 peers of France.57 Chests were often associated with places embodying authority. For princes, this meant castles, such as that in Lille where Philip the Good went to visit his coffers and treasures in 1461.58 Princes were reluctant to place their financial reserves elsewhere, including public monies from taxation. Chests, like castles, revealed the close union between domestic and public functions. The iconography associated chests as readily with the intimate as the public domain, linking these two spheres, which should not be viewed as opposed, as evidenced by representations of Alexander and Arthur depicted with chests.59 Chests could also be hidden in inaccessible places. This could be a matter of protection but was also associated with the negative image that could be attached to the accumulation of money and savings, for the tyrant, like a dragon, ‘sleeps in the shadows, resting in the secret of his chamber, with riches, in dissimulation.’60 Towers were better suited for this use than cellars. The Cabochien ordinance of 1413 required the king to place money from extraordinary taxes ‘in a great chest which shall be placed in the great tower of our palace, or elsewhere, in a safe and secret place as advised.’61 Secrecy provided protection, but it could also constitute a danger. The Dukes of Burgundy used their castle at Lille for their reserves, which under John the Fearless was reputed to house enormous treasures. Charles the Bold personally amassed the contents of a chest holding ‘the treasure of my said lord’ ‘in a tower of the castle at Lille, as my said lord had ordered,’ in a place called ‘the treasure chamber’ (la chambre du tresor). It was fortified, had a reinforced floor, and was known as ‘the chamber which was all of iron’ (la chambre qui est toute de fer). Coins were counted there, away from prying eyes. In December 1469, 50,000 écus were counted by candlelight in the space of eight days. The expression chambre de finances (‘chamber of finances’) is ambiguous and shifting, for ‘chambers’ were not necessarily places but could also be sets of objects (often placed in chests), or departments of the princely household. Under Charles the Bold, the ‘chests of finance’ (coffres des finances) were thus placed in a ‘chamber of finances’ (chambre des finances), conveyed to Bruges, Brussels, Hesdin and Antwerp, and thus seem to refer equally to places and to a proper mobile service made up of chests containing ‘papers, office registers, and other things used in the chamber of finances of my said lord.’62

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Knowing one’s coffers to know one’s strength Strong rooms were also sometimes connected to more private apartments, as was the case in Charles V’s Louvre. Chests were even sometimes placed directly in private rooms. It is known that the Duke of Berry kept his treasure in his study at Mehun-sur-Yèvre.63 Additionally, the prince could place his chests in various places to exhibit them. The prince’s person was thus surrounded by chests, whether he be in his tent or in his hall, as shown in the iconography (Figures 5.3 and 5.4). These could contain objects of varying nature. They might just as well contain money as,

FIGURE 5.3  Alexander

distributes the treasure of Philip of Macedon. Johannes de Columna, Mare historiarum, Anjou, 1447–1450. Maître de Jouvenel and his assistants. BNF, Latin 4915, f. 86.

The prince and his coffer  71

Arthur sleeping under his tent with his coffers. Songe d’Arthur. Mort le roi Artu. Poitiers, around 1480. BNF, MS Latin 111, f. 294.

FIGURE 5.4 King

in Charles the Bold’s chests, pastries called ‘oublies which are served daily to my said lord.’64 Louis XI’s held ‘the True Cross of Charlemagne’ when he went travelling in 1468.65 In illuminated manuscripts these chests are often shown in bed chambers, or placed at the foot of the bed in private spaces, particularly in the tent of a king at war, such as Arthur or Hannibal.66 Princes drew what they needed to give to those in their immediate circle, a highly political gesture which reinforced bonds of friendship or vassalage through the display of largesse, while also granting access to the prince’s intimate circle, making the chamber a place of power. As we have seen, according to Froissart, the Count of Foix ‘had certain chests in his chamber, from which he sometimes but not always had money taken to give when certain lords came, knights or squires, to whom he gave, for nobody ever left him without a gift from him.’67 The prince did not hesitate to exhibit his riches and power in his treasure rooms, apartments or in his hall. The iconography and narrative texts abound in such demonstrations. They could take place in secret rooms to which the prince conducted his guest, fuelling his reputation for wealth, expressing his magnificence and giving a mark of trust. When Charles VI visited the antipope Clement VII in Avignon, the latter ‘on several occasions opened secluded apartments where only

72  Jean-Baptiste Santamaria

his intimate circle were admitted, and the most secret recesses where his treasures and reserves were placed.’68 Such a visit also served to show that the prince alone mastered such displays of wealth, which could be used to deliver a lesson in wisdom, like Alphonso VIII of Castile exhibiting his chests in the Decameron.69 These demonstrations could acquire an even more demonstrative and political turn when conducted in ceremonial spaces, particularly when linked to the hall or the prince’s bedchamber or personal apartments, as is clearly shown in the iconography, as we saw for Alexander the Great. A superb description of this was also given by an intimate of John III of Chalon-Arlay, prince of Orange, during a trial: Messire Jehan de Chalon was a lord with great finances. He owned a chest four foot long and two high, which was ironed and shut with a lock, and always placed as a step at the foot of the bed where the said lord slept. It was very heavy. I even saw, fifty years ago, the late Huguenin de Scey, and three or four other gentlemen who were the lord’s domestic servants, say to him one day while talking after dinner that he should get rid of said casket, which was old and roughly fashioned. To which he answered: I will give it to you if you manage to take it out of the chamber. They tried to do so by seizing it from in front, from below, and from the side, but they could not lift it from the floor, it was so heavy. It was commonly said in the lord’s household that there was a reserve of gold and silver inside.70 The fine exemplum given by John of Chalon serves as a parable of the weighty links between prince, castle, land and precious metals, with these links taking on concrete form in the very ordinary chest standing at the foot of a bed. It is reminiscent of the Arthurian myth of the sword in the stone, with the chest becoming the object that unites power to chthonic forces. After all, metals are extracted from the depths, and accounts of building the keep of Ardres indicate that a small quantity of gold was placed in its foundations. This chest linked power to the castle to the earth, the underpinnings of lordly power. Its worn appearance suggested a degree of humbleness, as well as anchoring it in the lengthy timeframe of lineages, as immovable as gold is incorruptible. Lastly, it fed the mystery and secrecy surrounding power, and hence the imagination. Nobody saw it, but everybody could feel its strength. The prince relied on it to challenge the power of other nobles: ‘let them come and get it.’ A chest of this size is known to have weighed 150 kilos, and often contained between 200 and 400 kilos in coins. Several strong men would be able lift such a weight, but mechanisms existed to fix chests to the ground are known to have existed. Despite having iron handles, indicating it could be moved, the chest held in Noyon Museum, mentioned earlier, has four holes in its base through which heavy bolts could be passed, and a nut fastened and sealed to the ground.71 It was then impossible to lift, even when empty. The lesson could be addressed to the court but also to the common people, who were sometimes worried about the state of the prince’s coffers, particularly after the payment of taxes. In the insurrectional climate of Paris in 1356, the Estates ‘wanted

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to know what had become of the great deniers and treasures raised recently in the kingdom.’72 If need be, such valuables could be used to intimidate opponents and rebels. Georges Chastelain portrays Philip the Good’s response, during a chapter meeting of the Order of Golden Fleece in The Hague in 1456, to the Frisians and the people of Utrecht who asserted that ‘the duke did not have enough money to wage war against those of Utrecht.’ He crushed them beneath a deluge of luxury: He even had displayed in a great room next to the hall at least 30,000 marks in silver plate . . . thus letting it be known that while had he no silver money, he had largely the wherewithal to obtain it thanks to his chattels. Further still, a thing unheard of, he had brought with him from Lille two chests containing two hundred thousand lions [gold coins], and had these chests put in a chamber open to the public, where everybody came to try lift them, tiring themselves in vain.73 Once again, it was impossible to lift them. The 200,000 lions of 1454 alone would have amounted to 838 kilos of gold, while the 30,000 marks weighed in at 7.32 tonnes of silver.

Controlling keys and controlling chests: matters of trust and sovereignty Controlling chests and their keys was associated with controlling government. Holding the key was eminently symbolic in the Middle Ages. Saint Peter is a fine example of this, but far from the only one. Juno, wearing her crown, in an image of queenly authority, held the key to the chests of riches, and hence of liberality.74 This real and symbolic issue was a matter of base rivalry and brutal conflict between courtiers, but the prince had no intention of relinquishing control. He wanted to know and control in order to act, in short to retain control over the chests. Chastelain describes a visit by Philip the Good to the castle of Lille in 1461: ‘In this town of Lille, the duke resided for about eight days, and visited his chests and treasures which were in the castle. . . . As he was one of those men who keeps an eye on more than one thing, he thought a lot about his said chests,’ for ‘he was very curious about them.’ Deciding to keep them for a vast project, he ‘seemed to want to keep them for some very high and very timely purpose, known only to God and himself.’75 Examining the contents of the chests provided a way of judging on tangible evidence, rather than written accounts, and of correcting subordinates’ mistakes, of ‘reforming,’ in contemporary parlance. The Grandes Chroniques tell how Charles IV ‘saw his treasure virtually empty’ and had ‘various torments’ exacted on his treasurer, who died in the very fortress where the treasure under his guard was held.76 At times princes oversaw large transfers in person. Philip the Good oversaw the transfer of 200,000 crowns paid by the king to buy back the towns of the Somme ‘and finally, under heavy escort, the duke had it brought to Hesdin and placed it

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in his chests.’77 Chests were often equipped with locks, and their keys were closely watched by the prince, who might choose to place them . . . in a chest. Among the goods listed as belonging to the late queen, Jeanne de Boulogne in 1360, figures ‘a small green chest’ containing ‘a bag sealed with the queen’s seal,’ containing several keys.78 The queen could gain access to one key using several other keys, which could not be used without her knowledge, for anyone opening the bag thereby broke the seal. In 1394, Charles VI had 50,000 francs – 194 kg of gold – placed in the tower of the Louvre, in ten leather bags, put in a closed chest, in a strong room, whose keys were placed by the officer in a sealed bag that was handed to the king in person.79 The prince could choose to keep the keys himself, or else entrust them to someone else. The savings coffers of Charles VI, reputed to contain 120,000 francs in 1412, could only be opened using two separate keys, one held by the king and the other by the keeper of the savings (la garde de l’épargne), who was said to have taken advantage of the king’s mental state to empty the reserve.80 The chamberlain might use this key as a symbol, and an anonymous character in the illuminated Grandes Chroniques indicates that suggests that there were several ‘key bearers’ around the prince.81 In many countries, the office of treasurer fell to the chamberlain who had access to chests and to the bedchamber. Receiving the keys was a mark of trust which was not only reserved for the great, giving rise to jealousy and suspicion of royal favourites. Key bearers and keepers of the coffers were often associated with the household of the prince, for chests were associated with various departments there, being particularly linked to the chamber and the body of the prince. The keeper of savings of Marguerite de France was a valet who had become a barber and then chamberlain.82 The officers of the prince’s body were also entrusted with such missions, such as the sommelier of Charles the Bold, Charles de Visen, who held the office of ‘keeper of the chests of the chamber’ in Lille for 60 days.83 Such an appointment could also be made for specific purposes. In 1413, King Charles VI named Jean de Poligny ‘keeper of our chests and jewels.’84 This was a strategic role, no doubt given to this native of the Franche-Comté by John the Fearless. Did these men always know what they were guarding? Did they have the keys? The king’s keeper evidently did in 1412. It is clear that keepers of jewels were trusted men under whose protection money was also placed. It was into the safekeeping of his keeper of jewels, Jacques de Brésil, that Charles the Bold entrusted the money sent to Péronne by the king.85 The closeness to the prince and modest status of such men stimulated anxiety, and they were often lumped together with those favourites who used their intimacy with the prince to take his place.86 Such suspicions were fuelled by the opacity of these chests from which objects could be removed, usurping the prince’s authority. The University of Paris accused the keeper of chests of having emptied the king’s reserve, ‘for he distributed it at his pleasure,’ a phrase suggesting that the ‘pleasure’ (plaisir) characteristic of princely and royal freedom had been usurped.87 There was also a significant risk that the chests might be seized on the prince’s death. Such was the accusation brought against the keeper of John the Fearless’

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jewels, Philippe Musnier, and against his receiver general, Guy Guilbaut, to whom the duke had entrusted a chest filled with gold that had subsequently disappeared.88 There are other attested cases of pillage on the death of a prince, in which relatives were held to be responsible. When his mother-in-law died in 1295, Robert II, Duke of Burgundy helped himself before any inventory could be drawn up and before any coffer could disappear.89 The Estates did not appreciate the confusion between personal caskets managed by the prince and his intimates, and money raised by taxation, which was supposed to be used for common purposes. They sometimes sought to establish oversight, either directly or by great officers, in a form of polyarchic constitutional regime. Such a measure was introduced by the 1413 Cabochien ordinance concerning extraordinary taxes for wars: ‘which chest shall have three keys, of which the present or future chancellor will keep one, the president of accounts the second, and the officers in charge of our said finances the other.’90 Chests or coffers were, of course, very often coveted for the money they contained. Chronicles and illuminated manuscripts abound in examples of chests being pillaged. There was nothing immoral about this in time of war, provided the war was just. Men at arms are often represented carrying away coffers or splitting them open. Charlemagne’s seizure of the treasure of the Avars was one of the most famous episodes to be illustrated by such imagery, as Frankish soldiers split open chests with axes before joyfully plunging their hands inside.91 Jean de Haynin refers to Burgundian soldiers at Dinant in 1466, busy ‘striking and breaking doors, chests, caskets.’92 Charles the Bold fell victim to such practices at Grandson and then at Morat. Vice might then raise its head, often inciting risk and indiscipline. Such was the case when the French francs-archers attacked Maximilian’s coffers and baggage train on 7 August 1479, and were subsequently massacred.93 In the event of civil war, princes who forced chests ran the risk of appearing greedy, criminal and tyrannical. This rapaciousness at the pinnacle of power, associating murder and pillage, chests and tombs, was depicted in texts and images. In an illumination decorating the chronicle attributed to Baudouin d’Avesnes, three objects figure prominently in the murder of Caesar: the dagger, the crown on the ground and the chests.94 The execution of Theudebert II, decapitated on the orders of his brother Thierry, while preparing to offer part of his treasure, establishes a similarity between the chest and a coffin, showing how dangerous gold could be for those possessing it (Figure 5.5).95 Le livre des trahisons de France even depicts the Duke of Burgundy and the count of Armagnac as malefactors, trying to force a strongbox with four silver locks belonging to the monks of Saint Denis. They initially had a blacksmith (fevre) brought, then decided to take action themselves and, in an outburst of violence, committed an offence against the sacred nature of the object: ‘the Duke of Bourbon and the Count of Armagnac struck the said chest with all their strength (a force).’96 ‘Forcing’ a chest was clearly an act of violation, a term used to describe assaults as much against the clergy as against a woman’s body. The worst threat, however, was the one that came from within. Jean Coustain, sommelier to Philip the Good, who was executed for having compassed the

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FIGURE 5.5  The

beheading of Thedebert II in the treasure room on the orders of Thierry II in 613. Grandes chroniques de France. Brittany, end of the fifteenth century. BNF, MS Fr. 2610, f. 65v.

poisoning of Charles the Bold, left various chests, including one thought to have been stolen ‘from the French side,’ together with 5,000 écus, the theft of which had been concealed by the duke for fear of seeing his entourage unjustly accused. Yet ‘nobody bore the key except the said Jean,’ for he was most ‘trusted.’97 Lastly, one had to be wary of rebellious subjects: fearing that the people of Ghent would rise up after a disastrous beginning to his principate, Charles the Bold first decided that ‘discreetly, and by night, the coffers would be taken outside the town’ before concerning himself with the security of his daughter and of his own person, displaying thereby a certain sense of priorities.98

Conclusion For the prince, the chest was clearly associated with the day-to-day exercise of power. But it also offered a way of incarnating the nature of this power, if ambiguously, in its corporeal dimension, in that which linked the body of the lord to the earth, to the castle and to the power of gold. If the prince continued to fill his casket and keep it safely by his side, at the risk of appearing miserly, or else of being dispossessed by his enemies and especially his own people, it was because he sought to remain master of it, and no doubt appreciated its practical utility. Chests or coffers can tell us about how the prince’s political power took on material form on a daily basis, right into his own apartments, making it an indispensable object despite its dangers. By giving concrete form to the prince’s ‘fortune,’ it physically

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embodied certain qualities of good governance, first among which was total mastery of one’s own riches, which the prince amassed and dispensed ‘with his hand.’ Chests were a commonplace object, yet at the same time provided an opportunity to display liberality and ‘magnificence,’ making the prince the master of his courtiers’ fortune, like Juno. They associated private and public virtues. They exhibited the private virtue of a head of household in the mastery of his goods, dispensing a fortune to be prudently and conscientiously managed, acting freely without any domestic restraint. But they also showed public virtues, given the extent to which chests embody the solidity of the dynastic state, its links with the land, the castle, and the capacity to control taxation and wage war, crushing opponents and subjects beneath its weight. The chest granted the prince power to order his riches as he saw fit, to be master of his own household and of the common weal. It provided the prince with the freedom and discretion afforded by ready cash. The very triviality of the chest was linked to aspects of power, and could even take on the virtue of plainness, such as the worn chest of Jean de Chalon. Indeed, chests offered a lesson both in duplicity and in humility, for beneath their ordinary everyday aspect, they concealed power and extraordinary value. Chests doubtless dispensed a political lesson to the prince, but they also took part in a far larger motif in medieval culture, taken up by artists and writers when speaking of power, like Chastellain, who described in detail the coffers of the Dukes of Burgundy, and the secret meaning of whose work has been described as ‘a crystal concealed in a chest.’99

Notes 1 Philippe Contamine, La noblesse au royaume de France de Philippe le Bel à Louis XII (Paris: PUF, 1997), p. 143. 2 Yann Potin, ‘Le roi trésorier. Identité, légitimité et fonction des trésors du roi (France, XIIIe-XIVe siècle)’, in Lucas Burkart, Philippe Cordez, Pierre-Alain Mariaux and Yann Potin (eds.), Le trésor au Moyen Âge. Questions et perspectives de recherche (Neuchâtel: Institut d’histoire de l’art et de muséologie, 2005), pp. 89–117. 3 Jacques Chiffoleau, La comptabilité de l’au-delà: les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen âge: vers 1320 – vers 1480 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1980); Philippe Cordez, ‘Les usages du trésor des grâces. L’économie idéelle et matérielle des indulgence au Moyen Âge’, in Lucas Burkart, Philippe Cordez, Pierre-Alain Mariaux and Yann Potin (eds.), Le trésor au Moyen Âge. Questions et perspectives de recherche (Neuchâtel: Institut d’histoire de l’art et de muséologie, 2005), pp. 55–88; Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012). 4 Giacomo Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana: dalla povertà volontaria alla società di mercato (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004), Fr. trans. Nathalie Gallius and Roberto Nigro, Richesse franciscaine: de la pauvreté volontaire à la société de marché (Lagrasse: Verdier, 2008). 5 Jean-Baptiste Santamaria, ‘ “Comment roys et princes doivent diligamment entendre a la conduite et gouvernement de leurs finances”. Portrait du prince en maître des comptes à la fin du Moyen Âge’, Comptabilités, 11 (11 June 2019). . 6 Andrée van Nieuwenhuysen, ‘Documents relatifs à la gestion des finances de Philippe le Hardi, duc de Bourgogne et comte de Flandre (1384–1404)’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire, 146 (1980), 69‑312.

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7 Werner Paravicini, ‘Administrateurs professionnels et princes dilettantes. Remarques sur un problème de sociologie administrative à la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Karl Ferdinand Werner and Werner Paravicini (eds.), Histoire comparée de l’administration: IVe-XVIIIe siècles (Munich and Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1980), pp.  168–181; Wim Blockmans, ‘Princes conquérants et bourgeois calculateurs. Le poids des réseaux urbains dans la formation des états’, in Neithard Bulst and Jean-Philippe Genet (eds.), La ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l’État moderne (Paris: CNRS éditions, 1988), pp. 167–181. 8 Jacques Thirion and Daniel Alcouffe, Le mobilier du Moyen âge et de la Renaissance en France (Dijon: Faton, 1998), p. 32. 9 Chrétien Dehaisnes, Documents et extraits divers concernant l’histoire de l’art dans la Flandre, l’Artois et le Hainaut avant le XVème siècle (Lille: Quarré, 1886), p. 299. 10 ‘Chronique anonyme de Charles VI’, in Louis Douët d’Arcq (ed.), La Chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, vol. 6 (Paris: Renouard), p. 324. 11 Dehaisnes, Documents et extraits, p. 655. 12 Alexandre Tuetey (ed.), Testaments enregistrés au Parlement de Paris sous le règne de Charles VI (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1880), p. 191. 13 Anke Greve, Emilie Lebailly and Werner Paravicini, Comptes de l’argentier de Charles le Téméraire, duc de Bourgogne, vol. 1 (Paris: De Boccard, 2001), p. 463. 14 Ibid., p. 270. 15 Musée du Noyonnais, MN 1664. 16 Musée de la Faïence de Nevers, NOA 17. 17 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 1, p. 5. 18 Musée de Cluny, Cl. 13119, Wissembourg, IM670111552. 19 Le livre des trahisons de France, ed. Joseph-Bruno-Marie-Constantin Kervyn de Lettenhove (Bruxelles: Hayez, 1873), p. 112. 20 Noyon, MN 1664. 21 Various chests containing silver accompany Juno, an allegory of fortune, in the Epistle of Othea, BNF, MS Fr. 606, f. 24. 22 Lille, Archives départementales du Nord [ADN], B 13634 (1371). 23 Pierre Kauch, ‘Le trésor de l’Épargne, création de Philippe le Bon’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 11 (1932), 703–719. 24 Raymond Cazelles, ‘Les Trésors de Charles V’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 124 (1980), 214–226. 25 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 1, pp. 463–464. 26 Jean-Baptiste Santamaria, ‘Les leçons financières de Christine de Pizan’, in J. Devaux and A. Velissariou (eds.), Les miroirs des Dames au tournant du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance (forthcoming). 27 Cazelles, ‘Le trésor’. 28 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 3, p. 145. 29 Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais, A 758 (1374). 30 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, ed. Léon Mirot (Paris: Champion, 1931), vol. 12, p. 77. 31 L’histoire du châtelain de Coucy et de la dame de Fayel, ed. A. Armynot Duchatelet (Paris: Crapelet, 1829), p. 178. 32 Andrée van Nieuwenhuysen, ‘Le transport et le change des espèces dans la recette générales de toutes les finances de Philippe le Hardi’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 35 (1957), 55–65. 33 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 1, p. 21, vol. 3, p. 169, vol. 4, p. 677. 34 Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, ed. Henri Beaune and J. d’Arbaumont (Paris: Loones, 1883), vol. 2, p. 231. 35 Froissart, Chroniques, ed. Mirot, vol. 11, p. 60. 36 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 1, pp. 214, 157 and 463. 37 BNF, MS Fr. 388, ff 58–59.

The prince and his coffer  79

38 Jules-Marie Richard, Une petite-nièce de Saint-Louis: Mahaut comtesse d’Artois et de Bourgogne (Paris: Champion, 1887), p. 122. 39 Such as Jupiter’s horse in the Histoire de Troyes by Raoul Lefèvre (MS dated 1495). BNF, MS Fr. 22552, f. 52 v. 40 Three bearers may be seen heading towards a castle, each with a chest on his shoulder on fol. 7 of a copy of Marques de Rome. BNF, MS Fr. 17000, f. 7 v. 41 Comptes généraux de l’État bourguignon entre 1416 et 1420, ed. Michel Mollat du Jourdin (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1965), vol. 3, p. 503. 42 Claudia saving her father in BNF, MS français 12420, f. 95. 43 ‘My lord and his finance people are to be warned of the doubts and the unaccustomed and unordered ways used to issue deniers from chests’: Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 3, p. 8. 44 Mollat, Comptes, vol. 1, p. 286. 45 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 1, p. 268, and vol. 3, p. 437. 46 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 414 and 294. 47 Saint Luke, in the Breviary of Charles V illustrated by Jean le Noir. BNF, MS latin 1052, f. 537v. 48 Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires, ed. Joël Blanchard (Geneva: Droz, 2007), vol. 1, p. 37. 49 Jean-François Lassalmonie, La boîte à l’enchanteur: politique financière de Louis XI (Paris: CHEFF, 2002). 50 Mordrain and Nascien in front of the Ark, depicted as a chest on feet, with a lock. Histoire du Saint Graal de Joseph d’Arimatie, BNF, MS Fr. 344, f. 26. 51 Allegories of covetousness and avarice in front of open and closed chests illustrating the Roman de la Rose, BNF, MS Fr. 25526, fol. 2 and 3. 52 See Fig. 1. BNF, MS Fr. 6185, f. 89 v. 53 Such as the dog guarding his master’s treasure against thieves in the Bestiaire d’amours, BNF, MS Fr. 1951, f. 20. 54 See Fig. 3. BNF, MS Latin 4915, f. 86. 55 Comptes de l’argenterie des rois de France au XIVe siècle, ed. Louis Douët-d’Arcq (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1851), p. 402. 56 Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Me 778. 57 Chest held at the Hôtel Groslot, Orléans. 58 Georges Chastellain, Oeuvres, ed. Joseph-Bruno-Marie-Constantin Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels: Heussner, 1863–1866), vol. 1, p. 128. 59 Figs. 3 and 4. 60 Lydwine Scordia, ‘Le roi doit vivre du sien’: théories de l’impôt en France, XIIIe-XVe siècles (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 2005), p. 249. 61 L’ordonnance cabochienne, ed. Alfred Coville (Paris: Picard, 1891), p. 71. 62 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 3, p. 197 and vol. 4, pp. 303, 581, 677. 63 Uwe Albrecht, Von der Burg zum Schloss: französische Schlossbaukunst im Spätmittelalter (Worms: Werner, 1986), p. 50. 64 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 2, p. 385. 65 Blanchard, Mémoires, p. 135. 66 Hannibal even sits on a chest to listen to a spy. See Titius Livius, Ab urbe condita libri in BNF, MS Fr. 261, f. 25. 67 Froissart, Chroniques, ed. Mirot, vol. 12, p. 77. 68 Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denys, ed. Louis Bellaguet (Paris: Crapelet, 1839–1852), vol. 1, p. 622. 69 Boccaccino, Decameron in BNF, MS Fr. 240, f. 277 v. 70 Édouard Clerc, Essai sur l’histoire de la Franche-Comté (Besançon: Marion, 1840–1846), vol. 2, p. 443. 71 Noyon, MN 1667.

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72 Jean le Bel, Chronique, ed. Jules Viard and Eugène Déprez (Paris: Renouard, 1904– 1905), vol. 2, p. 245. 73 Chastellain, Oeuvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. 3, p. 92. 74 In an allegory of fortune and also to a certain extent of princely liberality, a crowned Juno holds a golden key in front of open and closed chests embodying the distribution of riches. Echecs amoureux d’Evrard de Conty, BnF, MS fr. 9197, f. 7. 75 Chastellain, Oeuvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. 1, p. 128. 76 Les grandes chroniques de France, ed. Jules Viard (Paris: Champion, 1937), vol. 9, p. 5. 77 Chastellain, Oeuvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. 3, p. 342. 78 Dehaisnes, Documents et extraits, p. 655. 79 Tuetey, Testaments, p. 191. 80 Enguerran de Monstrelet, Chronique, ed. Louis Douët d’Arcq (Paris: Renouard, 1857– 1862), vol. 2, p. 313. 81 This is the case of one of the courtiers in the lower register of an illuminated manuscript depicting the crowning of Charles VI in Grandes Chroniques de France, BNF, MS Fr. 2813, f. 3 v. 82 Jacquemart de Maisières. See ADN, B 15798. 83 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 4, p. 629. 84 Choix de pièces inédites relatives au règne de Charles VI, ed. Louis Douët d’Arcq (Paris: Renouard, 1863), vol. 2, p. 125. 85 Greve, Lebailly and Paravicini, Comptes, vol. 1, p. 463. 86 Philippe Contamine, ‘Pouvoir et vie de cour dans la France du XVe siècle: les mignons’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 138 (1994), 541–554. 87 Monstrelet, Chronique, ed. Douët d’Arcq, vol. 2, p. 316. 88 Jean-Baptiste Santamaria, ‘Crimes, complots et trahisons: les gens de finances du duc de Bourgogne Philippe le Bon à l’heure du soupçon, v. 1420-v. 1430’, in Jean-Marie Cauchies and Alain Marchandisse (eds.), L’envers du décor. Espionnage, complot, trahison, vengeance. Publications du Centre Européen d’Études Bourguignonnes (Neuchâtel: Centre européen d’études bourguignonnes, 2008), pp. 91–113. 89 Jean-Baptiste Santamaria, Le secret du prince. Gouverner par le secret (France, Bourgogne, XIIIe-XVe siècles) (Ceyzérieux: Champvallon, 2018), p. 232. 90 Ordonnance cabochienne, ed. Coville, p. 71. 91 See the Chroniques françaises of Guillaume Crétin (after 1515) in BnF, MS fr. 2820, f. 24. 92 Les mémoires de messire Jean, seigneur de Haynin et de Louvegnies, chevalier: 1465–1477, ed. Renier Chalon (Mons: Hoyois, 1842), vol. 1, p. 70. 93 Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires, ed. Bernard de Mandrot (Paris: Picard, 1903), vol. 2, p. 281. 94 BnF, MS fr. 279, f. 136. 95 See Fig. 5. Grandes chroniques de France, Brittany, late fifteenth century. BnF, MS fr. 2610, f. 65 v. 96 Livre des trahisons, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, p. 112. 97 Chastellain, Oeuvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. 1, p. 217. 98 Ibid., vol. 5, p. 277. 99 Estelle Doudet, Poétique de Georges Chastelain (1415–1475): ‘Un cristal mucié en un coffre’ (Paris: Champion, 2005).

6 TEAPOTS, FANS AND SNUFFBOXES The portable politics of gender and empire in eighteenth-century Britain Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding

In William Hogarth’s conversation painting The Strode Family (1738), the ritualized tea ceremony gathering friends and family members in a domestic environment can be interpreted as a statement about Britain’s commercial and colonial empire. Indeed, a sense of material foreignness emerges amid an otherwise very European setting fraught with numerous references to classical culture, such as the Grand Tour paintings hung on the wall and the neoclassical interior design. The Chinese porcelain, tea and the tea caddy all point to global trade and the conspicuous consumption of exotic products.1 William Strode’s father had made a fortune through commercial ventures with the South Sea Company that the painting celebrates in its ostentatious display of luxury. Strode’s newly-wedded aristocratic wife, Lady Cecil, is shown in charge of the assembly, being the keeper, for one thing, of the tea chest that sits strategically at her feet in the foreground, a sign of the preciousness and costliness of the highly exotic Chinese leaf.2 Here the manipulation of the porcelain tea set and the consumption of tea reveal the role of men and women in the domestication of exotic commodities that was the result of Britain’s global exchanges. Men conducted business and brought back these new goods that women subsequently integrated into the British household. The global turn in material culture studies has recently emphasized the cultural impact of global trade on the development of fashion, practices of sociability and habits of consumption.3 Moreover, the recognition of the connection between global trade and the politics of empire has made clear the need to incorporate the biographies of objects into the wide scope of political history in order to understand the various forms of political action and involvement. Scholarly interest in small things, which used to be seen as mundane and less significant than archival printed material, has soared in recent years, putting them centre stage in imperial history and transatlantic studies.4 Research in material culture using visual sources, texts and objects complicates our understanding of the way politics was shaped

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in the early modern period and allows for an investigation of popular and extraparliamentary politics. This chapter focuses on three categories of objects – teapots, fans and snuffboxes – and examines their relation with politics and gender in eighteenth-century Britain.5 In their shops, eighteenth-century British chinamen, chinawomen and toymen often sold these three artefacts, on top of tea, snuff and other articles brought from the East Indies or manufactured in England. The trade card of one of them, John Cotterell, a ‘China-Man and Glass-seller’ in London, advertised, among other commodities ‘Old as well as New China and Lacquered Wares, with various sorts of fine Teas . . . And Snuff. Indian Fans and Pictures. &c.’ at his shop ‘The Indian Queen and Canister’ (Figure 6.1). Studying the creation, possession and manipulation of these objects, I would like to suggest that far from being mundane articles of consumption or fashionable trifles, teapots, fans and snuffboxes embodied imperial but also domestic politics and acted as the bearers of political values and cultural meanings that brought together considerations on politics, art and gender. These objects were engaged in politics, understood in both

FIGURE 6.1 Trade

card of Esther Burney, fan-maker, 1749–1751 Anonymous, British, late eighteenth–early nineteenth century.

Source: Rogers Fund, transferred from the Library, The Met Public Domain.

Teapots, fans and snuffboxes  83

its narrow and broad sense.6 Indeed they were used, either openly or more secretly, as tools of propaganda in favour of a particular regime, monarch or cause (such as the Excise Crisis of 1732–1733 or the abolition of slavery). Considering politics in a broader sense, the use of these everyday objects reveals the ways in which political involvement was played out in particular by women who were traditionally regarded as outsiders of the public, political sphere. The social biographies of the objects considered here underlines the way in which colonial, national or social politics emerged from everyday cultural practices, such as drinking tea, taking snuff or unfolding a fan.

Imperial objects: the gendered global lives of fans, teapots and snuffboxes Fans, teapots and snuffboxes became extremely popular in the eighteenth century. Trade with China conducted by the English East India Company increased the imports of and desire for tea, and also porcelain tea services, including teapots but also Chinese fans. For instance, the cargo of the Sarah Galley, an East-Indiaman returning from China on 20 July 1700 contained, among silks, porcelain, tea and gouaches, an impressive total of 65,980 fans and 424 fire-fans, together with 2,848 tea tables and 146,748 pieces of porcelain.7 The taste for things Chinese triggered, in turn, an emulative spirit leading to the creation of fans as well as porcelain tea services with chinoiserie motifs in Europe. Ladies of fashion had access to a vast array of fans, from Chinese fans to fans in the Chinese style, decorated with chinoiserie motifs, to topical fans representing or commemorating an event, to fans with landscapes and genre scenes. The trade cards of fan-makers and sellers show that they sold various kinds of fans, made in Europe or in China. Fanny Burney’s mother Esther Burney’s trade card (Figure 6.1) at ‘The Golden Fan’ announces that she ‘makes mounts and sells all sorts of India [sic] and English fans,’ so fan sellers also assembled ‘hybrid’ fans, such as fans with Chinese sticks mounted with a handpainted or printed fan leaf made in Europe (Figure 6.2). The dissemination of imperial ideology found a prime conduit of expression in the material reception of imported objects of adornment and fashion. As Laura Brown has convincingly argued,8 the trope of dressing and adorning the female body that appeared in canonical texts such as Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714) embodied the transitional role of women in consuming the empire and domesticating it.9 That women worked as agents of transformation of the foreign into the domestic reveals how politics and fashion, two realms that are usually thought of as totally separate, were in fact closely intertwined. John Gay’s poem The Fan (1713) provides another striking example of the encounter between imperial politics and a gendered discourse on fashion. Although the politics of global commodity exchanges has been the concern of historians in recent years, the aestheticization of these exchanges has received less attention and has not been analyzed in the case of Gay’s poem. Scholarship on this text has so far focused on the poetic connection between Alexander Pope and John Gay, the mock-epic

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FIGURE 6.2 Fan,

painted vellum with pierced ivory sticks and guards, mid-eighteenth century; pastoral scene.

Source: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

genre and mythological framework of this text and its discourse on female nature, neglecting its political scope.10 Composed of three books, The Fan traces the manufacture of a fan in Venus’ grotto for Strephon, who, spurned by Corinna, asks Venus for a gift to win her heart. The fan is thus made by an army of cupids who also create the various accessories of fashion worshipped by the beau monde: ‘The Patch, the Powder-Box, Pulville Perfumes,/Pins, Paint, a flatt’ring Glass, and Black-lead Combs’ (I. 129–30). The mock-heroic description of busy little cupids in Venus’ grotto ironically deflates the manly work undertaken by Vulcan’s cyclops in the god’s forge described in Virgil’s Aeneid (Book Eight), and offers instead a view on women’s frivolity and obsession with fashion. The fan becomes a weapon in the game of seduction, a weapon, indeed, of mass seduction: In ancient times, when maids in thought were pure, When eyes were artless, and the look demure . . . then in the muff inactive fingers lay, Nor taught the Fan in fickle forms to play How are the sex improved in amorous arts! What new-found snares they bait for human hearts. (I. 196–205) In Book Two, the gods are seen discussing the type of decoration that should adorn the fan leaf, commenting on the relevance of choosing didactic, moralizing subjects

Teapots, fans and snuffboxes  85

to warn women of the danger of vanity and pride. The poem offers a normative vision of women as frivolous and vain unless reformed, but another reading can be proposed that considers female agency in conjunction with material culture and analyzes these luxurious objects as political tools in the hands of females outside of the parliamentary sphere of politics. The Fan reflects England’s contemporary material culture but also its link with global exchanges. Thus, in Book Three, the geography of the world is mapped out materially and texturally on the fan made for Strephon in a passage in which Venus addresses him: Rise, happy youth! This bright machine survey, While rattling sticks in busy fingers sway; This present shall thy cruel charmer move, And in her fickle bosom kindle love. The Fan shall flutter in all female hands, And various fashions learn from various lands: Not unlike Belinda’s dressing table in The Rape of the Lock displaying ‘[t]he various Off’rings of the World’ (I. 130), the materials of the fan as well as the possible scenes depicted on it evoke various countries. Elephant ivory and tortoiseshell, the products of nature, have been used to create the artful object and give it its brilliance and aesthetic refinement: For this shall elephants their ivory shed, And polish’d sticks the waving engine spread; His clouded mail the tortoise shall resign, And round the rivet pearly circles shine: On this shall Indians all their art employ, And with bright colours stain the gaudy toy; Their paint shall here in wildest fancies flow, Their dress, their customs, their religion show; The term ‘Indians’ is here used generically and refers to Chinese fan makers and fan painters whose skills are praised for the vivid colours they apply to the scenes they paint on fans. In the poem, half of the world is metaphorically ransacked, from Africa to Asia, and miniaturized for the manufacture of a fan, and nature’s bountiful productions (elephants’ tusks and tortoises’ shells) transformed into an artefact for women ‘deck’d with all that Land and Sea afford’ (V: 11). The description of the global nature of the fan production, whose components borrow from various parts of the world for its natural materials and human artistic skills (India, or China and Europe) ends with a striking mirror image between Chinese and British women: So shall the British fair their minds improve And on the Fan to distant climates rove. Here China’s ladies shall their pride display,

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and silver figures gild their loose array, This boasts her little feet and winking eyes; That tunes the pipe, or tinkling cymbal plies: Here cross-legg’d nobles in rich state shall dine, There in bright mail distorted heroes shine. (III. 149–170) As they survey the scenes painted on their fans, British ladies encounter their Chinese Doppelgänger. Are the Chinese ladies depicted on the fan leaf, bound-footed and confined to music-playing activities to be read by their European counterparts as an ideal of domestic conduct to follow? If the iconography alluded to in the poem emphasizes the need to discipline women, often seen as disorderly and excessive in the domestic sphere, these Indian or Chinese scenes also allow for the spatialization of an imaginary China and for women to mentally travel to China ‘on the fan to distant climates rove,’ and use the fan as a fetish. The maritime views of the Chinese coast seen from a ship or the playful imaginary compositions and recycling of Chinese vignettes on a fan both promoted imperialistic, visual interpretations of China. They invited a colonial-like act of appropriation of the country. The surveying, reviewing and inspecting panoramic gaze of the merchant symbolized an appropriation of China.11 Likewise, the reduction of China to stereotypes on a surface for women to observe made it symbolically ready to be possessed and colonized by Britain, and paved the way for the next phase of imperialism that eventually led to the Opium Wars.12 Fans were often seen as frivolous articles of fashion, and waving air considered a useless female activity. The author of an epigram in the Gentleman’s Magazine (December 1740) thus rejects what he calls the ‘speaking fan,’ – that is, the topical fan, which, according to him, can only spawn idle conversation: On the New fashioned FANS with MOTTOS. An EPIGRAM. A SPEAKING Fan! a very pretty thought; . . . New schemes of dress, intrigue and play, Want new expressions every Day: And doubtly blest! must be that mortal Man Who may Converse with Sylvia and her FAN. In fact, topical fans could be highly educational. The popular ‘Pamela fan’ (a fan reproducing scenes of Richardson’s famous novel Pamela) offered pedagogical virtues as it could act as a tool for instructing the ladies and giving them useful topics of conversation about the virtues and the morals encouraged by the novel.13 Fans allowed for a play between seeing and being seen, between exposure and concealment. Their folding and unfolding engaged ladies in a form of performance, either

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by projecting or concealing the self. The Fan compares the art of fluttering a fan to that of rhetoric and women to orators: The peeping Fan in modern times shall rise, Through which unseen the female ogle flies [. . .] As learned orators that touch the heart, With various actions raise their soothing art, Both head and hand affect the listening throng, And humour each expression of the tongue; So shall each fashion by the Fan be seen, From noisily anger to the sullen spleen. (III. 171–72) Teapots as well as fans could stand as substitutes for coquettes and ladies of fashion and worked as metaphors for women in texts as well as printed material. These images were used by William Hogarth in his engraving Royalty, Episcopacy and Law (1724–1725), a satire on the three powers in which the woman’s torso is replaced with a fan, while her head has become a teapot. Her aristocratic companion’s head has become a coat of arms while fan sticks stand for his legs (Figure 6.3). In a similar fashion, The Spectator n° 102 (27 June 1711) operates the metaphoric transformation of women into fans, endowing the latter with human passions: I have seen a fan so very angry, that it would have been dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to have come within the wind of it; and at other times so very languishing, that I have been glad for the lady’s sake the lover was at a sufficient distance from it . . . a fan is either a prude or coquette, according to the nature of the person who bears it. Snuffboxes, too, were familiar, popular items with their own political resonances and links to imperialism. In John Gay’s The Fan, the cupids in Venus’ cave also make snuffboxes: ‘Here the yet rude unjointed snuff-box lies,/Which serves the rallied fop for smart replied;’ (I, 121–22). Tobacco, a commodity produced in the colonies, and its counterpart, snuff, became favourite articles of consumption among political and sociable circles. Consumed equally by men and women, snuff became associated with fashion and frivolity, presented as the attribute of fops and idle ladies, as shown in The Rape of the Lock: ‘There Hero’s Wits are kept in pond’rous Vases;/ And Beaus’ in Snuff-boxes and Tweezer-cases’ (V. 116–17). Snuff and tobacco also carried strong links with the politics of empire. That these colonial goods were imported and consumed in Britain was seen as a way of domesticating the empire, ingesting it, tasting it and absorbing it. Tobacco production was perceived as a necessity for Britain’s commerce, a point raised in many texts and poems of the modern period. In an anonymous poem entitled ‘Five

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FIGURE 6.3 William

Hogarth, Royalty Episcopacy Law.

Source: Art Heritage/Alamy Stock Photo.

Reasons for Taking Snuff’ (1761), snuff and tobacco are seen as driving forces of English economy: E’en Commerce, name of sweetest sound To every British ear, Must suffering droop, should snuff be found

Teapots, fans and snuffboxes  89

Unworthy of our care For ev’ry pinch of snuff we take Helps trade in some degree The portrait entitled Elihu Yale, William Cavendish, the second Duke of Devonshire, Lord James Cavendish; Mr. Tunstal; and an Enslaved Servant, painted c. 1708, can be seen as a visual example of the transformation of England’s economy into a global one. Around the table are gathered Elihu Yale, who sits in the centre and thus occupies a central position, William Cavendish, second Duke of Devonshire, who sits on the right in a dark-blue velvet coat, and his younger brother, James Cavendish on the left, in red. The presence of a lawyer, standing behind Elihu Yale and James Cavendish, seems to confirm that the painting, commissioned by Yale, celebrates the marriage contract between Yale’s daughter, Anne, and James Cavendish. Elihu Yale can be considered as a global figure, as indicated in his self-penned epitaph on his tombstone in Wrexham churchyard in Wales: ‘Born in America, in Europe bred, In Africa travell’d and in Asia wed, Where long he liv’d and thriv’d; in London dead.’ His identity was thus fashioned by the emerging global economy of the seventeenth century, by commercial imperialism but also by colonialism.14 Yale travelled to India at the age of 23 and served as a clerk in the East India Company’s settlement of Fort Saint George in Madras (now Chennai), where he eventually became governor and amassed a colossal fortune of nearly £200,000 through private trade in diamonds.15 This painting shows Yale surrounded by objects that tell a story about his career, his social and professional successes. It displays a wealth of precious and foreign commodities brought to England by global trade: an Indian diamond, mounted on Yale’s ring, Madeira wine and other portables, such as snuffboxes, pipes and tobacco can be seen. The wine itself was poured by an African slave, himself an exotic commodity, wearing a metal collar around his neck, identifying him as enslaved. The snuffbox itself was linked to slave labour as it evoked tobacco plantations in the colonies, while the diamond recalled Yale’s career in India. These objects emphasized the economic and personal benefits of imperial politics. Politics also emerges from the material world evoked by Robert Southey’s poem Snuff (1799), which maps out a colonial geography of the world, from the Americas to India, and focuses on precious materials - silver, gold, gemstones, diamonds in particular - and snuff: What are Peru and those Golcondan mines, To thee, Virginia? Miserable realms, The produce of inhuman toil, they send Gold for the greedy, jewels for the vain. But thine are common comforts! – To omit Pipe-panegyrics and tobacco praise, Think what a general joy the snuff box gives Europe, and far above Pizarro’s name Write Raleigh in thy records of renown!

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The city of Golconda, in Southern India, was an important centre for trading diamonds, taken from the mines in the surrounding region. Southey also compares the power of European empires in the Atlantic world and establishes Britain’s superiority over the Spanish empire for its tobacco plantations in its colonies in North America before they gained independence. Two renowned explorers – and historical figures – are then compared: Walter Raleigh who founded the colony of Virginia and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro who led the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. The gold and silver mines of Peru, together with precious gemstones from South America and diamonds from India stand pale in comparison with tobacco. Interestingly, the poem displays the precious metals and gems as typical of vanities and worldly pleasures, emphasizing slave labour in the mines, but glosses over the intensive slave labour required in the tobacco plantations for bringing the pleasure of pipe-smoking or snuff-pinching, choosing instead to marvel at the economic benefits of having North American colonies. In a similar vein, in his poem Snuff, A Poem (1719) James Arbuckle thanks Christopher Columbus for introducing tobacco in Europe: But let not my ambitious Muse debase Thy Fame, Columbus, in unhallowed Lays [. . .] How the green Herb grows in its native Soil The Ways of Culture, and the Planter’s Toil The popularity of snuff was accompanied by a similar enthusiasm for the indispensable snuffbox. Snuffboxes took many shapes and came in different ranges, from modest objects to highly elaborate and expensive articles, made in gold or silver, sometimes enamelled or painted or studded with diamonds (Figure  6.4). They worked as markers of status, could be given as gifts, either as testimonies of friendship or as ambassadorial presents, and thus carried various meanings, from private marks of love and bonding to public statements about political relations between nations. The art of making snuff boxes required the use of various precious materials for the creation of the most luxurious items. In Snuff, A Poem, James Arbuckle ‘globalizes’ the making of a snuff box, ‘the lodging of snuff.’ Not unlike John Gay’s description of the fan as a miniaturized, material geography, James Arbuckle’s snuffbox is a metaphor of global exchanges between various empires (the Spanish Empire for the gold from Peru, the English one for tobacco), and the ransacking of nature, both on land and in oceans, to find precious materials to decorate the box with pearls, tortoiseshell and gold: Not Vulgar is the Lodging it [snuff] demands, But fit to Grace, and shine in Female Hands, Peruvian Hills their radiant Wombs disclose, The yellow Mass on Vulcan’s Anvil glows,

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FIGURE 6.4  A 

rectangular, jewelled gold-mounted mother-of-pearl snuffbox, the cover chased with Mars, Venus and Cupid at the Temple of Love.

Source: Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Courtesy of The Rosalinde & Arthur Gilbert Collection.

Oysters their pearly Tenements reveal, And quits the Tortoise his transparent Mail. The Sooty God exerts his utmost skill, To give the Fair a new Device to kill; Tempers, and Shapes the pliant Ore’ till wrought Into the Model of his heav’nly Thought, And sets the glitt’ring Shells in various Views, The glitt’ring Shells a mingled Blaze diffuse. Here, in a mock-epic style, the poem shows how the world, European empires included, is appropriated by female hands. The snuffbox stands symbolically as a materialization of imperial politics, while it also appears as an instrument of female empowerment in public places of sociability: ‘Thus arm’d, can Celia choose but daily gain/New Conquests, and extend her haughty Reign.’ As men reign over economic spheres of influence through trade and the building of empires, so women reign as empresses in social circles through the use of deceitfully trivial articles of consumption that are the direct result of global economic exchanges.

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‘A body of snuff boxes and a regiment of fans’: female social empowerment and the cultural politics of fans, teapots and snuffboxes In John Winstanley’s ‘On a Young Lady’s Fan’ (1742), the fan becomes an instrument of seduction: ‘In Chloe’s Hand, a Fan can prove/Th’ united Armoury of Love.’ Likewise, his poem ‘Upon the Tearing of a Certain Lady of qualities Fan, in the Publick Room at Bath’ reads as a satire on the balance of power between man and woman in the war of love. The poem thus begins: In love’s soft reign, the sceptre is the fan, Women the sovereign and the subject, man Her frowns and smiles its different motions show His hopes and fears from its impressions flow Although women could be disparaged for their frivolous use of fans, fashion nonetheless offered them a space for the expression of political ideas. The numerous descriptions of fans in mock-heroic poems as weapons to wreak havoc on men’s hearts imply the existence of a form of female power in circles of sociability and recognize women’s role and authority in these public and private spheres. The metaphor of the fan as weapon for all its seemingly triviality, makes an interesting statement about the subversive potential of fashion, and the use of fans as instruments of empowerment. The Spectator n° 102 (27 June 1711) draws on this theme in the publication of a fictional letter to the editor written by a female fan seller (a fictive persona) who has set up a military-like fan academy to teach the art of using a fan. The essay gives a description of the martial power of the fan in sociable circles and indicates the intersection of disciplinarian discourse on female conduct and discourses of fashion and material consumption, providing an interesting insight into the cultural politics of accessories such as fans: Women are armed with fans as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them. To the end, therefore, that ladies may be entire ­mistresses of the weapon they bear, I have erected an academy for the training up of young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the most fashionable airs and motions that are now practised at court. . . . When my female regiment is drawn up in array, with every one her weapon in her hand, upon my giving the word to Handle their fans, each of them shakes her fan at me with a smile. Although the passage can be read as satire on coquettes and on the uselessness of female fashionable trinkets, it also suggests the power of fashion to set rules of behaviour in sociable circles for elite women. That Joseph Addison has the letter sent from a female reader of The Spectator, a fan-maker and seller, is also emblematic of the close ties between gentility, education, fashion, consumption

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and the role of women as business entrepreneurs. As Amy Louise Erickson has shown, many women owned toy shops in London, where fans, tea, porcelain, mirrors, snuffboxes and other objects of decoration could be bought.16 The female persona in the letter combines a sense of business with polite education, and stands as a balanced model between typical female attributes (she has a sense of fashion and an interest in codes of conduct in high society) and a pragmatic commercial spirit. She also asserts that she can teach men to tame frivolous but shrewd fan-equipped females by teaching how to ‘gallant a fan.’ What could be termed the ‘soft power’ of women is thus constructed through seemingly and deceitfully trivial accessories. In a letter to the editor in The Spectator n° 134 (3 August 1711), a correspondent makes a comparison between fan-armed women and Amazons, offering the image of female soldiers taking power and authority upon disarmed men who have fallen under the charm of elegant fan-holding ladies: [The author of this letter] met with a soldier of your own training; she furls a fan, recovers a fan, and goes through the whole exercise of it to admiration. This well-managed officer . . . has . . . been the ruin of above five young gentlemen besides myself. . . . Our humble request is therefore, that this bold Amazon be ordered immediately to lay down her arms, or that you would issue forth an order, that we who have been thus injured may meet at the place of general rendezvous, and there be taught to manage our snuff-boxes, in such a manner as we may be an equal match for her. The only remaining male ‘weapon-accessory’ that seems to be able to resist the assaults of a fan is therefore the snuffbox. Although linked to pleasure and consumption, snuffboxes also entered the codifications of public and private circles, political and domestic spheres. We learn from an advertisement by the famous perfumer Charles Lillie, published in The Spectator n° 138 (8 August 1711) that the gesture of pinching snuff can be ‘careless,’ ‘scornful,’ ‘politic’ or ‘surly,’ offering a wide array of emotions to be expressed in various social circles, from Parliament to coffee-houses, from clubs to assemblies:

ADVERTISEMENT The exercise of the snuff-box, according to the most fashionable airs and motions, in opposition to the exercise of the fan, will be taught with the best plain or perfumed snuff, at Charles Lillies’s, perfumer, at the corner of Beaufort’s buildings, in the Strand, and attendance given for the benefit of the young merchants about the Exchange for two hours every day at noon, except Saturdays, at a toy-shop near Garraway’s coffee-house. There will be likewise taught the ceremony of the snuff-box, or rules for offering snuff to a stranger, a friend, or a mistress, according to the degrees of familiarity or

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distance, with an explanation of the careless, the scornful, the politic, and the surly pinch, and the gestures proper to each of them. N.B. The undertaker does not question but in a short time to have formed a body of regular snuff-boxes ready to meet and make head against all the regiment of fans which have been lately disciplined, and are now in motion. The male use of the snuffbox displayed ambivalence. On the one hand, it was seen as an effective tool to enliven the spirit and help men conduct business, as a way to make them belong to a circle of gentlemen. On the other hand, the use of snuff was condemned as fops’ and beaux’s activity that took men away from the busy public sphere of political or business oriented considerations to a rather effeminate activity ruled by women: ‘Coxcombs prefer the tickling Sting of Snuff/Yet all their claim to Wisdom is – a Puff.’17 However, Charles Lillie’s advertisement in The Spectator indicates how snuffboxes were not restricted to the use of idle gentlemen but were also fashionable instruments for the mercantile and wealthy middle-class men. The world of fashion and that of business symbolically meet in this famous perfumer’s shop and in a toy shop next to the famous Garraway’s coffee house, where, according to John Macky, ‘People of Quality who have business in the City, and the most considerable and wealthy Citizens frequent,’18 and where tea could also be purchased, which shows the porosity between industry and leisure. The management of the teapot and supervision of the tea assembly became closely connected with female accomplishment. Many texts celebrated the encounter between the English household and the Orient in the presence of the tea paraphernalia in English interiors. The poem Tea, published in 1743, runs an implicit metaphor between women and teapots. The choice of the teapot for the tea ritual works as an indication of the mistress of the house’s good taste and refinement: Prepar’d the [tea] Table, let the TEA – POT share Your applicated Thought, and ardent Care. Be curious here, the noble Subject well Deserves the Trouble of the nicest Belle. Not here in vain you practise strict Regard, It pays your Labour, with a rich Reward. Let China’s fine transparent Earth compose The stately Urn, with Elegancy chose. See that its Parts harmonious join, exempt From every Failing, lest it meet Contempt; Lest Fashion rise, incens’d by such Abuse, From its Displeasure, and forbid its Use. Here, the woman is invited to discriminate between Chinese export teapots to choose the most elegant one for her tea table. The exotic beverage and the porcelain tea set, both testimonies of Britain’s trade with China, help to discipline and aestheticize the British woman in the domestic sphere. The teapot is therefore

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politicized despite its domestic use as its presence is a reminder of Britain’s global politics. The teapot also serves to enhance the perceived physical qualities of genteel and aristocratic women, such as the whiteness of their skin (a sign of their social status) and the graceful movements of their arms and hands: Thrice happy Vessel! Which the British Fair deign thus to honour with peculiar care Thy gentle Arts of Management demand the taper Finger and the snowy Hand, Not stiff with Labour or with Pain-work soil’d, To those low Cares unus’d, by these unspoil’d. From thy kind Lip in grateful Affluence flow The Soul of Friendship and the Bane of Woe.19

Materializing political resistance: politicized objects of fashion Teapots, fans and snuffboxes connected politics and sociability, giving genteel women a greater sense of empowerment in the seemingly mundane and leisurely activities of taking tea, conversing at assemblies, going to the theatre and other places of sociability. The ‘in-betweenness’ of these objects relegated women to the private sphere while simultaneously making the latter a public scene for the construction of social and political identities. If the political significance of the use of teapots, fans and snuffboxes has been studied here in the light of its indirectness, as a tactic, in conjunction with the building of gendering spheres, these artefacts could also be used in more direct and open strategies of campaigning for a political cause. The ‘speaking fan’ (or topical fan) mocked in the Gentleman’s Magazine confirms the popularity of printed fans which could serve as aestheticized political pamphlets. The surface of a fan, once printed, became a text that could remain hidden if closed or could be deployed when the fan was opened. In The Examiner n° 32 (8 March  1710), Jonathan Swift describes the way female fashion can embody political factions and parties: The women among us have got the distinguishing marks of party in their muffs, their fans, and their furbelows. The whig ladies put on their patches20 in a different manner from the tories. They have made schisms in the playhouse, and each have their particular sides at the opera: and when a man changes his party, he must infallibly count upon the loss of his mistress. Female accessories could thus be imbued with political meaning, and fashion subverted to serve political purposes. Famous aristocratic females became fervent supporters of political leaders for whom they canvassed, using their public image and their sense of fashion, to make an impression on the crowds they met. In 1784,

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Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, famously canvassed for Charles James Fox during the electoral campaign to win him a seat in Parliament. Famous for her sense of fashion, she used her public image to help the Whig candidate. In using fashionable accessories as political statements, women were able to politicize the public space, in particular social spaces like the opera or the theatre. As Elaine Chalus has argued, women ‘used their appearance and actions to turn the physical location, the “places,” where they lived, worked and socialized into more abstract “spaces” where politics could be performed.’21 Holding a politicized fan at a ball, a play or an opera allowed a woman to voice out her political opinion in a theatrical gesture when opening the fan or choosing to keep her political thoughts unknown (when the fan was closed) at other times.22 Displaying the fan leaf worked as a performance initiated by a woman-orator whose fan language ranged from merely amorous matters to political concerns, ‘turning display into debate.’23 Contrary to a political pamphlet, a handbill or a newspaper where information was directed to the reader’s eyes only, fans projected information outward, becoming objects of spectacle, props in the hands of ladies of fashion turned actresses or orators on the public scene, often places of pleasure (a ball, a play) that became platforms for extra-parliamentary political expression. During the Excise Crisis of 1732–1733, the opposition to Robert Walpole’s decision to extend the excise to wine and tobacco was organized in the press and print culture of the time, through the publication of articles, the creation of satirical prints, the distribution of handbills and also the creation of an Excise Fan, ‘for all Loyal Ladies’ (Fog’s Weekly Journal 3 November 1733).24 On 2 June 1733, Fog’s Weekly Journal published an advertisement for the Excise Fan (Figure 6.5) and gave a visual description of the printed leaf, sold by fan-printer Martha Gamble: This Day is Publish’d An Excise Fan for all Loyal Ladies; or the Political Monster, as described in Fog’s Journal, May the 5th, Curiously Delineated, being a Memorial for Posterity. In this most agreeable fan, is represented, I. A Picture of Cardinal Wolsey, the first Excise Master of England, done from an Original Painting. II. His Feats on one Hand, and those of his Successor on the other. III. A Lawyer with two honest Briefs. IV. That famous Monster; Monger, Ferdinando Ferdinandi, Drawn from the Life. V. The Death of this Monster. VI. The Modern Inquisition, from an Assembly of many Spectators, as Vintners, Tobacconists, &c. ’Tis in the Power of every British Fair ’To turn Excises of all Kinds to Air. The anti-Excise sentiment was manifest when the Lord Mayor was cheered and greeted by crowds of people and fan-holding women: The Behaviour of the People upon this Occasion is an Instance that they are not unmindful of Benefits receiv’d and will not be ungrateful to those

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FIGURE 6.5 The

Excise Fan.

Source: The Trustees of the British Museum.

who endeavour to serve them, for in return from Westminster the late Lord Mayor’s Coach was perfectly carried by the Populace, the better sort from the windows and Balconies saluting him with the Cry of no Excise, even the ladies making their Compliments with their Fans The Ladies in the Balconies and Windows shew’d their Zeal by shaking their fans and joining in the Cry of No excise. Other political events gave occasions for fan-makers to produce these female badges of allegiance. The support for the Jacobite cause led to the manufacture of many clever objects (clever because they implied a degree of secrecy in their display of political allegiance) used to signal allegiance to the Stuart family in exile. As Katrina Navickas explains: ‘Such items were here to maintain the secrecy and privacy of an unspoken culture whereas patriotic and later pro-Hanoverian symbolism was meant to be more explicit.’25 Anamorphosis in painted portraits or secret lids composed some of the devices used on such objects to conceal the Jacobite connection of their owners. If topical fans were made to be projected onto the public and thus revealed, Jacobite fans had a more intimate nature as they were meant to remain hidden until its owner came into the presence of people of that relevant party. A hand-painted fan mounted on Chinese carved ivory sticks, produced in late September of 1745, the year of the Jacobite Rising, kept in the British Museum, represents Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, in armour attended by Cameron of Lochiel as Mars and Flora MacDonald as Bellona (Figure 6.6). Fame holds a laurel wreath over his head and a lion defeats a doe. Near Venus and Cupid, Britannia is seen receiving an olive branch from a dove. In this allegory, Jupiter is

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FIGURE 6.6 Jacobite

fan.

Source: The Trustees of the British Museum.

also seen in the clouds striking down Envy and Discord with his thunderbolt while the family of Hanover escapes in the background. This fan was given to the ladies who attended a ball at Holyrood Castle to celebrate the taking of Edinburgh. This fan represents the political involvement of the female aristocracy in the Stuart cause and stands for an expression of Jacobite resistance to the Hanoverian dynasty. That fashion accessories such as fans or snuffboxes replaced real weapons to fight for the exiled Stuarts also shows the emotional side of material culture in the political realm. Other Jacobite artefacts connected political allegiance with emotional bond: a French snuffbox in the Royal Collection representing the Young Pretender must be seen as the testimony of a fashionable practice as much as it expresses the sympathy felt by the owner for the exiled Stuart family (Figure 6.7). Fans and snuffboxes were held, manipulated, kept in pockets on the body and often acquired an emotional value for their owners. In the campaign for the abolition of slavery, material culture played a significant propaganda role, disseminating through objects arguments against slavery and the slave trade. The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade’s seal ‘Am I not a Man and a Brother?’ was used by Josiah Wedgwood in 1787 to transform the design into the famous cameo, which was then reproduced on the surface of many objects, such as teapots, jugs, hair pins and even snuffboxes. In 1808 Thomas Clarkson praised the political power of the fashionable Wedgwood cameo, which had helped to rally support for the abolitionist cause: Some had them inlaid in gold on the lid of their snuff-boxes. Of the ladies, several wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental

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FIGURE 6.7 Tortoiseshell box and cover with inset miniature of Prince Charles Edward

Stuart (1720–1788) late eighteenth century. Tortoiseshell vernis Martin, gold, enamel. 3.3 x 7.8 cm (whole object). Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 4757. URL: www.rct.uk/ Source: Royal Collection Trust/ Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020.

manner as pins for their hair. . . . [A]nd thus fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom.26 The incentive to give up sugar, the produce of slave labour, when drinking tea is a telling example of how consumption, fashion and politics intersected. In 1791, the Baptist William Fox denounced ‘blood sugar’ in an ‘Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum,’ a claim that was accompanied by many satirical prints (such as James Gillray’s famous ‘Antisaccharites, -or- John Bull and his family leaving off the use of sugar,’ 1792) but also by the creation of teapots bearing the motto ‘blood sugar.’27 Fox thus wrote: ‘If we purchase the commodity, we participate in the crime. The slave dealer, the slave holder and the slave driver are virtually agents of the consumer, and may be considered as employed and hired by him to procure the commodity.’ Abolition teapots decorated with verse were designed to signal support for anti-slavery sentiments (Figure 6.8). These political artefacts also displayed pamphlets, poems and

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FIGURE 6.8 Josiah

Wedgwood & Sons, Abolition Teapot, c. 1760.

Source: Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust.

catchphrases and thus took active part in the anti-slavery campaign. The effect they would have had on the tea table can be easily imagined, leading to political conversations among guests. William Cowper’s ‘the Negro’s Complaint’ was reprinted in a privately circulated publication, A Subject for Conversation and Reflection at the Tea Table (1788), and also appeared on teapots, jugs and jars. As Julie Ashcomb points out: ‘African blood, sweat, and tears were frequent tropes in abstention rhetoric,’28 a topic that would have thus been brought by women around the tea table. The surface of politicized anti-slavery teapots served as blank pages on which political texts could be printed, in a process similar to that of printed fan leaves and political handbills.

Conclusion Snuffboxes, fans and teapots were instruments of communication, the direct or indirect modes of expressing ideas and emotions. They contributed to the cultural politics of eighteenth-century Britain, serving as conduits for disciplining the body and for organizing (and regulating) conversation, gestures and conducts. Fashion, politics and print culture did meet in the expanding politicized material culture. Studying the use of teapots, fans and snuffboxes in their cultural and

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social environment reveals the transforming power of consumerism not only in the domestic sphere but also in the political realm.29 Of course, the use of fans, teapots and snuffboxes was not a practice limited to the British Isles; on the contrary, it was a European phenomenon. If the scenes painted on fans often described mythological and biblical stories or used gallant topics as popular themes for female consumers, political subjects and opinions were also represented on leaves. Fans dealing with political topics were not restricted to Britain: indeed, they were made throughout Europe. In France, fans played a strategic role in the representation of female elite power and of monarchical kingship. Georgina Letourmy has noted the recurring image of princesses with a strong personality being portrayed holding a folded fan upside down in royal portraiture of the 1740s, suggesting that the image of the fan worked as the female equivalent of the royal sceptre.30 Louis XV’s Queen Marie Leszczynska seems to have initiated this symbolical gesture in portraiture, as seen for example in a 1748 portrait by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, which was thereafter imitated by European princesses. As has been shown by recent scholarship, the 1760s were marked by a form of political propaganda circulating on the iconography of fans depicting Louis XV’s daughters that celebrated the virtues and elegance of the female members of the French Royal family.31 This practice continued during Louis XVI’s reign: MarieAntoinette was represented on some identified fans as Cleopatra to show the scope of her power, an iconography that did not appear in any other artistic production, suggesting the political strength of the fan as a medium. Elaine Chalus points out that ‘the use of fashion for political ends made politics a participatory, as well as a spectator, sport. It made politics visual and undeniable public.’32 Indeed, as this chapter has shown, the British discourses on the use of fans, snuffboxes and teapots reveal ambiguities and anxieties. They underline the need to discipline the female body as well as female appetites for fashion and novelty through ritualized gestures, such as the manipulation of a fan, a teapot or a snuffbox. They also praise the use of such accessories as contact zones between Britain’s commercial and colonial empire and modes of sociability. The various readings of these artefacts point to links between feminine and masculine consumption, fashion, colonial expansion and extra-parliamentary modes of political expression, be it political campaigning, actions of political resistance or more discreet tactics of displaying political allegiance.

Notes 1 See Linda Levy Peck, Women of Fortune: Money, Marriage, and Murder in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 284. 2 Tea was stored in tea caddies that were themselves contained in a locked tea chest often made of mahogany wood, a type of wood from the West Indies. 3 See, for example, Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (eds.), The Global Lives of Things: The Material Cultures of Connections in the Early Modern World (London: Routledge, 2016).

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4 See, for example, James Walvin, Slavery in Small Things: Slavery and Modern Cultural Habits (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2017). 5 The changing political and social significance of fans in France between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century is considered later by Mathilde Semal. 6 See the definition of politics in a ‘narrow’ and ‘broad sense’ in the Introduction to this volume. 7 The London Post, 22–24 July 1700 advertised ‘Damasks 30. Ditto with Gold Flowers 10. Gelongs white and strip’d 430. Pelongs Nankeen 7. Quilts Ditto, with Gold Flowers 8. Sattins Ditto 284. Ditto with Gold Flowers 53. Velvets 118. Paintings on Pelongs 115 pieces. Ditto on Gause 12200 Feet. Pictures on Paper 2413. Fans 65980. Fire-Fans 424 pieces. Screens 2 Pair. Scriptores 22. Large Tables 81. Tea Tables 2848. Lacker’d Chests 266. Lacker’d Wares of divers sorts 6517 pieces. 106 Borax. 797 Cambogrim. 45798 Copper. 358 Cloves. 250 Green Ginger. 112070 Pepper. 4353 Quicksilver. 16005 Raw Silk. 1322 Sago. 30063 Singlo Tea. 1163 pound weight of Bohee Tea. China Ware 146748 Pieces. Jambee Canes 41394. Gold 129 Ounces. Musk in Cod 228’. 8 Laura Brown, Ends of Empire: Women and Ideology in Early Eighteenth-Century English Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). 9 China was not part of the British Empire but was thought of as being related to a commercial empire, even if the balance of trade was detrimental to Britain. See Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding, La Chine dans l’imaginaire des Lumières 1685–1798 (Paris: PUPS, 2016), pp. 44–52. 10 Jacob Fuchs, ‘Versions of “Female Nature” in John Gay’s Fan’, Studies in EighteenthCentury Culture, 21 (1992), 43–51. 11 On the panoramic gaze, see Bernard Comment, The Panorama (London: Reaktion, 2001); Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999); Alison Byerly, ‘ “A Prodigious Map Beneath His Feet”: Virtual Travel and the Panoramic Perspective’, in Keith Hanley and Greg Kucich (eds.), Nineteenth-Century World: Global Formations Past and Present (Routledge: Abingdon, 2008), pp. 79–96. 12 On the history of the Opium Wars, see Arthur Waley, The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958); John Yue-wo Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism and the ‘Arrow War’ in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 13 See Stephanie Fysh, The Work(s) of Samuel Richardson (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997), pp. 75–79. 14 For several analyses of the painting, see . 15 For more information on Yale’s collection of objets d’art, jewellery, luxury furniture and curiosities, see Diana Scarisbrick and Benjamin Zucker, Elihu Yale: Merchant, Collector, and Patron (London: Thames and Hudson, 2014). 16 Amy Louise Erickson, ‘Esther Sleepe, Fan-Maker, and Her Family’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 42 (2018), 15–37. 17 Hawkins Browne, On Snuff (1813). 18 John Macky, A Journey Through England (London: Printed for J. Pemberton, 2nd edn., 1722), p. 174. 19 Tea, a Poem (London, 1743), pp. 10–14. 20 Beauty patches applied to the skin in imitation of beauty spots. 21 Elaine Chalus, ‘Fanning the Flames: Women, Fashion, and Politics’, in Tiffany Porter (ed.), Women, Popular Culture and the Eighteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), p. 95. 22 For comparable use in France, see Mathilde Semal, later. 23 Chalus, ‘Fanning the Flames’, p. 103. 24 For more information on the Excise Fan, see Chalus, ‘Fanning the Flames’, pp. 103–105.

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25 Katrina Navickas, ‘The “Spirit of Loyalty”: Material Culture, Space and the Construction of an English Loyalist Memory, 1790–1840’, in Allan Blackstock and Frank O’Gorman (eds.), Loyalism and the Formation of the British World, 1775–1914 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), pp. 47–48; Navickas drawns on Murray Pittock’s, ‘Treacherous Objects: Towards a Theory of Jacobite Material Culture’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2011), 39–63. 26 Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols. (London: L. Taylor, 1808), vol. 2, pp. 191–192. 27 Charlotte Sussman, ‘Woman and the Politics of Sugar 1792’, Representations, 48 (Autumn 1994), 48–69, p. 51; William Fox, An Address to the People of Great Britain in the Propriety of Abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum (London: M. Gurney, 1792), pp. 2–3, p. 10. 28 Julie L. Holcomb, Moral Commerce: Quakers and the Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016), p. 54. 29 Another aspect of the social and political involvement of women through the use and manipulation of objects pertaining to the domestic sphere is addressed in this volume by Adrien Quièvre in his chapter on the context of the charivaris performed during the 1884 Anzin strike. 30 Georgina Letourmy, ‘La Feuille d’éventail: expression de l’art et de la société urbaine, Paris, 1670–1790’, unpublished PhD thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne 2006, vol. I, p. 285. 31 See Aurore Chéry, ‘L’Iconographie des reines sur les éventails et les écrans à main dans la France du XVIIIe siècle’, in Miriam Volmert and Danijela Bucher (eds.), European Fans in the 17th and 18th Centuries: Images, Accessories, and Instruments of Gesture (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 95–106. For the development of fans in France during the Revolution and the Restoration, see the chapters by Semal and Fureix later. 32 Chalus, ‘Fanning the Flame’, p. 106.

7 WOODEN SHOES AND WELLINGTON BOOTS The politics of footwear in Georgian Britain Matthew McCormack

One of the most striking passages in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is where Lilliput’s Principal Secretary explains the politics of the kingdom. In what is clearly a satire of contemporary Britain, he notes that the two rival parties were distinguished ‘from the high and low Heels on their Shoes.’ The ‘low Heels’ (the Whigs) were favoured by the present king (George I), whereas his successor (the future George II) supposedly had divided loyalties: ‘we can plainly discover one of his Heels higher than the other; which gives him a Hobble in his Gait.’1 Literary scholars have debated the significance of this joke: high and low may refer to their religious leanings, or to foreign affairs, since high heels was a French fashion and the Whigs favoured a bellicose policy. Either way, shoes could have political meanings in the eighteenth century. Shoes may not seem to be an obvious topic for political history, but shoes were highly politicized in Georgian Britain. As expensive consumer articles, which were key markers of social status and gender identity, shoes were ‘political’ in the indirect sense of being bound up with social power, but this chapter will make the case that shoes were political in the more direct sense of the operation of power within the state. Shoes were an important component of the uniform worn by the class of men who wielded power at court, in parliament and in the localities. Footwear can help us to think about the precise ways in which their masculinity was embodied and lived, since it has an important impact upon the body in terms of its appearance, its posture and its ability to move. Work on political masculinities has emphasized the importance of the body in terms of rhetorical performance and the projection of a political personality.2 Shoes were also an important topic of political discussion: they were at the centre of moral debates about consumerism and luxury, which dominated political culture in the eighteenth century. Their very importance for notions of class and gender implicate them in debates about citizenship, given that this was a period when the lines of political inclusion were being redrawn in those

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terms. This everyday object can therefore contribute to our understanding of the new public sphere that was created in the eighteenth century, as well as the social world of high politics. Changes in shoe design, and the differences in the footwear worn by different social classes, shed light on the types of masculinity that came to be privileged within the political cultures of the day. If political history has had little to say about shoes, it is also the case that shoe history has had little to say about politics. Whereas work on material culture has highlighted the political significance of other articles of clothing, Kimberly Alexander has noted that the ‘signifying role’ of shoes has been left out of such interpretations.3 Where fashion history does consider shoes, it tends to be as a consumer article or a marker of identity. Some recent studies of shoes have taken on board their material as well as symbolic significance, and Ellen Sampson argues that we need to consider the shoe ‘as a habitual, worn and bodily object.’4 As such, this chapter will consider both representations of shoes and surviving examples of shoes themselves. Studying shoes from the time – and assessing their shape, weight and texture – can give an insight into what they would have been like to wear and the impact that they would have had upon the body. Shoe collections in museums are skewed in gender and class terms since, historically, the fancier and finer examples are the ones that have tended to be preserved. Men’s shoes were generally plainer than women’s, and many more elite shoes have been kept than plebeian ones, due to the relative quality of workmanship and the fact that working people wore shoes until they could no longer be repaired. By drawing on three key museum collections, however, it has been possible to locate a representative range of footwear from across the long eighteenth century.5 This chapter therefore makes a case for a political history of shoes, by bringing together these two rich fields. It will begin by thinking about the nature of political culture in the eighteenth century, where political virtue was evaluated in highly moral and gendered terms, and where shoes became the focus of debates about masculinity and citizenship. It will then turn its attention to citizenship in a national sense, to think about how certain types of leather shoes came to be seen as synonymous with Britishness, and how wearing them informed what it meant to live as a ‘Briton.’ Debates about politics and gender were inseparable from those on social class, and shoes worn by different social classes were loaded with political meaning. They also give us an insight into how people from different social classes moved and comported themselves. Focusing on the history of shoes in these ways can therefore show how embodiment should be central to our understanding of the practice of politics in eighteenth-century Britain.

Gender and politics Let us begin with some background about shoes in the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the century, shoes for elite men and women were often remarkably similar. They both typically had a high heel: although men’s tended to have a wider heel of stacked leather, and women’s a carved wooden heel, the visual effect was the

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same.6 Both sexes could wear shoes decorated with brightly coloured and patterned fabrics (Figure 7.1). Neither men nor women from the upper classes were expected to walk any great distances outdoors, where they would be conveyed by carriage or sedan chair, or ride on horseback, wearing boots made specifically for riding rather than walking.7 Their footwear was therefore not designed to facilitate ambulation nor to protect against the elements: its very impracticality signalled the elite’s social status and political power. Historians often argue that it was over the eighteenth century that modern, binary schemes of gender difference emerged, positing that men and women had different bodies that befitted them for different spheres of activity. Gender difference certainly existed prior to the eighteenth century, but it was relatively fluid and was not grounded in sexual anatomy to the same extent: Thomas Laqueur argues that men and women shared a common ‘one sex’ body. Over the course of the eighteenth century, however, men and women came to be seen as different creatures with distinct anatomies and social roles: gender came to be conceived of in more binary terms as it was increasingly grounded in the ‘two sex’ body. Crucially, Laqueur argues that political considerations rather than medical ‘discoveries’ were the drivers of the process, as women’s place in society came to be a focus of the Enlightenment.8 This argument has been widely debated,9 as has the ‘separate spheres’ interpretation in women’s history that complements it in many ways,10 but historians agree that gender roles were reformulated over the course of the eighteenth century. Not coincidentally, the styles of men’s and women’s shoes diverged at this time. Given the impact that shoes have on the appearance of the body and its capacity to carry out certain tasks, shoes were arguably integral to this process. Although shoes today are instantly recognizable as being ‘male’ or ‘female,’ and women’s feet are on average smaller than men’s, differences in shoe styles are not down to anatomical differences. Rather, shoes have become a site for the construction of gender difference.11

FIGURE 7.1 Men’s

silk brocade shoes (1730). Northampton Museum, 1975.23.1P.

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As the century wore on, men’s and women’s shoes went their separate ways. Men’s shoes became plainer in style and their heels lowered. Heels now carried the taint of the aristocracy and ‘polite’ manners came under attack for their insincerity and effeminacy. Lower shoes did not seek to deceive and placed their wearers on a level with one another, so were symbolic of equality in the Age of Revolutions.12 Increasingly, men’s shoes were only to be had in black (or, occasionally, brown). Colour disappears from the male wardrobe in general by the Victorian period. Historians have conventionally argued that this constituted a ‘renunciation’ of bodily display, which smoothed over distinctions between propertied men, giving them a common identity and a moral justification for their collective power.13 Far from being dull or self-abnegating, some recent commentators have pointed out that sartorial blackness could in fact be very showy, and made a collective statement about men’s ‘standing, goods [and] mastery.’14 By contrast to men, Elizabeth Semmelhack argues that women came to be seen as sensual and irrational over the course of the Enlightenment, and their footwear followed suit.15 Whereas men’s shoes were usually made of leather, women’s were typically made from silk or wool.16 By the end of the eighteenth century, fashionable women were wearing delicate fabric pumps tied with ribbons, which wore out so quickly they bought several pairs at once. Boots were available for walking or riding but, unlike men’s, these were for a specific purpose and were not for general wear. In the 1800s, half-boots were fashionable among female walkers, but even these were narrow and relatively flimsy, being made from kid leather or cotton.17 So whereas men’s shoes were avowedly practical articles that equipped them for mobility within the public sphere, women’s footwear restricted them to domestic arenas and roles. This divergence of gender roles was relevant to the politics of the century, since recent historians have shown how Georgian political culture was fundamentally gendered.18 The primary critique of the establishment was known as ‘Country patriotism,’ which alleged that the Hanoverian monarchs and their governments were not ruling in the interests of the people. Derived from neoclassical republicanism, it believed in the power of propertied citizens, whose virtue and independence allowed them to speak out against the corrupt oligarchy.19 The power of this appeal rested on nationalism and gender. Country thought pitted the patriots and ‘the people’ against an establishment that they alleged was culturally foreign. The polite classes’ desire for foreign luxuries – such as food, art and fashion – was taken to be evidence of their lack of patriotism and moral fibre. Worse, in the neoclassical tradition, ‘luxury’ was a source of corruption in the body politic: it upset the constitution, both in the sense of the individual’s bodily health and in terms of the political system.20 As we will see, expensive consumer articles like shoes could therefore be the focus of anti-establishment political critique. As well as being unpatriotic, their targets were ‘effeminate,’ suggesting that they lacked the moral qualities of true men. In opposition to this, the patriots revelled in a culture of sturdy masculinity, which celebrated physical strength, direct manners, simple tastes and rural virtue.

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The political subject of the Georgian period was a male head of household, who governed and represented those who depended upon him, on the model of a Roman citizen. This political celebration of virtuous masculinity evolved over the course of the century. In the later eighteenth century, radicals who sought to reform the political system usually made their case within this tradition, arguing that the establishment was morally and politically corrupt, and that ordinary men deserved citizenship rights on the basis of their masculine independence. This involved organizing citizenship along gendered lines, since women, children and any man who did not meet the required masculine standard were excluded from political rights.21 Radicals too celebrated a muscular, assertive vision of masculinity and politicized the ways in which that body was clothed, as we shall see.22 It was therefore not the case that men’s claims to political citizenship were based upon disembodiment or ‘renunciation,’ as the corollary to women’s exclusion on bodily grounds. On the contrary, men’s political claims were highly corporeal, based upon a particular vision of the virtuous body.23 In this context, the masculine body was politicized and particular attention was paid to what men wore on their feet. As a commentator of 1825 noted: ‘Religion, patriotism, public and private virtue, pure and fixed principles of taste, intellectual and corporeal refinement, all – all depend upon the choice of shoes.’24 Shoe leather itself could even be said to be a masculine material, given its toughness, dull colours and earthy smell. It comprised an area of consumerism that included horse tack, breeches, luggage and other safely masculine accoutrements.25 Real men wore leather shoes whereas women, foreigners and the poor often did not, highlighting how notions of manhood were constructed in terms of gender, race and class in this period.

Shoes and the nation The consumption of foreign goods and styles could be highly politicized in the eighteenth century. As a first example, let us consider John Gay’s Trivia (1716), a satirical poem about walking the streets of London. The fact that the narrator is walking is itself pointed, since the fashionable elite come in for criticism in the poem for not doing so. The fashionable lady whose feet are bound in ‘braided Gold’ travels by coach or chair: ‘Her shoe disdains the Street.’ By contrast, the narrator offers advice to the manly urban walker: Then let the prudent Walker Shoes provide, Not of Spanish or Morocco Hide; The wooden Heel may raise the Dancer’s Bound, And with the ‘scalloped Top his Step be crown’d.26 Gay condemns these fine soft leathers from abroad, which were both culturally suspicious and not up to the rigours of a London winter. Instead, Gay recommends ‘firm, well-hammer’d Soles’: Aileen Ribeiro notes that such shoes would have been

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made from ‘sturdy English cowhide with well-nailed soles.’ Unlike dancer’s shoes, these would have modest heels and would be wide at the front and fitted at the back, so as to be suitable for walking.27 The discussion of shoes throughout Trivia has a political focus. Gay associated with Tory writers and was critical of the Hanoverian establishment. Whereas Whig writers like Joseph Addison and Richard Steele promoted ‘polite’ urban behaviours, Gay celebrated the sturdy indigenous culture of the lower and middling sorts.28 Gay’s focus on footwear in the poem was quite deliberate, since shoes were redolent with national symbolism. It was partly a question of supporting indigenous manufacturers, on mercantile grounds.29 The connection between shoes and Englishness went deeper, however. Most shoes were made from cowhide, which was a by-product of the meat industry.30 Beef was of course synonymous with Englishness, being associated with strength and prosperity: cartoonists celebrated it as John Bull’s favourite dish, and Hogarth’s ‘The Gate of Calais’ (1748) suggested that it was the envy of the French in particular.31 If food symbolism could be deployed to suggest that other nations were poorer and less free, then so could leather and the articles manufactured from it. Leather too was a product of the English landscape, which provided rich pasture for grazing cows and also materials such as bark and acorns (from the symbolically redolent oak) that were used in the tanning process. Edmund Burke famously used the image of ‘thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak’ to signify the silent majority who rejected revolution and radicalism in the 1790s.32 Leather was therefore of ‘the country’ in an organic way and leather shoes mediated between the wearer and the land on which he trod. Clothes’ proximity to the body make them expressive of the politics of the wearer, but given that leather articles like shoes function as a ‘literal second skin,’ they embody that connection in a particularly direct way.33 If sturdy English footwear connected the wearer to their country, then footwear or styles from abroad represented a form of contamination. Critics of the elite noted that they were corrupted by the experience of the Grand Tour, where they acquired foreign clothes, tastes and manners. The ‘macaroni’ was the man who brought effeminate manners back home with the pasta dish, and became a stock figure in prints, satires and on the stage. Gay condemned the ‘Fop, of nicest Tread’ who sported his ‘red heel’d Shoes’ on the streets of London: talons rouge originated in the court of Louis XIV and were copied by fashionable and francophile Englishmen.34 Historians debate whether the fop was a sexual or a social figure: did he represent a queer sexuality, or was he a heterosexual figure who took ‘polite’ manners too far?35 Either way, Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello argue that he ‘undermined social hierarchy and the English pragmatic sense of style.’36 The cartoon ‘Welladay! is this my son Tom’ (1773) juxtaposes the fop with his father, a farmer who has come to town and is shocked at his attire (Figure 7.2). The fop’s tiny slippers with fancy buckles contrast with the farmer’s top boots, which are bulky in order to protect the leg while riding, and which are fitted with spurs. Their masculinities are embodied in their contrasting postures, since the fop’s refined step contrasts with his father’s broad gait. This relates to their choice of footwear, since the fop’s heeled

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FIGURE 7.2 ‘Welladay!

is this my son Tom’ (1774). Lewis Walpole Library.

slipper lent itself to a refined, toe-first step, whereas the farmer’s riding boots would have fostered a broad-legged stride.37 As well as providing a means to satirize the foreign tastes of English elites, footwear also served to characterize foreigners themselves. ‘Wooden shoes’ came to symbolize poverty, oppression and foreignness. A poem of 1734 condemned the ‘Wooden Shoe, that Type exotick/Of Tyranny and Pow’r Despotick.’38 In particular, it was used by the English to caricature the French. This symbolism was widely employed in the politics of the 1670s when Charles II was criticized for allying with the French against the Protestant Dutch. In 1673, a wooden shoe was placed

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in the speaker’s chair, bearing the arms of Charles on one side and the king of France on the other.39 As one satirist put it: When the English Prince shall Englishmen despise, And think French only loyal, Irish wise; Then wooden shoes shall be the English wear, And Magna Carta shall no more appear; Then th’ English shall a greater tyrant know Than either Greek or Gallic stories show.40 Forcing Englishmen to wear ‘wooden shoes’ meant imposing French-style absolutism upon them. James Gillray satirized the prejudices of ‘patriot’ politicians in his print ‘Independence’ (1799). It depicted the backbencher Thomas Tyrwitt Jones, ranting to an empty House of Commons about foreigners, non-Anglicans and corruption, among other things: ‘I don’t like Wooden Shoes! no Sir, neither French Wooden Shoes, no nor English Wooden Shoes neither!’ Jones is presented as a John Bullish squire, of sturdy build and clothed in dishevelled rural attire, including bulky leather riding boots.41 Throughout the eighteenth century, ‘wooden shoes’ stood for the footwear supposedly worn by the French. Gay noted that, in Paris, ‘Slav’ry treads the Streets in wooden Shoes’ – in contrast to the comfortable and expensive leather shoes worn by his English narrator.42 Leather shoes permit an easy freedom of movement that clogs do not, so footwear can relate to notions of liberty in a direct, corporeal sense. The availability of such shoes was a direct consequence of the political system: before the Revolution, the French leather industry was tightly controlled and heavily taxed, so France suffered from ‘an endemic absence of leather’ whereas Britain was more successful at meeting demand.43 During the Revolutionary wars, leather was required for the military so clog-wearing became even more common, and the sabot became a revolutionary symbol. In the 1790s, British caricaturists depicted bloodthirsty Sans-Culottes either in wooden shoes or barefoot. In James Gillray’s ‘Un petit soupèr a la Parisiènne, Or A Family of Sans-Culotts refreshing after the fatigues of the day’ (1793), their huge clogs emphasized their emaciated frames, and contrasted with the buckled leather shoe and shapely leg of the murdered aristocrat under the table (Figure 7.3).

Class and the politics of the body In reality, of course, many British people wore wooden shoes as well. This only serves to demonstrate how notions of nation intersected with those of class in this period. Working people in Britain commonly wore clogs.44 They were widely worn in the Lancashire mill districts, for example, where clog fighting or ‘purring’ was a violent popular pastime. Northern radical politicians were aware of the class connotations of the wooden shoe. George Williams was a former soldier who supported universal suffrage and the ballot, and opposed slavery and the Corn Laws.

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FIGURE 7.3 James Gillray, ‘Un petit soupèr a la Parisiènne, or A Family of Sans-Culotts

refreshing after the fatigues of the day’ (1793). Beinecke Library.

He stood for Ashton-Under-Lyne when the borough got its first parliamentary seat as a result of the 1832 Reform Act. A deputation from the town found him working on his farm ‘with a spade in his hand and good strong clogs on his feet,’ which apparently confirmed his radical credentials. After his victory, he was presented with ‘a pair of clogs strong enough to trample a score of boroughmongers to the dust.’45 Rather than being fully wooden shoes, these clogs commonly had thick leather uppers on wooden soles. Wooden soles were cheaper than leather and wore out much less quickly. Thick leather uppers were nailed to the wooden sole, so they were sturdy and quick to produce. The disadvantages of wooden soles are their lack of flexibility and their weight. A pair of crudely constructed clogs from the early nineteenth century in Northampton Museum are notably heavy, with soles that are a minimum of 15 millimetres thick (Figure 7.4). Leather shoes provide a very different sensory and corporeal experience to wooden ones. Leather soles mould to the insole, providing comfort that unyielding wood does not. They also become flexible and sympathetic to the motions of the foot, allowing the wearer to walk with a smooth gait. By contrast, clogs are noisy and cumbersome, and promote an inelegant walking style. In terms of the body’s appearance, they exaggerate the size of the foot, which would have had particular class connotations in the early

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FIGURE 7.4 Clogs,

early nineteenth century. Northampton Museum, D.3/59–60.

nineteenth century when it was fashionable to have the appearance of small feet. Footwear can therefore help us to understand how social class manifested itself in bodily terms in the past. Many working people in Britain did wear leather shoes, but these too could be signifiers of class. Shoes were expensive consumer articles in the Georgian period. Before the introduction of sewing machines and new welting techniques in the 1840s, shoes were very labour intensive to produce and were therefore a significant purchase. Whereas the elite could afford bespoke footwear that was made to measure, others had to make do with readymade footwear that was only available in a few sizes. As Margo DeMello notes, most people in this period therefore wore shoes that did not really fit.46 As well as having implications for comfort, it will have affected how large numbers of people walked and comported themselves. Working people commonly made do with cast-off or second-hand shoes, which could be uncomfortable if they had moulded to the foot of their previous owner. Shoes were also repaired and adapted, to eke out as much wear in them as possible. A pair of early nineteenth-century ankle boots from Northampton Museum have clearly been cut down from riding boots: of fairly crude construction to begin with, this adaptation will have given them a new lease of life.47 Whereas the elite could afford several pairs of shoes in a range of shapes and colours, working people typically only had one or two pairs in much more generic styles. The divergence of men’s and women’s styles was far less pronounced among working people than it was for their social betters: linking shoe design to widening sexual difference only works to an extent, since social class also needs to be taken into account. Working-class footwear gravitated around particular styles, such as the Blücher boot, a laced ankle boot that shod private soldiers and working men in

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the early nineteenth century. A lower quality version was the brogan, which often had wooden soles and ‘stiff leather that dug into the skin of the wearer.’ Cheapest of all was the ‘Negro brogan,’ which was exported to America to be worn by slaves.48 A common feature of working people’s footwear was hobnails. Hobnails added to the durability of the sole and also provided grip when walking on muddy ground: they were therefore useful for private soldiers and working people, but rarely appeared on elite footwear. Hobnails had the disadvantages of being noisy and unyielding on hard ground, and were notorious for causing leaks when the nails fell out.49 Alison Matthews David notes that common soldiers were ‘beasts of burden,’ who had to carry heavy packs and were shod with metal much like the horses.50 A horseshoe-shaped plate was often attached at the heel to stop it wearing out.51 Shoes were therefore highly symbolic of social class. Although sumptuary laws that restricted certain clothes to certain classes had been repealed in 1604, the exigencies of economics and culture were almost as effective at prescribing footwear styles. Rebecca Earle notes that ‘a deep sartorial gulf . . . separated the rich from the poor’ by the nineteenth century.52 In today’s parlance, to be ‘well heeled’ implies wealth and station, whereas to be ‘down at heel’ is its opposite. In the eighteenth century, these phrases were not yet proverbial: they could be used to comment on someone’s shoes, but the social comment was only implied.53 For example, at a criminal trial in 1784, a witness described a defendant as having ‘one of his shoes down at heel.’54 This was a comment on the shoe rather than the man, although it was in keeping with his shabby appearance. In the nineteenth century, however, these phrases took on their modern meaning as describing the person themselves, implying a close identification between clothing and its wearer. All of this has wider implications for the nature of social identity. Dror Wahrman argues that the ‘modern self ’ emerged over the course of the eighteenth century and that, by the nineteenth, individuals were strictly classified in terms of gender, race and class. He also argues that clothes became detached from this process, as one would see through them to perceive the real self.55 Earle agrees that clothing ‘was no longer considered a racial characteristic’ by the nineteenth century.56 As we have seen, however, shoes became more important to the ways in which their wearers were socially classified. Perhaps more than any other item of clothing, shoes are synonymous with their wearer: they are identified with the body rather than merely being an adjunct to it. It is therefore worth concluding by focusing on elite men’s footwear and their implications for politics. We have noted how, over the course of the century, men’s shoes became plainer and lower-heeled. The shoe remained an important part of the elite male ensemble, however. As McNeil and Riello note: The male shoe also acted as a type of emphatic punctuation stop at the end of silk-stockinged legs, which marked out his gender distinction from young boys and women, and his class distinction from working men wearing leather or cloth protective leggings, ragged shoes, and clogs.57

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As Karen Harvey has noted, apparel such as leather breeches emphasized the shapeliness of the leg and the prominence of the genitals, so was highly sexualized.58 It was therefore men’s very bodiliness that marked out their status in society and the public sphere. Although shoes were usually plain, one opportunity for decoration was the buckle. These went out of fashion in the 1790s when they became a politicized symbol of the aristocracy, along with the stockings-and-breeches ensemble. Nathaniel Wraxall noted in his diary that, in ‘the era of Jacobinism and equality,’ men’s dress was characterized by ‘pantaloons, cropped hair and shoe strings, as well as the total abolition of buckles and ruffles.’59 Boots came into vogue in the 1790s and remained central to the gentleman’s wardrobe for decades to come. The adoption of trousers had implications for shoe fashions, since trousers and pantaloons would typically be worn with boots rather than shoes. In 1801, Hampton Weekes wrote from London to his brother in the country to offer him his old silk breeches, since ‘I wear my boots and Pantaloons now’: he later added, ‘indeed it is the wear of all the young Men here.’60 Given their association with the military and equestrianism, boots are often fashionable in times of war. In the democratic political atmosphere of the time, however, boots became synonymous with public life. Boots suggested energy, activity and a statesmanlike attention to the febrile international situation. The boot par excellence was the wellington. This was developed by the bootmaker George Hoby following the instructions of the Duke of Wellington, who desired a simple, smooth boot for wearing on campaign. As the invention of the victor of Waterloo, and later prime minister, the wellington’s patriotic credentials were never in doubt. In common with other fashionable footwear of the early nineteenth century, the wellington was cut close, and was manufactured from leather that was more flexible than was traditional for riding boots. Examples from museum collections have supple soles and uppers, making them suitable for walking as well as riding (Figure 7.5). It was therefore notable for its adaptability. As J. Sparkes Hall noted, ‘We go to the ballroom in it, the theatre, the houses of parliament, and even royalty itself is approached in boots!’ The ‘we’ that he referred to were of course elite men, and the locations were the centres of the public sphere, where statesmen were expected to dress and move in a particular way. He continued: A good Wellington boot of the softest calf leather, the sole moderately thick, the waist hollow and well-arched, firm and yet flexible, cut to go on without dragging all your might with boothooks, and made with an intermediate sole of felt to prevent creaking, is the best boot for general wear that can be made.61 The fitted wellington, whose soft leather hugged the leg, therefore provided a silhouette for elite men that emphasized the contours of their bodies. At a time when men of Wellington’s class dominated political life, the wellington boot underlined their manly qualifications for office. Dandyish but sober, elegant but practical, the wellington epitomized the balancing act lived by late-Georgian gentlemen, who

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FIGURE 7.5 Wellington

boots, 1800–1825. Northampton Museum, 2000.27.33.2.

were expected to embody a refined but moral masculinity. The wellington therefore befitted this transitional period in masculinities, between what John Tosh characterizes as the eighteenth-century ‘polite gentleman’ and the ‘simple manliness’ of the Victorian period.62 Such men were required to be virtuous in both their public and their private lives, to synchronize the ‘outer’ and the ‘inner’ man, and footwear – that most liminal of garments – helped them to achieve this. In conclusion, shoes were loaded with political meaning in the Georgian period. The wellington boot, the wooden shoe or the women’s silk pump all mark out their wearer in terms of class, nation and gender. Shoes were therefore ‘political’ in the sense that they contributed to the process of classifying people. As I have argued here, however, shoes also had a more direct bearing on the politics of the day and were bound up with debates about political participation in the Age of Revolutions. The ‘wooden shoe’ carried connotations of foreignness, poverty and oppression, whereas the leather shoe was replete with masculine and national associations. These were not just symbolic traits, mere facets of representation: rather,

Wooden shoes and wellington boots  117

these qualities were inherent in the materiality of the objects themselves and the ways in which they were used. If men of a certain class made a case for their right to rule based upon their masculine attributes, then we need to pay attention to the ways in which they mobilized their bodies in order to make this claim. Gentlemen shod in expensive, supple wellingtons moved and comported themselves in a very different way to a millworker in clogs, or a lady in shoes made from fine textiles. What we wear on our feet can therefore help us to understand the ways in which political cultures have historically been embodied.

Notes 1 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), ed. Paul Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 35–36. 2 Matthew McCormack, The Independent Man: Citizenship and Gender Politics in Georgian England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), chap. 2. 3 Kimberly Alexander, ‘Shoes and the City: Shoes and Their Sphere of Influence in Early America, 1740–1789’, in Deborah Simonton (ed.), The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience (Oxford: Routledge, 2017), pp. 296–308, p. 306. 4 Ellen Sampson, ‘Entanglement, Affect and Experience: Walking and Wearing (Shoes) as Experimental Research Methodology’, International Journal of Fashion Studies, 5 (2018), 55–75, pp. 61, 66. See also Giorgio Riello, A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Producers and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil, Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers (London: Berg, 2006); Kimberly Alexander, Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2018). 5 The Bata Shoe Museum (Toronto), the National Leather Collection (Northampton) and the UK’s national shoe collection (Northampton Museum and Art Gallery). 6 June Swann, Shoes (London: Batsford, 1982), p. 20. 7 Matthew McCormack, ‘Boots, Material Culture and Georgian Masculinities’, Social History, 42 (2017), 461–479. 8 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). 9 For example: Helen King, The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 10 For example: Amanda Vickery, ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History’, The Historical Journal, 36 (1993), 383–414. 11 Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil, ‘Footprints in History’, History Today (March 2017), 30–36, p. 30. 12 Elizabeth Semmelhack, Standing Tall: The Curious History of Men in Heels (Toronto: Bata Shoe Museum, 2016), p. 42. 13 John Carl Flügel, The Psychology of Clothes (London: Hogarth Press, 1930); David Kuchta, The Three Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England, 1550–1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Thomas A. King, The Gendering of Men, 1600–1750 Vol. I: The English Phallus (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). 14 John Harvey, Men in Black (London: Reaktion, 1995), p. 10. 15 Elizabeth Semmelhack, Shoes: The Meaning of Style (London: Reaktion, 2017), pp. 170–172. 16 Swann, Shoes, p. 29. 17 Lucy Pratt and Linda Woolley, Shoes (London: V&A, 1999), p. 61. 18 Anna Clark, Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Marilyn Morris, Sex, Money and Personal Character in

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Eighteenth-Century British Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014); Matthew McCormack, Citizenship and Gender in Britain, 1688–1928 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019). 19 Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 20 Philip Carter, ‘An “Effeminate” or an “Efficient” Nation? Masculinity and EighteenthCentury Social Documentary’, Textual Practice, 11 (1997), 429–443; John Sekora, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). 21 McCormack, Independent Man, chap. 1. 22 Katrina Navickas, ‘ “That Sash Will Hang You”: Political Clothing and Adornment in England, 1780–1840’, Journal of British Studies, 49 (2010), 540–565. 23 Karen Harvey makes the case for ‘embodied citizenship’ in ‘Men of Parts: Masculine Embodiment and the Male Leg in Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of British Studies, 54 (2015), 797–821, p. 821. 24 ‘The Street Companion; Or, the Young Man’s Guide and Old Man’s Comfort, in the Choice of Shoes’, London Magazine and Review, January 1825, p. 73. 25 Amanda Vickery, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 124. 26 John Gay, Trivia: Or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (London, 1716), p. 2. 27 Aileen Ribeiro, ‘Street Style: Dress in John Gay’s Trivia’, in Clare Brant and Susan E. Whyman (eds.), Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London: John Gay’s Trivia (1716) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 131–148, p. 135. 28 Clare Brant and Susan E. Whyman, ‘Introduction’, in Brant and Whyman (eds.), Walking the Streets, pp. 2–26, p. 8. 29 There is an analogy with the American colonies, where London shoes went from being a sign of sophistication to an unpatriotic attachment to British rule: instead, propagandists promoted the ‘virtue’ of local manufacture. Karen Alexander, ‘Footwear, Women’s, 1715–1785’, in José F. Blanco and Mary D. Doering (eds.), Clothing and Fashion: American Fashion from Head to Toe. Volume One: Pre-Colonial Times Through the American Revolution (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2015), pp. 110–114, p. 114. 30 Giorgio Riello, ‘Nature, Production and Regulation in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France: The Case of the Leather Industry’, Historical Research, 81 (2008), 75–99. 31 William Hogarth, ‘The Gate of Calais: Or, the Roast Beef of Old England’ (1748): Tate Gallery N01464. 32 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), ed. Leslie Mitchell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 85. 33 Hilary Davidson, ‘Holding the Sole: Shoes, Emotions and the Supernatural’, in Stephanie Downes, Sally Holloway and Sarah Randles (eds.), Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions Through History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 72–93, p. 75. 34 Gay, Trivia, p. 15. 35 Philip Carter, ‘Men About Town: Representations of Foppery and Masculinity in Early Eighteenth Century Urban Society’, in Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus (eds.), Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities (London: Longman, 1997), pp. 31–57. 36 Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello, ‘The Art and Science of Walking: Gender, Space and the Fashionable Body in the Long Eighteenth Century’, Fashion Theory, 9 (2005), 175–204, p. 187. 37 Anonymous, ‘Welladay! Is This My Son Tom’ (1773): Lewis Walpole Library lwlpr01668. 38 Anonymous, The Secret History of An Old Shoe (London, 1734), p. 7. 39 Steven Pincus, ‘From Butterboxes to Wooden Shoes: The Shift in English Popular Sentiment from Anti-Dutch to Anti-French in the 1670s’, The Historical Journal, 38 (1995), 333–361, p. 344.

Wooden shoes and wellington boots  119

40 Anonymous, ‘Nostrodamus Prophesy’, in George de F. Lord (ed.), Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse Volume 1, 1660–1678 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 188. 41 James Gillray, ‘Independence’ (1799): British Museum Satires 9401. 42 Gay, Trivia, p. 5. 43 Riello, ‘Nature, Production and Regulation’, p. 99. 44 Riello, Foot in the Past, p. 34. 45 ‘Colonel Williams – Obituary’, The Christian Reformer: Or, Unitarian Magazine, 7: 74 (February 1851), 126–128, p. 128. 46 Margo DeMello, Feet and Footwear: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2009), p. 283. 47 Men’s cut down leather boot (1820s): Northampton Museum, 1984.1203. 48 Semmelhack, Shoes, pp. 100–101. 49 Charles H. Melville, Military Hygiene and Sanitation (London: Arnold, 1912), p. 308. 50 Alison Matthews David, ‘War and Wellingtons: Military Footwear in the Age of Empire’, in Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil (eds.), Shoes: A  History from Sandals to Sneakers (London: Berg, 2006), pp. 116–137, p. 124. 51 Riello, Foot in the Past, p. 34. 52 Rebecca Earle, ‘ “Two Pairs of Silk Satin Shoes!!” Race, Clothing and Identity in the Americas (17th-19th Centuries)’, History Workshop Journal, 52 (2001), 175–195, p. 191. 53 There are 26 occurrences of the phrase ‘down at heel’ and 4 of the phrase ‘well heeled’ in the corpus of Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. All of them refer to a shoe itself (or horseshoe, or another material article), rather than a person. 54 E. Hodgson, The Trial of Kenith McKenzie (London, 1784), p. 1020. 55 Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (Yale: New Haven, 2004), p. 178. 56 Earle, ‘ “Two Pairs of Pink Satin Shoes!!” ’ 189. 57 McNeil and Riello, ‘Art and Science of Walking’, p. 184. 58 Harvey, ‘Men of Parts’. 59 Quoted in Swann, Shoes, p. 34. 60 John M. T. Ford (ed.), A Medical Student at St Thomas’s Hospital, 1801–1802: The Weekes Family Letters (London: Wellcome, 1987), pp. 94, 244. 61 Joseph Sparkes Hall, The Book of the Feet: A History of Boots and Shoes (New York, 1847), p. 125. 62 John Tosh, ‘Gentlemanly Politeness and Manly Simplicity in Victorian England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 12 (2002), 455–472, p. 455.

8 THE FAN DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION From the elite to the people Mathilde Semal

And yet, in its splendid futility, what is the fan if not the symbol, barely material, of what men live, labour and die for: a cry of fleeting beauty, the fragile promise of happiness, the eternity of an instant?1

In these few words, Carlos Baro and Juan Escoda sum up perceptions of the fan in the eighteenth century, its golden age. Two important elements are worth underlining in the definition provided by the Nouveau Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise: ‘what the ladies have become accustomed to carrying in their hands, to air themselves from time to time.’2 First, in Europe the fan was by then exclusively associated with women, whereas in earlier times and different regions if had often been an attribute of male military or religious power. In ancient Egypt or China, for example, fans had been used as flags to command troops during wars. The fan was also used in many civilizations for religious purposes.3 Second, in this account it was reduced to its most utilitarian function: to cool oneself down. Yet in fact, from the seventeenth century, this object was used both in summer and winter by women of the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie. Since it was used all year round, whatever the weather, we can conclude that the fan was far more than a utilitarian object. It was endowed with social and cultural values which went beyond its declared, simple function.4 The Ancien Régime fan was first and foremost a precious indicator of the social status of its owner. By the richness of the materials used (silk, mother-of-pearl, precious stones, etc.), the finesse of the maker’s work or the quality of the miniaturized paintings, the fan allowed its handler to distinguish herself from the rest of society. Designed for the pleasure of the eyes, this small object was meant to entertain, and could serve as an excellent conversation piece. It took its place in social interactions, in the court or in salons, and it makes repeated appearances in the memoirs of the period. In the context of the French court especially, the fan

The fan during the French Revolution  121

was governed by the rules of the etiquette, and not everyone could do what they wanted with it. In her Souvenirs, for example, the Marquise de Créquy observes that ‘one did never take the liberties with opening one’s fan in front of the queen unless it was to use it as a kind of plate (soucoupe) and to present something to her majesty.’5 Finally, fans, designed as miniature works of art, also reflected the taste, fashion and interests of their time, whether through iconography, ornamentation or both. In all these ways, the fan mirrored many facets of French society in the eighteenth century.6 As the century drew to a close, however, the fan industry, like many other industries at that time, declined as a result of the events of the French Revolution and the economic collapse which accompanied it. Later, however, fans re-emerged to play a new role in ironic counterpoint to what had gone before. One consequence of the momentous events of the end of the century was that fans passed from the aristocracy to the people in a way which radically changed their significance. As part of this process, the latest news was portrayed on fan leaves and, later, they even served to transmit propaganda. These so-called ‘revolutionary’ fans were less luxurious but just as rich in meaning and interest as their predecessors. This chapter will attempt to understand which schemes were deployed by fan manufacturers to convey propaganda messages and, more specifically, to analyze the part played by fans in the political life of that time. It should be noted at the outset that revolutionary fans have been little studied so far, probably because of their relatively low prestige. Many catalogues of exhibitions of fans leave out this particular type. Two exhibitions staged in 1989 did show fans of this kind and include them in their catalogues: Modes et révolutions, 1780–1804 organized by the Musée de la Mode et du Costume, Paris as part of the bicentenary of the French Revolution;7 and L’éventail à tous vents. Du xvie au xxe siècle, staged by Michel Maignan.8 Yet, the fan has only recently won its place as a scholarly field of study. Only two doctoral theses, completed in 2006 and 2015, have so far considered fans.9 It is clear that many aspects of this object have yet to be tackled in depth.10 The present chapter contributes to filling this historiographical gap, while shedding a new light on what has been considered to be a seemingly trivial object in the grand scheme of the French Revolution, unlike more overtly symbolic items, brandished at highly politicized moments, such as cockades or liberty caps.11 The fans considered were not used in such clearly politicized circumstances, but rather wove politics into the everyday. This chapter considers first the different ways in which the fan served as an emblem of the Ancien Régime before turning to the circumstances that allowed it to be appropriated by revolutionaries. Concentrating on several examples of French fans created between 1785 and 1800, I expand on the ways that political messages were conveyed. In the terms presented in the introduction to this book, the word ‘political’ is used here in its narrow sense. Even though the fans I consider were part of everyday life, rather than being used to intervene directly at specific, highly politicized moments, they did serve to present the positions of two parties opposing each other for high political power at that time, royalists and revolutionaries. Before concluding, I will focus on the fan as an

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object in motion, which can be opened and closed at leisure, exposed or hidden in society, properties which contributed to its power as an everyday political object.

The end of an emblem The pre-revolutionary fan might be considered an emblem of French Ancien Régime society for a number of reasons. Most simply, it reflected the tastes of the aristocracy. It was strongly associated with court society, as an object of selfrepresentation, and also as a symbol of luxury and artifice, condemned as a result by revolutionaries. The fan was already used by the royal family for propaganda purposes in the seventeenth century and this practice continued in the eighteenth century. Several drafts for fan leaves dedicated to military campaigns have been preserved from the reign of Louis XIV. The importance of these objects for the king is shown by the annotations which he himself made on these preliminary designs.12 Most of the fans featuring the royal family were, however, created for weddings or births. In 1781, several fans were created for the birth of the Dauphin Louis-Joseph, first son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. The London Fan Museum has one,13 and the Brussels Musée Art et Histoire holds another,14 each with a different composition. It thus seems reasonable to assume that more than two models were created for this particular occasion. On the leaf of the Brussels copy, the central cartouche is decorated with sequins which frame the king and queen next to the Dauphin’s cradle with two allegorical putti watching over him. The cartel on the left is decorated with the crowned arms of the Dauphin of France, and the one on the right with a dolphin (invoking the Dauphin) crowned by a divine hand (Figure 8.1). Events with no particular political connotations also provided the occasion to create fans: the first hot air balloon flight in 1783, for example, the eruption of Vesuvius in 1779, and so on. Printed fans were also available, for which Britain dominated the market, exporting to France, Spain and America.15 These were generally less richly decorated and mounted on a bone or wooden frame, so they could be manufactured in large quantities and distributed to a wider public. These topical fans were thus cheap and readily available enough for women of many different classes to show their political opinions, or at very least their interests. With the revolution the fan fell into disrepute, tainted as the attribute par excellence of the aristocratic woman. At a time when taste in clothing tended to the négligé à la patriote, a patriotically casual and unaffected mode of dressing, the luxury trade, associated with frivolity and amusement, was condemned as superfluous. Two-thirds of the Parisian fan-makers went out of business between 1790 and 1800. Gradually, however, fans re-emerged, although now it was revolutionaries who used them as propaganda tools. While France was initially the central player in this movement, other countries soon followed suit, even those which were less directly affected by the events. Fans thus underwent the same evolution as newspapers, which benefited from the freedom of the press declared by the National Assembly of 1789 in the 11th article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and

The fan during the French Revolution  123

FIGURE 8.1 Folding

fan, 1781. Gouached silk on ivory frame. Brussels, Musée Art et Histoire, 6214.

Photo: Mathilde Semal. © BMAH.

of the Citizen. Opinions could now be expressed freely, as much on fan sheets as in the new daily newspapers that reached all social classes.16 The adoption of the fan by revolutionaries was encouraged by the modification of the various stages of its manufacture to make fans cheaper and hence to reach a broader public in the second half of the eighteenth century. At that time, a market for semi-luxury products developed, affecting all sectors of fashion and decorative arts, with less noble materials replacing precious materials. Rhinestones replaced diamonds, for example, and new metal alloys were used to replace gold and silver.17 As for fans, mother-of-pearl or ivory frames were replaced by new and less expensive frames made of wood or bone, while the leaves were no longer made of leather or silk but paper. Fan sheets were then printed and painted, and could therefore be produced in greater numbers. In 1770, the invention of the pleat mould accelerated their production and later their popularization. In the wake of these changes, different varieties of fans co-existed, allowing all levels of society to appropriate what had once been a solely luxury object. The presence of fans in the post mortem inventories of the Parisian middle class consequently increased from 5.1% in 1725 to 34.4% in 1785.18 The acceleration and decrease in the cost of fan production clearly favoured its manufacture in a large number of copies, quickly spreading revolutionary messages. Revolutionary fans were less richly decorated than their predecessors, a factor that also influenced the speed of their production.

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Although it is difficult to know precisely for whom these fans were intended, given their cost of production, it is easy to assume that they were widely used in the poorer segments of society.

A veritable journal of the people’s feelings To convey their messages, fan designers used different methods, whether iconographic, symbolic and/or textual. Like royal weddings and births before the Revolution, the great events of the time were also found on the fan sheets. The Assembly of Notables of 22 February 1787, the adoption of civil marriage by the Legislative Assembly on 20 September 1792, the adoption of the tricolour cockade, and the celebration of the Federation on 14 July 1790 were all depicted on fans. The same kind of events were depicted on earthenware, reflecting the concerns of the people. To take up Champfleury’s description of the latter, fans could be described as a ‘veritable journal of the people’ (véritable journal du peuple).19 Among these fans, many were used to denounce the financial crisis, which had been intensified by the issue of assignats, a fiduciary currency set up during the French Revolution. These featured original compositions representing a multitude of assignats superimposed on one other. The Musée Carnavalet, Paris has more than 15 fan sheets of this type, eight of which are of the same model, which suggests that revolutionary fan manufacturers could produce a large number of fans with a single design.20 Fans depicting particular vignettes were also popular, such as a fan representing Philippe Egalité, born Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, a prince of French blood known to have been a fierce opponent of Louis XVI and to have voted for his execution. In the episode depicted on this fan the prince shows his kindness by volunteering to be the godfather of a child of commoners. The baptism is represented on the leaf if the fan. Philippe Egalité stands before the kneeling parents, the mother holding the child in her arms. Further on, the priest stands next to the baptismal font (Figure 8.2). On either side of the fan, eight verses of a song are dedicated to the glory of Philippe Egalité and explain the illustrated story. Here are the fourth and fifth verses: Wandering lost on a walk He enters a peasant’s home He calls him his comrade He sits down at his house on a bench The wife of this poor needy man Was giving birth to a child He wanted to be its godfather To show his benevolence. S’égarant à la Promenade Il entre chez un Paysan

The fan during the French Revolution  125

FIGURE 8.2 Folding

fan, 1788. Gouached paper on wooden frame. Brussels, Musée Art et Histoire, G. 1105.

Photo: Mathilde Semal. © BMAH.

Il l’appelle son camarade Il s’assoit chez lui sur un banc La femme de ce pauvre Haire Donnait le jour à son enfant Il veut en être le Compère Pour montrer qu’il est bienfaisant. A second type of revolutionary fan sang the praises of the prominent figures of the revolution, including Marat, Le Peletier and Chalier among others. Jacques Necker, Minister of State under Louis XVI from 1788 to 1790 and an important figure at the beginning of the revolution, was highly appreciated by the people of Paris, and many popular objects put him centre stage. Among these, some fan leaves were illustrated with the portrait of Necker presented as an allegorical depiction of France (Figure 8.3). A poem alongside this scene praises the minister’s merits: It is in him after God That I put my hope; All the good that he has done Provokes my trust. So many complaints and fears

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FIGURE 8.3  Brisé

fan ‘Le retour de Necker,’ 1788. Gouached and varnished wood. Brussels, Musée Art et Histoire, G. 1103.

Photo: Mathilde Semal. © BMAH.

Fate might have spared me; If from the charge of the Treasury He had not been distanced. C’est an lui qu’après Dieu Je mets mon Espérance; Tout le bien qu’il a fait Aspire ma confiance. Que de plaintes & de peur Le sort m’eut épargné; Si du soin du Trésort Il ne l’eut éloigné. The poem thus insists upon the mistake the king made in dismissing the Minister of Finance in 1781. Third, fans also regularly featured symbolic elements, and even set out to explain them. One such fan displays a number of revolutionary symbols under the heading ‘To the glory of the French nation’ (À la gloire de la nation française) (Figure 8.4).

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FIGURE 8.4 Folding

fan, 1790. Printed paper on rosewood frame. Brussels, Musée Art et Histoire, 9299.

Photo: Mathilde Semal. © BMAH.

On the implicit assumption that these symbols would not have been understood by everyone, they are explained by a text next to the image: The rainbow heralds the happiness of France. In the middle, the eye of the eternal and the balance of justice. The lightning will consume the feudal regime, the Parliament of Privileges. . . . The cap of freedom is supported by a cock emblem of vigilance. The globe represents France, emblem of a new world based on the book of the constitution. L’arc-en-ciel présage du Bonheur de la France, au milieu l’oeil de l’Eternel et la Balance de la Justice. La foudre va consumer le Régime fédoal, les Parlements des Privilèges . . . Le Bonnet de la liberté soutenu par un coq emblême de la vigilance. le Globe représente la France, emblem d’un nouveau Monde appuyé sur le livre de la Constitution. These fans thus had a pedagogical purpose, their designers aiming at transmitting their ideals and opinions to as many people as possible. Another example shows an allegorical statue of the Republic being decorated by the people: men, women and children. The allegory holds, with the right hand, the square of reason and, with the left hand, tablets engraved with the inscription ‘human right’ and a peak topped with a Phrygian cap (Figure 8.5).

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FIGURE 8.5 Folding

fan, 1792. Printed paper on wooden frame. Brussels, Musée Art et Histoire, G. 1098.

Photo: Mathilde Semal. © BMAH.

Alongside these symbols, the fan reproduced a revolutionary song written in 1792. The reverse side of the fan also featured 30 couplets from the song Le bonheur de la France. The trend to include melodies on fan sheets apparently came from Italy, where manufacturers rushed to print opera songs that were popular with the public. After 1789, makers of ‘revolutionary’ fans adopted this approach. As the foregoing examples suggest, songs were very well represented on the fans, both on the obverse and reverse sides, which was in turn a reflection of their importance during the revolutionary period. Songs were not only sung in the streets but also published in newspapers by publishers less interested in conveying accurate information than promoting a particular political philosophy.21 The fans thus served a comparable function to an opinion piece in a newspaper. The tune to which the song should be sung was generally written on the fan sheet before the text, so that fans could serve as musical prompters or memory aids. The fan manufacturers themselves were generally anonymous,22 as they had been earlier in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is however clear that they were inspired, as they had earlier been, by the painters of the Painting Salons. Even before the Bastille was taken, the art of the Salons propagated new ideas. In 1789, Moreau, for example, had already proposed a drawing entitled ‘The Constitution of the National Assembly of 17 June.’23

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Yet it was not only revolutionaries, however, who saw the potential of fans. Many royalist or so-called au souvenir fans were made during the Revolution, especially after the execution of Robespierre, on 10 Thermidor, Year II (28 July 1794).24 Unable to express openly their opposition to revolutionary power, manufacturers used various stratagems to create seditious fans that only subtly revealed their messages.25 One such fan, for example, ostensibly portraying a revolutionary scene, cunningly integrated the filigree portraits of Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Madame Première and Louis XVII among the leaves of a weeping willow.26 Other fans present the profiles of the king and queen on either side of an urn.27 Similar models could be used to expose a fleur-de-lys or the words Vive le Roi only when a certain set of folds were presented to the viewer.28 Given the political risks attached to making them, these fans were difficult to obtain and consequently expensive. We know, for example, that Madame Despeaux, from rue de Gramont, sold these highly sought-after fans for between 180 and 200 livres each.29 It seems, however, that this royalist fervour was only short-lived. Louis-Sebastien Mercier acknowledges as much when describing in 1798 the balls still held by the surviving relatives of the guillotined: ‘and the aristocracy has sunk so low that no one carries any longer those fans adroitly sprinkled with fleurs-de-lys, nor these mysterious candy boxes where a secret mechanism might skilfully reveal the forbidden emblems of royalty.’30 Revolutionary fans were not restricted to France. During the Revolution of Brabant in the same period, the Austrian Netherlands rose against the rule of Emperor Joseph II. Fans were then designed to support the opinions of revolutionaries with the same material and formal characteristics as their French counterparts. Much like the latter, fans from Brabant relate events associated with the Revolution, display the emblems and the prominent figures of the revolutionary struggle, mottos or song lyrics. In one of these, on a sober sheet of paper with a symmetrical composition are arranged, on the left, a rider and a mast flying the new flag of the United Belgian States and, on the right, an infantryman and a second rider. In the centre, a central medallion holds the ten coats of arms of the Member States and their motto: ‘Union will be our support’ (L’Union sera notre soutien) (Figure 8.6). These elements, the coats of arms of the States as well as the red, black and yellow flag, were used on many fans. Other fans, while the French glorified the Assembly of States General, refer to the ‘Assembly of the Estates of Brabant before 1 May 1787’ (Assemblée des États de Brabant avant le 1er May 1787) (Figure 8.7). The coat of arms of the United Belgian States, sable (heraldic yellow), a crowned and rampant golden lion, are framed with the portraits of two prominent figures of the Revolution in Brabant: Emmanuel-Marie de Cock and Henri-Nicolas Van der Noot. Under each portrait, a poem describes their actions and their importance to the people. Under the portrait of Van der Noot, for example, we read: By his genius and his manly eloquence He became the Saviour of his fellow citizens By saving them, he won their hearts And eternal rights to their thanks.

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FIGURE 8.6 Folding

fan, 1790. Printed paper on ivory frame. Brussels, Musée Art et Histoire, 1988.

Photo: Mathilde Semal. © BMAH.

FIGURE 8.7 Folding

fan, 1787. Printed paper on rosewood frame. Brussels, Musée Art et Histoire, G.1099.

Photo:Mathilde Semal. © BMAH.

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Par son génie et sa mâle éloquence De ses concitoyens il devint le Sauveur En les sauvant, il s’est acquis leur cœur Et des droits éternels à leur reconnaissance. Here, the poem highlights the gratitude that citizens must have felt towards these politicians. On each side of the coat of arms were also written the words of a revolutionary song, ‘Belgians, sing your defenders’ (Belges, chantez vos défenseurs), to be sung to the melody of the popular song Travaillez bon tonnelier.

An object in motion: the fan as a sceptre At the end of the eighteenth century, for symbolic, iconographic but also practical reasons, the fan became political. Turning from its ornamentation to the way it was manipulated in practice, we might go further to argue that by its use, characterized by its back and forth movement, the fan served, through gesture, as a marker of the power and of the will of the woman who wielded it. It could function, so to speak, as a kind of sceptre. Depending on the situation, at the French court or in salons, it could also work, again through gesture, as a shield, or as a sword. Since it can be opened or closed, a fan could play a protective role. By placing her fan in front of her face, the woman who held it protected herself not from blows but from looks. Whether out of shyness, politeness or to avoid overly insistent looks, the fan protected its owner and allowed her to redirect the gaze towards something else: her fan’s leaves and its ornamentation. By opening and closing, moreover, the fan also protected itself. By opening it at her discretion, the owner revealed its content to her trusted friends. Given its permanent movement when used for its primary function – cooling down its owner – the fan could only be correctly read once at a standstill and therefore voluntarily shown by its carrier. Once closed, the fan could hide any of its contents and so conceal the thoughts of its carrier. For revolutionary fans, especially, it is easy to imagine the fans opening and closing depending on who was in the room, trusted or not, sharing or not their political opinions. Seditious fans were particularly suited to this exercise. By their ingenuity, au souvenir fans were also adapted to serve a double meaning. The fan could also play the role of a sword for its owner. It opened up possibilities not only of defence but also of attack. Extending the gestures of the woman wearing it, the fan amplified them and formed part of the rhetorical means at her disposal. By highlighting her speech, it allowed her to have more impact. As Octave Uzanne would assert in the 1880s, commenting on Molière’s Femmes savantes (1672), ‘a general would be less troubled by the loss of his command sword than Armande [one of the femmes savantes] by the loss of her fan.’31 This play was still very much in vogue in the eighteenth century, when manners had changed only slightly, at least with regard to the fan. Then too, like a sword that was an integral part of a general’s uniform, the fan brought a certain presence. Octave Uzanne, on the basis of contemporary diaries, imagines the presentation of the Comtesse

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du Barry to the court on 22 August 1770: ‘She made a superb entrance, spreading at her throat a fan of the highest price, which maintained her bearing and seemed to affirm by her attitude that she had set full sail and finally defeated the enemies determined to destroy her.’32 Fans provide further evidence of the increased involvement of women in politics in the eighteenth century. Interestingly, while many seditious objects – including canes and pipes – were the subject of lawsuits during the Revolution, there seems to have been no mention of the use of fans of this type. We can ask ourselves here about the importance of gender in the impact of these objects. It seems that, as typically female objects, fans, although political, were considered less dangerous than typically masculine accoutrements such as pipes and canes. We might suggest that fans were perhaps still considered as anodyne objects of coquetry. And, indeed, perhaps they were also a way for women to maintain a certain form of elegance during the sober times of the Revolution, even if they were now smaller and far less ornate than their predecessors. This oscillation between elegance and political commitment finds pictorial expression in painted and engraved representations of Charlotte Corday. Witnesses described her entering Marat’s house with a fan in her hand and works representing Marat’s murder often depict her with a weapon in one hand and a fan in the other.33 With Charlotte Corday, the fan became the symbol of the elegant revolutionary.

Conclusion Carried by all the women of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century, the fan was a symbol of luxury and futility that sidelined it during the Revolution. Yet its adoption by revolutionaries, shows how its materiality and practicality were decisive in permitting its return. The fan was an object that could be produced quickly, cheaply and in many identical copies thanks to printing technology. To propagate their political ideals, the creators of these fans used an essentially symbolic repertoire, using the emblems of the Revolution and the Republic. They also used revolutionary songs, drew inspiration from the prominent figures and important events of the time. The revolutionary fan thus fulfilled many functions, obviously symbolic and political but also utilitarian and aesthetic. Last but not least, it was an object that could be manipulated and displayed in society. More specifically, the fan could be manipulated in one of three positions. First, when closed, it hid its decoration and hence its content. Second, if opened and waved by its carrier, its ornamentation could only be glimpsed. Finally, if its owner desired, the fan could be held still, thus showing all of its contents. It was thus a subtle, tri-functional object which allowed its owner to play with what she wanted others to observe. By situating it in the popular culture of the time – the ‘beliefs and practices, and objects through which they are organized, shared by a population’34 – what at first seems to be a trivial object can be seen as part of a broader phenomenon. It was one particularly rich element of the propaganda that

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developed on a new scale during this period, contributing in its own way to the creation of a new political language. The fan regained its nobility once the Terror was over. The elegant ladies of the Directorate and the Empire were eager to bring this accessory back into fashion. The objects in question were, however, smaller, known as ‘Lilliputians,’ adapted to fit into the handbags or reticules which ladies now carried. With the return of a certain frivolity but also of codes specific to the court life, the range of available fans also returned. Eclipsed with the death of the king and reborn with the Emperor, the fan’s fate confirmed its symbolic function as one part of the whole art of living.

Notes 1 Carlos M. Baro and Juan Escoda, Eventails anciens (Lausanne: Payot, 1957), p. 3: ‘Or, dans sa splendide futilité, qu’est-ce que l’éventail sinon le symbole, à peine matériel, de ce pourquoi les hommes vivent, peinent et meurent: un cri de beauté fugitive, la promesse fragile du bonheur, l'éternité d'un instant?’ (Eng. trans. by the author). 2 Nouveau Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise (Paris: J.-B. Coignard, 2nd edn., 1718), s. v. Eventail: ‘Ce que les Dames ont accoustumé de porter à la main, pour s’éventer de temps en temps’ (Eng. trans. by the author). 3 Many histories of fans mention these uses. See e.g. Baro and Escoda, Eventails anciens; Emile Duval, Les éventails de la collection d’Emile Duval (Paris: A. Lévy, 1885) et Octave Uzanne, L’éventail (Paris: A. Quantin, 1882). 4 Mathilde Semal, ‘Une approche sociale et culturelle de l’éventail au XVIIIe siècle. A travers la caollection du Musée du Cinquantenaire’, unpublished MA thesis, Université catholique de Louvain, 2016. 5 Renée Caroline de Froulay, Souvenirs de la marquise de Créquy. De 1710 à 1803, vol. 3 (Paris: Garnier frères, 1834), p. 18: ‘car alors on ne prenait jamais la liberté d’ouvrir son éventail devant la reine à moins que ce ne fut pour en user en guise de soucoupe et pour présenter quelque chose à S. M.’ (Eng. trans. by the author). 6 Georgina Letourmy-Bordier has demonstrated this in her PhD dissertation and other articles: Georgina Letourmy-Bordier, ‘La feuille d’éventail. Expression de l’art et de la société urbaine. Paris. 1670–1790’, unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2006; Letourmy-Bordier, ‘Miniature et éventails en Europe au XVIIIe siècle. La question du portrait’, in La miniature en Europe. Des portraits de propagande aux oeuvres éléphantesques (Paris: éditions du CEREMIF, 2013); Letourmy-Bordier, ‘L’éventail du succès, le théâtre mis en image à la veille et au début de la Révolution’, in Philippe Bourdin and Gérard Loubinoux (eds.), La scène bâtarde, entre Lumières et Romantisme (Paris: Services Universités Cultures, 2004). 7 Fabienne Falluel, ‘Eventails’, in Cathérine Join-Dieterle (ed.), Modes et révolutions. 1780– 1804, Exhibition catalogue, Musée de la Mode et du Costume (Paris: Editions Paris-Musées, 8 February–7 May 1989). 8 Michel Maignan, L’éventail à tous vents: du xvie au xxe siècle. Exposition du 28 avril au 22 juillet 1989, Paris, Le Louvre des Antiquaires (Paris: Louvre des Antiquaires, 1989). 9 Letourmy-Bordier, ‘La feuille d’éventail’; Pierre-Henri Biger, ‘Sens et sujets de l’éventail européen de Louis XIV à Louis-Philippe’, unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Rennes II, 2015. 10 The gendered and cultural politics of fans in eighteenth-century England are studied here by Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding, and Emmanuel Fureix considers examples of subversive fans during the Restoration in the next chapter. 11 See e.g. Richard Wrigley, The Politics of Appearance: Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002).

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12 Georgina Letourmy-Bordier and José de Los Llanos, Le siècle d’or de l’éventail. Du RoiSoleil à Marie-Antoinette, Catalogue de l’exposition du 14 november 2013–2 March 2014, Paris, Musée Cognacq-Jay (Paris: Faton, 2013), pp. 68–69. 13 This fan (London, The Fan Museum, inv. 595) was exhibited during the exhibition Le siècle d’or de l’éventail. See Letourmy-Bordier and de Los Llanos, Le siècle d’or de l’éventail, pp. 94–95. 14 Brussels, Musée Art et Histoire, inv. 6214. 15 Maignan, L’éventail à tous vents. Du xvie au xxe siècle, p. 15. 16 Jacques Godechot, Histoire générale de la presse française. Tome 1, Des origines à 1814 (Paris: PUF, 1969). 17 Natacha Coquery, ‘Bijoutiers et tapissiers: le luxe et le demi-luxe à Paris dans la seconde moitié du xviiie siècle’, in Stéphane Castelluccio (ed.), Le commerce du luxe à Paris aux xviie et xviiie siècles: échanges nationaux et internationaux (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 202. 18 Cissie Fairchilds, ‘The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods in EighteenthCentury Paris’, in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 230. 19 Champfleury, Histoire des faïences patriotiques sous la Révolution (Paris: E. Dentu, 1875). 20 Falluel, ‘Eventails’, p. 179. 21 Laura Mason, Singing the French Revolution (New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 61. 22 Only rare fan leaves are signed. Except in these cases, it is difficult to know who painted which fans. 23 Françoise de Perthuis and Vincent Meylan, Éventails (Paris: Editions Hermé, 1989), p. 83. 24 Falluel, ‘Eventails’, p. 181; Maria Freulon, Autant en porte le vent. Eventails. Histoire de goût. Catalogue de l’exposition du 5 nov. 2004 au 7 fev. 2005, Bordeaux, Musée des Arts décoratifs (Paris: Somogy, 2004), p. 64. 25 Emmanuel Fureix considers seditious objects during the Restoration, including fans, in the next chapter. 26 Maryse Volet and Annette Beentjes, Eventails. Collection du Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève (Geneva: Slatkine, 1987), p. 28. 27 Freulon, Autant en porte le vent, pp. 66–67. 28 In 2018, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris acquired one of the few fans of this type. 29 Freulon, Autant en porte le vent, p. 64. 30 Louis-Sebastien Mercier, Le nouveau Paris (Paris: Ch. Pougens, 1798): ‘et l’aristocratie est descendue si bas, que l’on ne porte plus de ces éventails adroitement semés de fleurs de lys, ni de ces bonbonnières mystérieuses où un secret découvroit habilement les enseignes proscrites de la royaute’ (Eng. trans. by the author). 31 Uzanne, L’éventail, p. 56: ‘Un général privé de son épée de commandement serait moins embarrassé qu’une Armande sans son éventail’ (Eng. trans. by author). 32 Uzanne, L’éventail, p. 88: ‘Elle fit une entrée superbe étalant sur sa gorge un éventail du plus haut prix, qui assurait son maintien et semblait affirmer par son attitude qu’elle mettait toutes voiles dehors et terrassait enfin les ennemis acharnés à sa perte’ (Eng. trans. by the author). 33 Jean-Paul Doucet, ‘Procès criminel de Marie-Anne Charlotte Corday d’Armont devant le Tribunal révolutionnaire’ on his website Le droit criminel [26 October 2018], [Consulted on 20 March 2019]. 34 Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson (eds.), Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 3–4.

9 RESISTING WITH OBJECTS? SEDITIOUS POLITICAL OBJECTS AND THEIR ‘AGENCY’ IN RESTORATION FRANCE (1814–1830) Emmanuel Fureix

During the Bourbon Restoration from 1814 to 1830, hundreds of thousands of seditious objects of all shapes, sizes and purposes circulated on French territory. These curios included pipes depicting famous figures, tobacco boxes, illustrated combs and knife handles, printed handkerchiefs and scarfs, cufflinks bearing emblems, neckties and braces with effigies on them, illustrated liqueur bottles, drinking glasses, jewels, and anthropomorphic confectioneries and gingerbreads. At a time when it was technically possible to reproduce images, these many everyday objects all bore unauthorized visual signs deemed detrimental to public order. The vast majority of them featured Napoleonic images and emblems, which were held in obloquy by the Bourbon regime, or else signs inspired by the ‘Liberal Internationale’ which emerged in the 1820s. Their production and circulation peaked during the Restoration, or at least that is what the traces they left in police surveillance archives suggest. These objects were characterized by various forms of hybridity. They lent themselves inextricably to run-of-the-mill and to political usages, especially to the art of dissenting practice.1 They straddled the boundaries between the public and the private realms. While being intended for the domestic sphere they were also part of the ‘techniques of the social realm,’2 being exhibited in daily interactions, on public promenades or in cabarets. From the point of view of those producing and distributing them, they were subject to the profit principle and to matters of public opinion. From the point of view of their owners, they were just as much a matter of fashion as of displaying political opinions. Their hybrid nature also inhered in their material origin, for they could be mass produced as a series, manufactured in small workshops, or secretly fabricated in a bedroom or prison cell. Finally, they could just as easily find their way into trade channels as into relations based on the exchange of gifts.

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Their proliferation during the Restoration corresponds to three convergent historical trends. The first concerned the mass migration of images onto popular everyday objects made of wood, textile and earthenware, a phenomenon dating from the previous century which accelerated throughout the nineteenth century. A second parallel movement concerned the politicization of ordinary objects during the ‘Atlantic revolutions,’ and particularly during the French Revolution. In both the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary camp, emblems and images with political references started to crop up on run-of-the-mill objects, closely linked to shifting current affairs – such as fans.3 Finally, there was a more general trend towards informal politicization during the Restoration and the July Monarchy (from 1814 to 1848).4 Outside the official elite sphere of representation and deliberation, there were an increasing number of counter-scenes for political expression, ranging from theatre to banquets, from funerals to rumours, not to forget seditious songs and exclamations. In such a context, everyday objects refract in their own way the political struggles of the moment, including those between dominant groups over the control of power. Thus, the conflict between moderates and ultra-royalists found expression in the ‘tobacco box wars’ of around 1819–1820, opposing ‘Touquet’ tobacco boxes, mass-produced in defence of the constitutional charter, to ultra-royalist tobacco boxes. Seditious objects were also a response to the contraction of official public space. At the same time, the Restoration was a time of acute awareness of the specific threat that seditious objects posed to public order. This awareness and accompanying fear gave rise to a mass of archives, mainly police but also court archives.5 These describe, interpret, and sometimes over-interpret objects, tracking down their production and trade channels. Objects may thus entrap thought.6 Their exoticism or hieroglyphic encryptions fascinate historians. Their aesthetic is often associated with a ‘popular culture’ generally imagined to be steeped in idolatry and fetishism. There is also a real risk of over-politicizing the signs found on these objects. Producing or owning a seditious object did not in itself constitute an act of resistance. Seeking to avoid these snares as far as possible, I  here look first at seditious figures and their operating mechanisms, and second at the agency attributed to the seditious objects, that is to say, in this case, their capacity to trigger political interaction.7

Seditious signs, mechanisms and the subjective threshold of sedition Seditious objects were legal constructs. It was the way they were viewed by the police and court authorities that defined the threshold of what was seditious and what was not. Objects were judged to be seditious by the presence of a visual sign or image on them. Seditious objects were thus not defined explicitly in legal texts, but indirectly through the censorship of images. The November 1815 law on seditious texts and cries (an emergency law issued in the context of what is known as the ‘White Terror’) banned ‘drawings and images whose engraving, exhibition,

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and distribution would tend [to disobey the king and the constitutional charter].’ But the presence of a banned image or sign was not enough to make an object seditious. The decisive factor in the eyes of the law and of the courts was their exhibition or circulation in the public domain. During the first half of the nineteenth century, visual and oral communication was at least as important as the circulation of written texts, being conceived of as part of an interrelated whole.8 It was thus broadly logical that the press laws regulated, albeit indirectly, the circulation of seditious objects, as if they were analogous to published opinions. The law of 17 May 1819 thus punished ‘bearing in public any unauthorized external rallying sign,’ together with the sale, distribution or exhibition ‘in public places or meetings’ of ‘drawings, engravings, paintings, or emblems’ liable to provoke crimes or offences. The definition of the threshold of sedition was fairly vague regarding the signs represented, but it was clear on the public nature of the object being sold, assembled, or disseminated. A dissenting object held in a private dwelling was thus exempt from any possible prosecution under the law. A new 1822 law on the press supplemented the existing punitive arsenal with the possibility of conviction for ‘exhibiting in public places or meetings, distributing, or selling any sign or symbol intended to propagate a spirit of rebellion or breach public peace.’ This new law with its broader definition was more in line with police practice, which was attentive to all disturbances to public order. In a word, any object likely to trouble the civic order was deemed seditious. One significant way in which an object was judged to be seditious was by the banned images it displayed. Police and court archives thus allow us to gauge how this legal armoury was deployed, together with the language of resistance conveyed by seditious objects. By far the largest group of objects seized was of items bearing an image of Napoleon and/or his family. It should be remembered that the early days of the Restoration (or more precisely the Second Restoration) in 1815–1816 had been marked by a wide scale operation to eliminate Napoleonic images, be they engraved, painted, or sculpted. This iconoclastic operation, conducted with the support of the entire administrative pyramid from the ministry of the interior down to the smallest town hall, resulted in the public destruction  – sometimes in gigantic bonfires  – of signs and images glorifying the fallen emperor.9 It was thus in response to this spectacular obliteration that Napoleonic images began migrating to everyday objects, inundating the market with objects bearing images, such as pipes depicting famous individuals, tobacco boxes, handkerchiefs and so on. Representations of Napoleon as emperor, with his dynastic symbols such as the eagle, crown or monogram N, were judged particularly seditious, for these exhibited an alternative sovereignty and legitimacy deemed intolerable in the public sphere. To give one example, labels for liqueur bottles produced in Lyon and distributed across the country were seized and burned for displaying a desire for the restoration of the empire. ‘The Elixir of St Helena’ showed Napoleon Bonaparte on his island, beneath an imperial eagle, and, on the left, a ship and dinghy suggesting the possibility of escape and his return to France (Figure 9.1).

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FIGURE 9.1 ‘Elixir

de Sainte-Hélène.’ Seditious liqueur label. Paris, Archives nationales, F7 6706.

On the other hand, tolerance thresholds towards these images developed with the changing political context and the current assessment of the balance of power. At the end of the Restoration, several years after Napoleon’s death in 1821, the image of the former emperor finally became legal as a historical figure. Napoleonic signs no longer seemed so inflammatory, including in the public domain, provided they were not accompanied by any provocative words or gestures, any ‘ill intent’ or ‘guilty project.’10 In 1828, when objections were raised to a seizure of Napoleonic busts, the minister of the interior explained this new jurisprudence regarding engraved and sculpted images: Bonaparte nowadays being a historical figure, the courts have decided, on several occasions, that engravings or busts portraying him cannot be considered as seditious, and they have dismissed the proceedings brought against various merchants. Consequently, the administration authorizes the sale of said engravings, provided they are not accompanied by any apologia.11 More ambiguous in the eyes of the authorities were objects bearing liberal images, such as neckties or pipes depicting the leaders of the liberal opposition to the Restoration, Manuel and Foy, or fans evoking the liberal revolutions of 1820–1821 in southern Europe. The seller of a necktie bearing the image of Foy and Manuel was

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thus arrested before then being released, while many other memorabilia produced on the occasion of General Foy’s death, including rings, umbrella handles, cufflinks, liqueurs, perfumes and ‘à la Foy’ sweets, apparently circulated unhindered.12 It is true that the image of these liberal statesmen did not directly threaten the sovereignty embodied by the Bourbon king. As for the fans evoking the 1820 Piedmont liberal constitution, they were authorized on the grounds that they were intended for the Italian market, and were thus no threat to French public order.13 Objects and fabrics decorated in the blue, white and red of the French tricolour were viewed very differently. They were systematically hunted down, being deemed an attack on royal sovereignty, and associated with a revolutionary and imperial memory that the ruling powers were eager to eradicate. Another form of sedition found on some objects was the presence of caricatures or visual attacks which offended the monarchy. In these instances, the caricatures in question had not already been published, even clandestinely, and then engraved on objects, but were instead autonomous caricatures specific to these objects. It is true that preventative censorship of images considerably reduced the scope for political caricature in the 1820s. But caricature was still to be found on objects featuring visual and textual attacks on the monarchy. A pack of playing cards seized by the police in 1823, for example, featured crowns with donkey ears and snake heads, intended to ‘ridicule the sacred personage of our monarch and that of the august members of his family, and further excite all the enemies of royalty in their blindness.’14 In another case, a pack of cards bore explicitly seditious inscriptions, ‘Down with the Bourbons!,’ ‘Death to royalists!.’15 A seditious tobacco box in 1827, known as a ‘giraffe’ box because of its engraving depicting the famous giraffe offered to Charles X by Muhammad Ali, was sold by a merchant of novelties with devastating descriptions targeting the sacred personage of king: ‘His Highness the Giraffe entering Paris,’ ‘Nothing has changed in France, except there is now one more stupid animal.’16 The campaign denouncing the alliance between the throne and the altar during the reign of Charles X also extended to the sphere of everyday objects. The figure of the ‘Jesuit-King,’ showing the sovereign in the guise of a Jesuit or bishop, with a zucchetto or clerical rabat, gave visible form to the interweaving of civil and religious power, and the supposed sway the Catholic Church exerted over royal government, even a ‘Jesuit plot.’ The body of the king, rather than incorporating the sacred, became a monstrous double when conflated with that of the clergy. On a fair stall in Metz in April 1827, a confectioner displayed gingerbread representing King Charles X wearing a zucchetto, triggering a scandal (Figure 9.2). The evidence was immediately seized by a police chief and sent to the prefect and then the minister of the interior. This evidence has left a trace on the paper, giving an idea of the object in question. But what most worried the authorities were graphitized coins, in circulation in ten or more départements between 1826 and 1828. These coins bearing the effigy of Charles X had been profaned by turning the king into a bishop or Jesuit, with a zucchetto drawn or engraved using Indian ink, black paste or else etched on

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FIGURE 9.2 Traces left by a seditious gingerbread showing the effigy of the Jesuit-King,

seized in Metz in 1827, Paris, Archives nationales, F7 6705.

(Figure 9.3). Tens of thousands of coins of this type were in circulation, s­ubverting the visual order of sovereignty in a clearly orchestrated campaign. Coins  – an ­incarnation of sovereignty – were thus used as objects to criticize power, without it ever being possible to identify the perpetrators. Producers of seditious images also adapted to being hunted by the police by adding cryptic signs and oblique yet familiar references to ordinary decorations. Unlike the esoteric signs of secret societies (which were very powerful during the Restoration), no prior knowledge was needed to understand them. For example, signs of mourning placed on run-of-the-mill objects on Napoleon’s death in 1821 were enough for an ordinary observer to identify who was being mourned. Indeed, in the context of the Restoration, partaking in mourning for Napoleon amounted to exhibiting a dissident opinion.17 Weeping willows and funeral crowns printed on silk waistcoats, or anonymous mausoleums on tobacco boxes sufficed to turn such items into seditious objects. The discreet miniature patterns printed on a cloth seized by the police during a fair were more cryptic, yet once the constitutive signs were decoded these motifs pointed towards a powerful Napoleonic imaginary: an island (Saint Helena), a weeping willow, a bicorn hat, and a rising sun announcing the possibility of a Napoleonic restoration (Figure 9.4). The seditious object coupled a sign to an operating mechanism. This mechanism often relied on disclosing a hidden truth, with the object thus functioning as a machine for revealing secrets. Many seditious objects during the Restoration concealed clandestine images beneath a veil or screen. Thus, apparently innocent sweets contained effigies of Napoleon beneath their wrappers. Equally, tobacco boxes with a false base seized by police in 1819 hid beneath their banal outward appearance (a military scene) a subversive sign or effigy, in this case a portrait of

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FIGURE 9.3  Indian

ink and paper copy of a coin debasing the effigy of Charles X, found in Loudun (Vienne) in 1827. Paris, Archives nationales, F7 6706.

FIGURE 9.4 Piece

of seditious fabric seized by the police in Bas-Rhin in 1824. Paris, Archives nationales, F7 6705.

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Napoleon. A witness declared that ‘whenever an individual examined the top of the tobacco boxes, the merchant would say, “open it and you will see something completely different”.’ Dissimulation was, in the first place, of course, a constraint imposed by bans on what could be depicted. But it also obeyed a different principle, that of mystery and unveiling, which seditious objects shared with erotic objects, enhancing their market value.18 Similarly, portraits of the emperor were set into rings and revealed by turning the bezel. The handles of walking canes contained little bronze figures of Napoleon, which only emerged when one operated a secret mechanism, while the shadow cast by other canes revealed Napoleon’s profile. Such mechanisms for concealing and revealing images may also be found at other times and in other political cultures, such as the counter-revolutionary fans evoked by Mathilde Semal in this volume. But one mechanism seems particularly well-suited to the specific context of the Restoration, namely a device to show two images, revealing the reversibility of power.19 Certain objects displayed an official emblem or portrait of sovereignty, which could be easily switched to show its contrary: an effigy of Louis XVIII concealing a portrait of Napoleon, a fleur-de-lys masking an eagle, a white cockade c­ amouflaging a tricolour one and so on. Indeed, the alternation between four different regimes within the space of two years – the First Empire, First Restoration, Hundred Days and Second Restoration – undermined any self-­ evident p­ olitical legitimacy, making it conceivable that power be reversed at any moment. Seditious objects thus disclosed this regime of uncertainty, such as a bronze statuette depicting Louis XVIII wearing the decorative badge of the Order of the Holy Spirit, concealing within it a miniature bust of ­Napoleon, and bearing an ironic description on its base ‘the longed-for [individual]’ (Figure 9.5). Fleurs-de-lys on folded paper operated in an analogous way, revealing triumphant eagles once unfolded. Such papers were in circulation in several departments between 1819 and 1822 (Ille-et-Vilaine, Haute-Garonne, Seine). They were engraved or drawn, at times sold, at times deliberately left in public spaces or shown to wondering country folk. Such reversible emblems sought to assert the fragility of the Bourbon monarchy and the possibility of a return to an imperial regime. One such paper seized as evidence ended up in the correspondence of the minister of the interior, and is held by the French national archives (Figure 9.6). It shows an innocent fleur-de-lys drawn on paper, which once unfolded, reveals a crowned eagle above a portrait of Napoleon, above the motto ‘Glory, Honour, Homeland,’ and two medallions depicting Empress Marie-Louise and ‘Napoleon II,’ the Duke of Reichstadt. It had been drawn by a writing instructor and sold for 30 sous in Toulouse, where it sparked the concern of the authorities. They hastened to arrest its author, but were saddened to observe that this technique was being used elsewhere in France at the same time.

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FIGURE 9.5 Seditious statuette with a dual effigy of Louis XVIII and Napoléon. Musée

national des châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau.

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FIGURE 9.6  Seditious

fleur-de-lys drawn on folded paper and seized in Toulouse, 1819. Archives nationales, F7 6704.

Resisting with objects?  145

The ‘agency’ attributed to seditious objects The police sources used for this study allow us to measure the ‘agency’ attributed to objects. Alfred Gell proposed this concept as part of his outline of a general anthropology of art in order to designate the network of intentionality which coalesce in the art object, analyzed as a ‘social agent.’20 His model combines four factors interacting with one another: the index (the ‘physical visible thing’), the represented prototype (the referent), the artist and the recipient. I here use agency more modestly to designate the capacity of an object to trigger political feelings and interactions in ‘viewers,’ whether the latter were mere citizens or else administrators coming into contact with the object under consideration. One way this question can be approached is that of police anxiety and its associated paranoid semiotic. From the point of view of the police, and in accordance with the legal framework we alluded to earlier, the agency of a seditious object may be measured first by the extent to which it was public. The visibility of its being on sale or the overt nature of its exhibition were here decisive in activating the seditious properties of the object. A given object such as a necktie portraying Napoleon could be tolerated if sold discreetly inside a shop, yet brusquely seized if on public display or visible from the street. Indeed, those selling or bearing such objects knew how to play with the boundaries between public and private, between the overt and the discreet. One sales technique used by many merchants and peddlers consisted in mixing contradictory signs in their assorted objects: Napoleonic and royalist tobacco boxes, statuettes of saints, of members of the royal family and of Napoleon. The owner of a shop in Paris called the ‘Musée des Beaux-Arts,’ on being accused of selling seditious busts of an effigy of Bonaparte, denied having any political leanings on the grounds that they ‘were mixed up among nearly 800 famous men.’21 Conversely, the archives contain the odd example of seditious objects being exhibited with affectation, in gestures of virile violence or bravado, a characteristic of agonistic citizenship common among young men. Thus, young people and travelling salesmen in Montbéliard in 1826 ‘bear in public, with affectation, pipes in white porcelain with a sculpted relief painted in blue in an effigy of Bonaparte.’22 Bearing a seditious sign on a public street in the context of keen conflict to control civic space could easily degenerate into a brawl between rival groups of young men. This phenomenon was fairly rare, however, with portable objects mainly being shown discreetly in semi-public spaces with an ‘air of mystery.’ Second, the ‘agency’ accorded to seditious objects was also assessed in the light of their social anchoring. Objects for the working classes were a subject of ongoing concern for the administrative and police authorities. Censorship targeted objects ‘particularly of little value, found among the people and among workers’ since they ‘may produce a bad effect.’23 The discourse of the administrative elites was tinged with this belief in the particular nature of the working classes, deemed to think in signs and affects. Belief in a rigid divide in kinds of sensibility characteristic of different classes became entrenched in the course of the nineteenth century, with passive emotions felt to be the preserve of the working classes, and

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the logos rooted in rationality being assigned to the more ‘capable’ elites.24 In the opinion of a mayor in northern France during the Restoration, ‘the people look at external signs.’25 Thus objects of ‘popular’ manufacture, external to the luxury market, attracted particular attention from the police chiefs monitoring stalls and stores. The way that seditious objects gave wing to flights of emotion, imagination and paranoia can also and perhaps especially be seen in police writings. Haunted by the ceaseless fear of sedition and plots, police texts projected contemporary political fantasies onto objects. The most innocent items were thus transfigured into signs of ‘revolutionary’ rallying. Simple ribbons worn by fiddlers or journeymen carpenters were mistaken for subversive tricolour ribbons. A multi-coloured lantern lit on the day when the baptism of the Duke of Bordeaux was celebrated (on whom the Bourbon dynasty’s hopes were pinned) was mistaken ‘due to an optical effect’ for a tricolour illumination. A ribbon entangled by the wind was interpreted as a ‘seditious eagle.’26 A belt with medallions depicting Apollo and Diane was seen as seditious clothing portraying Napoleon and Marie-Louise.27 And so on and so forth. The sources are full of such hermeneutic mishaps. One is particularly entertaining and interesting. At a fair in Coucy (Aisne), a police chief hurriedly seized knives with illustrated handles that he thought seditious, mass-produced in the little town of Thiers (Puy-de-Dôme), which specialized in cutlery. It was not the image per se but the way it was affixed to the object that gave rise to paranoid semiotics. The nails used to fix the printed motifs onto the knife handles were interpreted as exhibiting clear seditious intent: At the bottom of the handle on one side is the bust of Louis XVI, with a nail to hold the handle passing exactly through the neck of the bust, indicating the way this unfortunate monarch died; at the other end of the corresponding handle is another bust with the nail I have just spoken of passing through the chest of what looks like the Duke of Berry struck in the chest; lastly, at another upper end there is a bust with the nail passing through its head, which seems to indicate that someone has broken the head of the Duke of Enghien.28 The way this knife handle depicted an imagined martyrology of the Bourbons was thus supposed to glorify a string of regicides. The investigators attributed seditious intent to the workers who had affixed the nails to the knife handles. Returning to Alfred Gell’s model, the artist (in this instance the worker) was thought to have acted on the index (the knife handle) and on the prototype (three portraits of Bourbons), and on the recipient (the observer) in order to awaken and celebrate the fantasy of regicides. However, this interpretation did not stand up to statements by the workers and manufacturers who made these knives. The portraits did not represent the Bourbons at all, the position of the nails was in no way intentional, and the workers questioned had not even heard of the Duke of Enghien. Sedition was thus nothing more than a police fantasy, although this fiction was nevertheless

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refracted through a genuine imaginary, that of the trauma of regicide, which was so present during the Restoration. Beyond the obsessions of the police and the courts, the administrative sources also contain information about what was done around seditious objects, and in particular how they might incite crowds, rumours and prophesies. However fragmentarily, this helps us reconstitute a different type of ‘agency,’ namely the capacity these objects had to incite social interaction and trigger political emotions. First, the public display of seditious objects nearly always caused people to gather around the stalls or shops in question to talk about the objects, including in front of the shops of confectioners when sweets bearing Napoleon’s effigy were visible. These crowds were often attracted by the surprise of seeing a visual taboo broken, especially when it concerned a rival sovereignty: the appearance of an image of the emperor, for example, in the early years of the Restoration. These crowds attracted even more people in the event of police or judicial repression. When the news spread that a woman had been convicted for selling handkerchiefs portraying Napoleon and his son, her novelty store was swamped with protesting would-be customers.29 More specifically, the agency of a seditious object inhered in its capacity to secrete or corroborate rumours and anticipations of coming events. The proscribed image or emblem served to substantiate dubious information, or at least sparked discussions. Thus, seditious coins representing Charles X as a Jesuit gave rise to a series of rumours about the throne being vacant: ‘the rumour is spreading that the king was made a bishop at least two months ago, and that since this period he carries out his duties each day, but that so as not to be distracted from his religious occupations His Majesty is minded to discontinue with conducting the affairs of the realm.’ The object, in this case the graphitized coin, stirred up disorder rooted in the perceived vacancy at the head of the monarchy, and the possibility of regime change. Objects of Napoleonic worship were even more prone to prophetic and messianic interpretations, announcing the return of the hero and/or his son, hence an imminent imperial restoration. When Napoleonic buttons bearing an eagle went on sale in October 1814 in Gisors (Rhône), this sufficed to endorse the possibility of Napoleon’s return.30 In Besançon, when a tricolour kite (in green, white and pink) went on display a few months after the death of the Duke of Berry, it was enough to spark collective panic and fear that Napoleon would return.31 Seditious objects, or objects thought to be seditious, were viewed during critical episodes as reinforcing doubts about the stability of power and the belief that it could be overthrown. At times, this gave rise to some confusion. In Rouen in March 1821, Napoleonic veterans riding in a stagecoach showed their fellow travellers a collection of tobacco boxes depicting the emperor to announce the ‘forthcoming reestablishment of the Republic.’32 The image of Napoleon thus paradoxically served to signal the return of the Republic. Certain police reports refer to the emotions observed on the faces of those seeing seditious objects and even instances of quasi-religious devotion. These could be negative emotions relating to fear or a taboo concerning a forbidden image.

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In  1822, when two women discovered a portrait of the emperor in a tobacco pouch deliberately left in a street in Amiens, they were unable to stifle cries of horror.33 The recent death of the emperor may have had something to do with this outburst of panic. Alternatively, viewers could react with exalted emotions if they harboured nostalgia for the Napoleonic past. During a projection of Napoleonic phantasmagorias in Tham and then in Montbéliard, the exclamations of the public expressed enthusiasm. Equally, simply seeing the liqueur labels portraying Napoleon seemed to excite certain veterans, ‘nothing seems more likely to provoke the naturally ardent spirits of those already heated by wine and strong liqueurs than seeing such labels,’ noted the lieutenant of police for the Rhône a few weeks after the assassination of the Duke of Berry.34 Exaltation could border on devotion when virtually religious gestures accompanied the vision of the adored effigy. In 1815 in a cabaret in Nantes, ‘people passed from hand to hand a tobacco box covered with a portrait of Napoleon’ each evening, and the affiliates ‘kissed this effigy and hugged it with idolatry.’35 These probably isolated gestures nevertheless corroborate the real presence of political images in the first half of the nineteenth century as shown in other practices, such as when the sovereign’s portrait was treated as a living person, secreting a form of social magic.36

Conclusion Seditious objects during the Restoration thus need to be apprehended as political objects in their own right. Were they objects of resistance? No doubt they were, in a domain of politicization where signs and objects played a central role. Further, sedition resided as much in the display mechanisms as in the signs represented. These made visible the possibility of overthrowing power and sovereignties. Were they objects of widespread worship? Such an interpretation would be unwarranted, given how few traces there are of Napoleonic object worship. The social life of these objects cannot be reconstituted in as much detail as could be wished, given the lack of adequate sources. They were hybrid objects circulating in commercial channels and political spaces, and it is hard to apprehend them other than through the fantasies produced by police reports. In this respect, these objects were agents caught up in power relations which are as least as revealing of a police imagination structured by fear than by any popular ‘practice of everyday life.’

Notes 1 Michel de Certeau, L’Invention du quotidien. Les arts de faire (Paris: Gallimard, 1990 [first pub’d 1980]), Eng. trans. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 2 Gianenrico Bernasconi, Objets portatifs au siècle des Lumières (Paris: CTHS, 2015). 3 Richard Taws, The Politics of the Provisional. Art and Ephemera in Revolutionary France (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2013); Leora Auslander, Cultural Revolutions: The Politics of Everyday Life in Britain, North America and France (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009); and the chapter by Mathilde Semal.

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4 Emmanuel Fureix, ‘Rites protestataires et tensions démocratiques en France (1820–1848)’, Almanack, 9 (2015), 5–18, . 5 The sources used here were prospected during a survey of political iconoclasm, published as Emmanuel Fureix, L’œil blessé. Politiques de l’iconoclasme après la Révolution française (Ceyzérieu: Champ Vallon, 2019). 6 On this topic, see Fureix, L’œil blessé, p.  73 et sq., and also Enrico Francia, ‘Oggetti sediziosi. Censura e cultura materiale nell’Italia della Restaurazione’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome  – Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines, 130 (2018), 31–41; Alessio Petrizzo et Carlotta Sorba, ‘Nuovi sguardi sugli oggetti’, Contemporanea, 19 (2016), 439–482. On Napoleonic objects in France see Sudhir Hazareesingh, La légende de Napoléon (Paris: Tallandier, 2005), chap. 3. 7 The concept of agency covers many different meanings, including the capacity to act on the social world (the dominant meaning in the social sciences), or the intentions which coalesce in an art object. See Alfred Gell, Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). I  here use the concept in a more restricted sense, namely that of producing interactions of a political nature. 8 On visual censorship, see David O’Brien, ‘Censorship of Visual Culture in France, 1815–1852’, Yale French Studies, 122 (2012), 37–52; Robert Justin Goldstein, Censorship of Political Caricature in Nineteenth-Century France (Kent, Ohio and London: Kent State University Press, 1989). 9 Fureix, L’œil blessé, p. 131 et sq. 10 Letter from the minister of the interior to the prefect of Haute-Loire, 10 March 1822. Paris, Archives nationales F7 6704. 11 Reply from the minister of the interior to the prefect of Jura, August 1828. Archives nationales, F7 6704. 12 Jean-Claude Caron, Les deux vies du général Foy (1775–1825), guerrier et législateur (Ceyzérieu: Champ Vallon, 2014), pp. 345–348. 13 Letter written by the public prosecutor of Aix to the minister of justice on 25 October 1822. Archives nationales, F7 6704. 14 Archives nationales, F7 6704. 15 Ibid. 16 Archives nationales F7 6706. 17 Emmanuel Fureix, La France des larmes. Deuils politiques à l’âge romantique, 1814–1840 (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2009). 18 Erotic tobacco boxes also had a false base. 19 For comparison, one might cite the clandestine material culture of the Jacobites. See e.g. Murray Pittock, Material Culture and Sedition, 1688–1760. Treacherous Objects, Secret Places (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and the chapter by Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding. 20 Gell, Art and Agency. 21 Letter from Rouy to the prefect of police, 13 November  1825, Archives nationales, F7 6706. 22 Report dated 27 May 1826, Archives nationales, F7 6704. 23 Report from the police chief of the town of Tours on 2 November  1827, Archives nationales, F7 6704. 24 Jacques Rancière, Le partage du sensible: esthétique et politique (Paris: La Fabrique, 2000). 25 Letter from the mayor of Condé-sur-l’Escaut to the préfet du Nord, 2 August  1822. Lille, Archives départementales du Nord, M135/59. 26 Fureix, L’œil blessé, p. 85. 27 Hazareesingh, The Legend of Napoleon. 28 Transcript of 7 August 1822 by the king’s prosecutor at the court of Laon. Quoted in Marc Prival and Jean-Louis Gaineton, ‘Des couteaux séditieux et des hommes à Thiers sous la Restauration’, Bulletin historique et scientifique de l’Auvergne, 704 (July–September 1992), 129–150.

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29 Police report dated 29 November 1829 in Arras (Pas-de-Calais), Archives nationales, F7 6705. 30 Lyon, Archives départementales du Rhône, 4M245. 31 Archives nationales, F7 3792. 32 Archives nationales, F7 6706. 33 Ibid. 34 Letter from the police lieutenant of the Rhône département to the préfet du Rhone, 12 March 1820. Archives départementales du Rhône, 4M 245. 35 Report from the Mayor of Nantes to the prefect of Loire-Inférieure on 2 September 1815. Nantes, Archives départementales Loire-Inférieure, 1M85. 36 On this topic, see Fureix, L’œil blessé, pp. 91–111.

10 A SONOROUS POLITICS OF EVERYDAY OBJECTS Coal workers’ charivaris during the Anzin strike of 1884 Adrien Quièvre

Between February and April 1884, in the Anzin coalfield (Nord, France), 11,000 miners out of a total workforce of some 14,000 went on strike in protest against new working rules introduced by the company.1 The tasks of buttressing and the maintenance of underground galleries, which had until then been performed by special workers known as raccommodeurs, were now to be undertaken by the miners charged with removing the coal, at variable rates of pay. As a result, the raccommodeurs, mostly elderly miners and children, were to be laid off. This strike was an important moment in the history of miners’ conflicts, marking a departure from the previous flashpoints on the Anzin coalfield.2 Whereas earlier strikes had followed the model of the strike-revolt – short and violent conflicts, lasting only a few days – the 1884 strike lasted for 56 days, after which the miners returned to work without obtaining any of their demands. For the historian Yves Le Maner, this marked ‘the birth of the “modern” strike among the miners: powerful movements, long, coordinated, organized by a union.’3 The struggle that had until then opposed the miners to the company now included a new actor, the union, leading to a reconfiguration of power relations. During the strike, hundreds of meetings were organized on the coalfield, at which union leaders repeatedly urged the strikers to remain irreproachably quiet and obedient.4 Under union leadership, planned discussions with the authorities and negotiations supplanted the noisy and spontaneous demonstrations which had characterized earlier conflicts. This change in the miners’ ‘repertoire of contention’ lead many actors and observers, from journalists to the authorities, to stress the calm that prevailed on the coalfield.5 A correspondent dispatched to Anzin by the conservative newspaper Le Figaro wrote that there were ‘[n]o marches, no shouting, no tumult; the cabarets are empty, the miner only leaves his house to go to the meetings where his delegates – or so called – come to encourage him to resistance.’6 The prefect of Lille, writing to his ministry, ­concurred: the agitation no longer took place, as earlier, in the streets, but in the

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public meetings held at regular intervals in various public houses.7 And yet, despite the union’s numerous calls for calm and the massive deployment of law-enforcement across the coalfield, a number of turbulent events did occur during the strike, and among them three charivaris. These charivaris are particularly interesting for the way the strikers used various everyday objects and accessories to create noise and commotion and to mock non-strikers returning from work. The ritual of charivari has long been examined by scholars in a wide variety of contexts and from a number of perspectives.8 The term commonly designates a public ritual performed to punish unseemly marriages or indecent sexual behaviour in rural communities. The participants, most often in costume, gathered around the house of the offenders in a discordant concert of cries, laughter and song, accompanied by the beating of various objects. In most cases, the charivari was part of customary social control and was meant to reaffirm collective authority over individual behaviour within the community. During the nineteenth century, however, the practice of charivari took a more political turn as it began to be used against disliked officials, tax collectors or members of the clergy. While its various origins, forms and meanings have been extensively studied, the material conditions of its performance have generally been ignored.9 Most often, either the specific objects used are not mentioned, or they are presented in the form of a list, without classification nor consideration of their specificities and effects.10 Although a number of attempts have been made to classify the objects used during charivaris, these have not been entirely satisfying for a variety of reasons. Roger Pinon, for example, studying charivaris in the Walloon region of Belgium, proposes to follow a strict organological classification, focused on the acoustic specificities of the objects used.11 The limitation of this method is that it fails to relate these objects to the everyday lives of the people using them. Claudie Marcel-Dubois considers the objects used in nineteenth- and twentieth-century charivaris by dividing them into three categories: musical instruments; objects from domestic life; and tools used in agricultural activities.12 Although this does allow her to situate the objects in their original context of use, her categorization appears too broad and fails to take into consideration the symbolic meanings of objects. It is, I think, possible to go further. By taking into account the acoustic properties, practical functions and symbolic resonance of objects used during charivaris we can reach a better understanding of their function, significance and effects. The charivari is, above all, an acoustic practice. Though varying depending on the historical or geographical context, charivaris are always characterized by a combination of music, sounds and voices in concert, generally described as discordant. Thus, the physical characteristics of the objects used to create such sounds (composition, weight, shape), the nature of the participants (men, women or children, homogeneous or mixed crowd) and the gestures applied to the objects (beating, shaking, rubbing, blowing) all drastically affect the general aspect of the charivari. From the perspective of the sounds associated with them, no two charivaris are identical. Moreover, the functions of objects, the way they are perceived and experienced, the gestures attached to them, and more broadly their symbolic meanings,

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are not categories fixed in time. They can vary drastically depending on the historical, social and cultural context.13 Thus, the use of different objects during charivaris and the meaning attached to them are likely to change with time and in context. In the present chapter, I will examine the objects used during the three charivaris which took place during the 1884 Anzin strike, situating them in the context of the everyday lives of miners. This chapter will essentially seek to answer the following questions: what happened during these charivaris? What objects were used by the strikers? What was their place in the everyday lives of miners? Why did the strikers use these objects in particular?

The sound of charivaris On 19 March 1884, at the end of the 28th day of the strike, a group of women organized a charivari against non-strikers coming back from work. The event was reported in a short telegram sent by the commissioner of Condé to the prefect of Lille: ‘Last night, when coming back from work, some workers were booed by some women from Rieu de Condé who shouted and banged on pans. Nothing serious and nothing to fear for the payroll today.’14 Although it does not use the term ‘charivari,’ the description of people gathered, shouting and beating on pans strongly recalls this ritual. On 4 April, the 43rd day of the strike, a second charivari took place on the coalfield, and was described by the maréchal-des-logis: Thursday, 3 April, on the town square of Le Trieu de Fresnes with a dozen strikers, it was agreed between them that the next day, Friday, 4 April, for the return of miners who had not stopped work, a bugle call would be sounded to assemble those who would like to join them, to go on the paths leading to either Le Trieu de Fresnes or Odomez and Notre-Dame, to taunt and intimidate the miners returning from work. On Friday, 4 April, at 2:30 pm, on the roads leading from the pits to the places designated above . . . we noticed a fair number of people, more or less in costume, playing with hoops, and, as the miners returning from work passed by, shook their hoops and beat them to roll them, saying, ‘Walk then goodfor-nothing, work then good-for-nothing,’ following and preceding them, continuing their game until they reached the square of Le Trieu de Fresnes where a gathering of about a thousand people had formed on their arrival; it was then that the police intervening to protect the workers, and were jostled and insulted.15 A telegram from the commissioner of Condé adds: This afternoon a considerable band, several wearing tricolour ribbons in elaborate hats, miners, women and children gathered at Le Trieu de Fresnes to wait for some workers returning from work. A  woman was noticed

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dressed as a man leading the others. Another young man, 15 years old, seeing the gendarmerie, shouted ‘Beat them.’ Wanting to seize this provocateur, the brigadier of gendarmerie was assaulted by a woman. When I arrived with the two guards calm was restored and everyone went back to normal. An inquiry is being made by gendarmerie in our presence about this charivari.16 A journalist from the daily paper Le Temps, covering the strike, also painted a detailed and colourful picture of the scene: [The gendarmes] noticed a large crowd, miners with their wives and children, singing, shouting, gesturing around the pits. They did not oppose the exit of their comrades; they simply gave them a charivari. The exit of each of the miners was greeted by hurrahs, dances, an infernal din of fire tongs struck on pans. At times, one of the strikers named Corroène played the Marseillaise on an old trombone, and all those with him accompanied him singing. Everyone was having fun. The gendarmes laughed as they passed; unfortunately one of the demonstrators, a young man wearing a red cap, approached one of them and insulted him. The gendarme put his hand on his collar and wanted to take him away. Immediately they were surrounded; men and women rushed at them to snatch the miner from their hands. The trombone player’s wife, disguised herself as a miner for the charivari to be complete, seized the brigadier by the collar; the gendarmes were thrown into the ditch and the released prisoner was able to escape. The attitude of the miners and their wives, about eight hundred in number, was so furious that the gendarmes were forced to draw their way through the crowd and return to their brigade camped a short distance away in the commune of Vieux-Condé.17 Finally, on 7 April, ten days before the end of the strike, a third and last charivari was given to the non-strikers: ‘A demonstration took place in Fenain when the workers were returning from their work, the woman Leclercq Charlemagne threw dirt at two of these men while other women banged their clogs together.’18  A telegram from the prefect adds: ‘On 7 April last, thanks to his firm attitude [the prefect refers here to a zealous gendarme], he managed to disperse a gathering of a hundred women who were preparing to give a charivari to the non-striking miners returning from the pits.’19 These three charivaris shared a number of noticeable specificities. They all took place in the afternoon, when the miners returned from work, which seems to indicate that they were scheduled in advance. For the first one, women banged pans, suggesting a form of agreement about the objects used. The second charivari appears to have been elaborately planned. The maréchal-des-logis mentioned in his report a ‘bugle call’ would be given ‘to assemble those who would like to join them . . . to taunt and intimidate the miners returning from work.’ Here, sound did not only occur during the charivari but also prior to it, as an acoustic rallying sign for the strikers dispersed across the coalfield. This could explain the large number

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of participants, a thousand, who took part in the charivari. As for the third one, the gesture appears more spontaneous as women seized what they had to hand, or rather on their feet, to produce a racket and express their anger. These were, moreover, collective actions, as men, women and children vocally booed and mocked the non-strikers, expressing their presence through shouts, hoots, insults and chants. We can imagine a wide variety of sonic registers and intensities as voices from all ages and genders sang, laughed and shouted at the non-strikers, alternating between choruses and improvisations. This is notably the case when the journalist details the musical interactions between the participants, especially when a miner in fancy dress played the ‘Marseillaise on an old trombone’ and all the audience accompanied him in song. It is not impossible that on such occasions demands were formulated by the strikers which were linked to the causes of the conflict, but that the observers chose to ignore them in their reports. In contrast, the descriptions greatly emphasized the physical dimension of the charivaris. Strikers are pictured shouting, singing, booing, gesturing, dancing, hitting and beating objects against one another for a period which must have lasted several minutes, the time it took for the gendarmes to arrive and intervene.20 If the journalist’s account suggests a peaceful and humorous ambiance with the cheering, music and dressing up, all strongly recalling the tradition of carnaval, the authorities had a much less musical ear.21 Describing the same gathering, the Gazette des tribunaux does not mention a charivari but the ‘Fresnes troubles’ referring to ‘regrettable disorders’ caused by a ‘very large band.’22 The focus is on the violence of the strikers and the unavoidable intervention of the gendarmes to make arrests. The Gazette mentions the presence of individuals booing and beating on ‘cauldrons,’ but ignores the use of musical instruments, the group’s interactions, and more generally the festive character of the event underlined by the journalist. Following this charivari, many strikers were arrested and condemned. Several documents mention eight-day prison sentences ‘for taking part in a gathering that has pursued the workers by booing and giving them a charivari.’23 Among the sentenced was Aristide Corroène, a 27-year-old miner. He was the one who played the Marseillaise on his trombone during the charivari of 4 April. Leclercq Charlemagne was sentenced to one month in prison and a fine of 16 francs for her participation in the third charivari.24

Everyday objects for expressing discontent Let us now take a closer look at the objects mentioned in the records and try to situate them in the everyday lives of the miners. It is telling that even when the accounts of these charivaris are reduced to the bare minimum imposed by the need to send them by telegram, the senders took the time and space to mention the objects used by the strikers. First, various kitchen utensils are cited: pots, pans, cauldrons and tongs, all belonging to the household. Pots and pans were employed for the preparation of food and beverages (Figure 10.1). Miners mostly ate vegetable stews and soups made with vegetables cultivated by the workers themselves

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FIGURE 10.1  Le

mineur à table (around 1900). The postcard shows a family of miners inside their home. Centre Historique Minier, Loan from the Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail.

in their gardens. This meant simmering the various ingredients for several hours, hence the need for pots and pans. Pans were also used to prepare coffee and chicory coffee, beverages drunk by the whole family during the day. Tongs, meanwhile served to tend the fire of the coal stove (Figure 10.2). One report also mentions the use of cauldrons. Bigger than pots and pans, these were used to heat the large quantity of water needed wash the clothes of the family and to clean the miners when they returned from work (Figure 10.3): As soon as the miner crossed the threshold of the house, he undressed completely, hung his clothes out to dry, and plunged into the cuvelle – the wooden tub, sometimes a half-barrel – where his wife poured the water that she prepared on the stove. And rubbing with black soap – at the risk of yellowing his hair, they say – willingly accepting that the housewife give him a helping hand.25 This daily ritual was important as it removed the stains left by coal on their face, hair and body. Allowing them to rid themselves, until the next day, of the social stigma attached to their membership of the ‘breed of miners,’ an object of both fear and fascination in nineteenth-century France.26 We also have the musical instruments, in particular the trombone and the bugle. Unlike the kitchen utensils, using these instruments would require some musical skill. Usually practised during leisure time, music was an important part of

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FIGURE 10.2  Le

mineur à table (detail). Various kitchen utensils, including pans and tong. Centre Historique Minier, Loan from the Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail.

the miners’ life and culture. Many of them belonged to the municipal band or choir, or to the company’s musical society. In fact, musical practice was also strongly encouraged by the employers who saw in it an opportunity to occupy miners’ free time ‘innocently.’27 These musical ensembles also served to promote the image of the company during national competitions. Yet, it seems that Corroène, who played the trombone during the charivari, was not part of the musical society of Anzin, since his name does not appear in the company’s records.28 He may have been a member of the municipal brass band, or he may have learned to play the instrument by himself. The mention of an ‘old trombone’ could indicate that Corroène inherited it from his family or that the instrument was not very well

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FIGURE 10.3  La toilette

du mineur (around 1900). Centre Historique Minier, Loan from the Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail.

maintained. It could also be that he played the trombone badly or inexpertly, making it sound like an old one, whether deliberately – in an attempt to pastiche the Marseillaise – or not. Third, and somewhat less conventionally, came the hoops used during the second charivari. The strikers, in fancy dress, followed the miners coming back from the pits, beating their hoops to roll them and repeating, ‘Walk then good-fornothing, work then good-for-nothing.’ This use of hoops as if in a game strongly evoked the children’s sport of hoop rolling. Most often played with several participants, the idea of this game was to push a wooden hoop as far as possible without it falling over by hitting it with a stick.29 This game was popular among the working class since the materials needed were very cheap, and it was played by miners’ children on the coalfield (Figure 10.4). Since any circular object could serve as a hoop, players often used barrel circles or wooden wheels. Interestingly, a book on mine digging and maintenance published in 1844 mentions wooden circles made of ash, oak or chestnut, used by the miners to support small circular underground galleries, generally up to one metre. In the context of the mine, it is possible that the miners may have taken these circles as they were no longer used for buttressing by 1884.30 Finally, one report mentions clogs (sabots) used by women during the last charivari. These wooden shoes were characteristic of miners’ work clothes at the time, whereas on their days off they would have worn leather shoes or souliers. Clogs had the advantage of being hardwearing and offered a good protection during work. Importantly, although clogs were worn by both men and women, the male miners

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FIGURE 10.4  Abscon.

La fosse ‘La pensée’ (around 1900). Children posing with their hoops. Archives municipales de Valenciennes, 22Z 61 038, Fonds Alexis Mathieu, Legs Jean Vanhove.

had the habit of removing them before going down the pits, to avoid sliding on the wet soil of the mines, and also because of the heat underground.31 Émile Zola spent a few days in Anzin during the 1884 strike to collect details for his novel, Germinal, which included much information about the everyday lives of miners. In his field notes, he wrote that every day the miner ‘goes to the barracks, to his box locked with a padlock to which he has the key, puts on his coat if he has one. Leaves his clogs. He takes his tools, which he left the day before.’ Later, he adds: ‘In the bottom of the mine, workers are barefoot.’ Clogs, then, were mostly worn by women, during their work above ground at the mine, or while doing domestic work (Figure 10.5).32 The large diversity of objects used in charivaris raises the question: why did strikers use these objects in particular? First and foremost, these objects had advantages from an acoustic standpoint. They are essentially hollow, made from hard materials, which meant that they would resonate loudly when beaten or knocked one against the other. They thus offered great acoustic power as well as a variety of timbres. As the practice of charivari involved, above all, the production of a loud and continuous racket, we can guess that this was a critical aspect. The pragmatic factor might also have lead the participants to use these objects, as they are easy to handle and to transport. This allowed them to be mobile and to follow the miners returning from work. They were also likely to be found in most miners’ homes. Accordingly, everyone could have taken part in these charivaris by simply seizing

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FIGURE 10.5

Denain. Un groupe de cafus (around 1900). Women wearing their work clothes and clogs. Archives municipales de Valenciennes, 22Z  58  108, Don René Goube.

an ordinary object found at home and turning it into a sounding device. Finally, the objects could easily be replaced, which is also an important feature, as they risked being broken, lost or seized by gendarmes. It may appear surprising that these records do not mention the strikers using mining tools during the charivaris. This is particularly remarkable, as the work of coal mining in 1884 required an extensive use of tools to extract and cut the coal. Hammers, pickaxes, shovels, axes: these tools would have certainly made good accessories for the charivaris. They were an important part of the everyday lives of the miners, were made in strong materials and, would have produced loud sounds if beaten. Also, they could be turned into a weapon in case of confrontation with the gendarmes or the troops. Yet, miners do not seem to have made use of their tools during protests or demonstrations. Visiting Anzin in 1884, Zola wrote that ‘[t]he true weapon of the miner is the rock. Never [fighting] with his tools.’33 What can explain this absence? In her extensive study of the coal mining industry in France, Diana Cooper-Richet suggests that the miners never used their tools during strikes and revolts ‘out of respect for their work.’34 In other words, the miners refused to transform their tools into weapons because they felt an irrepressible consideration or reverence for their work. I do not find this explanation convincing. I believe the absence of tools during these practices is grounded in a much more rational explanation: the tools never belonged to the miners. ‘His tools . . . are provided by the Company against a bond of 10 francs, and replaced when worn or broken; if

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he does not give them back, he pays the price according to the tariff.’35 As a result, the miners would have been the first to suffer if their tools were broken, worn out or lost, both because he was responsible for their condition, and also because each miner was paid by the company according to his productivity.

Charivaris and the audibility of women Although we have seen how charivaris involved men, women and children, in the records cited earlier commentators particularly emphasize the involvement of women. They are described as leading the crowds, giving voice and creating a racket. They were the ones who initiated the first and third charivaris and beat on pans and clogs. As for the second one, the journalist from Le Temps wrote how a woman did not hesitate to go as far as physical confrontation with the authorities in order to stop the arrest of one participant. In fact, during the 1884 strike, the prefect repeatedly feared that the implication of women would lead to an uncontrollable rise of violence. ‘I already know that women are starting to incite their husbands,’ he wrote in his correspondence with ministers.36 According to him, women ‘understand nothing about politics, surrender to their passions.’37 In other words, they would be unable to grasp the political significance of the strike and would indulge in the most violent agitation. These kind of descriptions are not restricted to the roles of women during miner’s strikes. They are common in police and judicial records of the time. As Michelle Perrot has argued, women mostly found their way into these documents through ‘set descriptions’ of their ‘inciting and expressive role . . . in all forms of popular gathering, from Carnival and Charivari to strike protests, and where it is not always easy to unravel the reality from the stereotype.’38 Perrot demonstrates how these stereotypes work through the systematic depiction of women in the traits of ‘vociferating women, shrews when they open the mouth, hysterical as soon as they gesticulate.’39 Women, in this view, would only be capable of noise. More than just essentialist and misogynistic depictions, these stereotypes served as means of affect control and social regulation. They aimed to deny women any reasoned capacity of action and to exclude them from the political sphere. These recurring stereotypes raise a methodological question: how can we bring to light and understand the engagement of women during strikes or revolts when the primary sources are biased by gender clichés and the clear intention to depoliticize women? The risk, as Michèle Riot-Sarcey underlined in an article published in 1997 on the writing of women’s history, is to redouble ‘the essentialist presuppositions that accompany it, and to reproduce, by the description of behaviour, the effects of a cultural construction without exposing the power relations which determine it.’40 Like other feminist historians writing in the 1980s and 1990s, RiotSarcey sought new ways to emphasize the various forms of political and social involvement of women in history.41 To avoid the transmission of stereotypes and bring to light the reasons and meanings of women’s implication in the social and political spheres, she stresses the necessity to ‘reinstate the historicity of the tensions

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inherent in gender relations.’42 This, she continues, ‘supposes to go beyond the static relation of a written document which favours the description of the effects of power relations to the detriment of the analysis of the why and how of these relations.’43 What this means for us, in the context of the 1884 strike of Anzin, is that it is not enough to acknowledge the fact that women massively participated in these episodes of charivari and to describe their behaviour. We must also try to understand why they chose this particular ‘repertoire of contention’ and, if possible, why they chose the objects they did. To do so, it is necessary to shed light on some specificities of the social and economic conditions of the Anzin coal company and how these affected women’s daily lives. The employers of Anzin were engaged in a constant mission of education and moralization directed at its workers. Faced with the scarcity of housing in the rural region around Valenciennes, the company started building and managing houses about 1826. These consisted of long rows of semi-detached houses located near the pits, called corons, which were rented to the miners and their families at a below market rate. The company also possessed the entire daily infrastructure (school, church, hospitals, shops) and supervised the free time of workers by organizing activities (brass bands, choirs, pigeon racing, gardening). These various activities were supposed to keep the miners away from the surrounding villages and limit potential sources of social and political agitation.44 As François Ewald notes about the domination exerted by mining companies: ‘It seeks to make itself invisible, elusive and unconscious by blending in the usual forms of sociability.’45 Similarly, although miners’ dwellings were constructed first of all to meet an economic need, namely recruiting and establishing the workers next to their workplace,46 they were also part of a surveillance programme designed to identify and sanction any deviant behaviour. The miners’ houses were systematically checked by agents of the company who made sure they were properly maintained according to a certain code of conduct. The slightest infringement was punished by a fine. In fact, a few months before the start of the 1884 strike, Emile Basly, secretary of the Anzin miners’ union chamber, raised the alarm concerning their poor living conditions: The dwellings are unhealthy; in addition, miners are confined like flocks of sheep under the control of an agent salaried by the company. He passes several times a day and, as he must also make a profit for his bosses, he imposes a fine on housewives as soon as he learns that the orders he has given have not been executed.47 It is important to note that, in the case of Anzin in 1884 – as in many other contexts, past or present48 – women were in charge of the household.49 As a result, they were the first ones targeted by the company’s efforts to assert its control over housing, and were expected to conform to strict standards. In addition to or instead of their work at the mine surface, where they sorted coal, women took care of the entire family. They looked after the children, ran errands, grew vegetables in small gardens attached to the houses, prepared the meals several times a day in order

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to fit in with the varying schedules of husband and children, laundered clothes blackened by the coal and had the responsibility for household accounting and managing the salaries. By doing so, women massively and constantly participated in the process of social reproduction.50 Dominique Le Tirant studied the social and economic role of mining women, showing how, in everyday life, they ‘play a vital role in supporting production by providing ongoing assistance to their husbands. This activity belongs to the register of “care,” it is also the invisible part of work in the coal production economy.’51 Therefore, even when they were no longer hired by the company, women were still placed under its strict hierarchy and supervision and were expected to conform to strict standards.52 On the whole, the legislation forbidding them to work underground, the continuing separation of wage work and domestic work and their exclusion from male trade unionism meant that women had far fewer symbolic or physical means of contestation when their social or economic situation was in danger.53 All this helps explain why women initiated and massively participated in charivaris. Against the union’s repeated recommendations to keep the strike confined to the rooms of the public houses or estaminets where the meetings took place, women extended the conflict to the entire coalfield through the practice of charivari, asserting themselves in the process as active agents in the strike. To return to Charles Tilly’s concept of the ‘repertoire of contention,’ we can see how, in the case of the 1884 strike, the emergence of union and political reformism did not result in the disappearance of the charivari, characteristic of the ‘ancient repertoire of contention,’ but rather changed its significance and meanings. Excluded from the ‘modern repertoire of contention,’ women chose means of action anchored in the ‘ancient repertoire.’ As we have seen, most of the objects used during these charivaris belonged to the domestic sphere. In fact, excepting one musical instrument and the hoops, all the objects belonged to the domestic sphere or symbolized the work of women within the coalfield. Pots were used to cook, tongs to keep the fire going, cauldrons served for the washing and the laundering of clothes, and clogs were mostly worn by women. By choosing to gather around the mine pits to make these everyday objects resonate, women deployed the domestic sphere within the workspace of the mine. Traditionally used in an invisible manner and under the strict control of the company, pots, tongs, cauldrons and clogs were turned into instruments of protest during the charivaris. These objects played a role of sound amplifier, and in the process, in a concert of sounds, noises and voices, helped to make women’s living and working conditions audible.

Conclusion Concentrating on the objects used by strikers in these three charivaris leads to a better understanding of their effects and meaning. Not only does such an approach provide valuable details regarding their sonic and musical specificities, it also shows how the objects used by the miners related to their everyday lives. The musical instruments, the various kitchen utensils, the hoops and the clogs symbolized, at

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the same time as enabling, a network of social and cultural practices shared by the inhabitants of the coalfield. Through these objects as deployed in these charivaris, every aspect of miners’ lives was mobilized: professional life, leisure time and especially the domestic sphere. Moreover, a closer inspection of the practices of the Anzin coal company, both in the mine and beyond it, reveals how the objects used reflected an interlinking set of social, economic and political factors. The company imposed tough working conditions, kept a close eye on the miners’ dwellings and administered leisure time. All this was done in an effort to coerce the minds and bodies of the workers and prevent the development of a life outside the mine. From this point of view, clogs, musical instruments, kitchen utensils and hoops do not only provide material testimony to everyday life on a nineteenth century coalfield, they also embody the company’s control over its workers. Their use during these charivaris thus carried a strong symbolic resonance. By turning these everyday objects into instruments of protest, the strikers gave them new meanings and agency. By doing so, they temporarily suspended the social and economic order imposed by the company. This was particularly the case for the women who participated massively in these charivaris and used various kitchen utensils – employed on a daily basis for the tasks of social reproduction – to make themselves audible. Studying the material conditions of these charivaris provides us with some contextual details about the objects used, their acoustic specificities and their significance in everyday lives. Above all, however, it underlines the capacity of coal workers to reinvent traditions and to create new means of contestation. In this case, these charivaris emerge as more than just noisy and dissonant actions directed at the non-strikers but also as a space of everyday resistance, a space whose acoustic force and amplitude interfered with the union’s discourse and raised dissent about the course of the strike. With these charivaris emerged a dissonance of voices, sounds and noises, a dissonance of speeches, opinions and desires meant to reconfigure the order of audibility. In a word, it served to voice a disagreement, which, according to the philosopher Jacques Rancière, lies at the heart of politics.54

Notes 1 For a detailed history of the company, see Marcel Gilet, Les charbonnages du Nord de la France (Paris: Mouton, 1973); Reed G. Geiger, The Anzin Coal Company, 1800–1833: Big Business in the Early Stages of the French Industrial Revolution (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1974). 2 For an overview of the strikes of 1833, 1846, 1866, 1872 and 1878, see Jean-Baptiste Foucart, La grève des charbonniers d’Anzin en 1866 (Paris: Picard, 1866); Jean-Pierre Aguet, Contribution à l'histoire du mouvement ouvrier français: les grèves sous la monarchie de juillet 1830–1847 (Genève: Droz, 1954); Philippe Guignet, ‘L’émeute des quatre sous, ou les voies de la protestation sociale à Anzin (mai 1833)’, Revue du Nord, 219 (1973), 347–364; Bruno Mattéi, Rebelle, rebelle! Révoltes et mythes du mineur, 1830–1946 (Seyssel: Éditions du Champ Vallon, 1987). 3 Yves Le Maner, ‘Les grandes grèves minières du Pas-de-Calais’, in Madeleine Ribérioux (ed.), Fourmies et les premier mai (Paris: Les éditions de l’atelier, 1994), p. 268. 4 The Anzin union chamber which piloted the strike was created in 1883, under the impetus of radical deputies. Anchored in a reformist ideal, trade union leaders were

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hostile to any form of direct action, favouring a legislative approach. See Rolande Trempé, ‘Le réformisme des mineurs français à la fin du xixe siècle’, Le Mouvement social, 65 (1968), 93–107; Joel Michel, ‘Syndicalisme minier et politique dans le Nord-Pas-deCalais: le cas Basly (1880–1914)’, Le Mouvement social, 87 (1974), 9–33. 5 Sociologist and historian Charles Tilly coined the expression ‘repertoire of contention’ to designate the collective means of action shared by individuals depending on their historical, cultural and geographical situation. Tilly argues that, in France, the repertoire of contention went from ‘ancient’, local and particularized, with actions such as charivaris, revolts, blockages, to ‘modern’, national and autonomous, characterized by strikes conducted by unions, large demonstration or petitioning. In this view, many of the actions taken during the strike resemble the ‘modern repertoire of contention’. See Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986). 6 Le Figaro, 12 March 1884: ‘Pas de promenades, pas de cris, pas de tumulte; les cabarets sont vides, le mineur ne sort de chez lui que pour se rendre aux meetings où ses délégués – ou prétendus tels – viennent l’encourager à la résistance’. 7 Archives départementales du Nord [hereafter A.D.N.], M 626/13, f. 493: ‘Le rôle que jouent les réunions publiques dans cette grève est tout nouveau. Jusqu’ici l’agitation se produisait dans la rue. Pour la première fois elle est contenue pendant un certain nombre de jours dans l’enceinte des salles de bals ou estaminets où se tiennent les réunions’. 8 On the practice of charivari and its history, see Gabriel Peignot, Histoire morale, civile, politique et littéraire du charivari (Paris: Delaunay, 1833); E. P. Thompson, ‘ “Rough Music”: le charivari anglais’, Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations, 27 (1972), 285–312; Nathalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford California Press, 1977), pp. 97–123; Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt (eds.), Le charivari (Paris: Mouton, 1977). On political charivaris in nineteenth century France, see: Charles Tilly, ‘Charivaris, repertoires and urban politics’, in John M. Merriman (ed.), French Cities in Nineteenth Century (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1981), pp. 73–91; Emmanuel Fureix, ‘Rites protestataires: un nouvel espace public et politique (1820–1848)?’ in Michel Pigenet and Danielle Tartakowsky (eds.), Histoire des mouvements sociaux en France. De 1814 à nos jours (Paris: La Découverte, 2012), pp.  46–57; Xabier Itçaina, ‘Popular Justice and Informal Politics: The Charivari in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century France’, in Ilaria Favretto and Wabier Itçaina (eds.), Protest, Popular Culture and Tradition in Modern and Contemporary Western Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 185–207. 9 See also: Rolande Bonnain-Moerdyk and Donald Moerdyk, ‘À propos du charivari: discours bourgeois et coutumes populaires’, Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations, 32 (1977), 381–398; Bryan D. Palmer, ‘Discordant Music: Charivaris and Whitecapping in Nineteenth-Century North America’, Labour/Le Travail, 3 (1978), 5–62; Loretta T. Johnson, ‘Charivari/Shivaree: A  European Folk Ritual on the American Plains’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 20 (1990), 371–387; Russell P. Dobash and R. Emerson Dobash, ‘Response to Violence Against Wives: Charivari, Abstract Justice and Patriarchy’, Social Problems, 28 (1981), 563–581; John Cashmere, ‘The Social Uses of Violence in Ritual: Charivari or Religious Persecution?’ European History Quarterly, 21 (1991), 291–319. 10 For instance: ‘Skillets, basins, cauldrons, etc.’ (Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, ‘charivari’, vol. 3 (1753)); ‘Cauldron, pans, bells, cow bells, horse or mullet bells, scythe, pieces of iron and zinc, horns made from animal horn, from terracotta or tree bark, rustic or industrial whistles’ (Arnold Van Gennep, Manuel de folklore français contemporain (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1998 [1943]), p. 529. Thompson also mentions instruments fabricated for the sole purpose of charivaris like ‘rolling stones into a tin kettle – or any improvisation with tin cans and shovels.’ (Thompson, ‘ “Rough Music”: le charivari anglais’, p. 286). Describing a charivari that took place in 1668 in Lyon, Natalie Zemon Davis writes: ‘Thirty to forty people gather in the street, armed with male and female metal tools: pots, pans, tools from saddlers companions (to make saddles and bridles . . .,

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will it “curb the woman”?), bells from mules, drums and chains to hang in the street.’ in Le Goff and Schmitt (eds.), Le charivari, p. 392. 11 Roger Pinon, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un charivari? Essai en vue d’une définition opératoire’, in Kontakte und Grenzen. Probleme der Volks-, Kultur- und Sezialforschung. Festschrift fur Gerhard Heilfurth (Göttingen: Schwartz, 1969), pp. 393–405, p. 398. 12 Claudie Marcel-Dubois, ‘La paramusique dans le charivari français contemporain’, in Le Goff and Schmitt (eds.), Le charivari, p. 49. 13 On this point, see Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London and New York: Verso, 2002 [1968]); Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste (London: Routledge, 1984 [1979]); Isabelle Garabuau and Dominique Desjeux (eds.), Objet banal, objet social. Les objets quotidiens comme révélateurs des relations sociales (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000); as well as the multiple and various works dedicated to ‘material culture’. 14 A.D.N., M 626/14, f. 518. ‘Hier soir au retour des ouvriers ayant travaillé ils ont été hués par cris en frappant sur casseroles par quelques femmes du Rieu de Condé. Rien de grave et rien à craindre pour la paie qui a lieu aujourd’hui’. 15 A.D.N., M 626/13, f. 157. ‘Le jeudi 3 avril courant, étant sur la place du Trieu de Fresnes avec une douzaine de grévistes, il a été convenu entre eux, que le lendemain vendredi 4 avril, pour le retour des mineurs qui n’avaient pas quitté le travail, on donnerait un coup de clairon à l’effet de réunir ceux qui voudraient se joindre à eux, pour se porter sur les chemins et sentiers conduisant, soit au Trieu de Fresnes, soit à Odomez et Notre-Dame, pour narguer et intimider les mineurs retournant du travail. En effet, le vendredi 4 avril, dès 2 heures et demie de relevée, sur les chemins conduisant des fosses aux endroits ci-dessus désignés . . ., on remarquait un assez grand nombre d’individus, plus ou moins travestis, jouant au cerceau et qui, au moment où les mineurs revenant du travail passaient près d’eux, poussaient leurs cerceaux en frappant dessus pour les faire rouler, en disant “Marche donc fainéant, travaille donc fainéant” les suivant et les précédant en continuant ainsi leur jeu jusque la place du Trieu de Fresnes où un rassemblement d’environ 1000 personnes s’est formé à leur arrivée; c’est alors que la gendarmerie intervenant pour protéger les travailleurs, a été bousculée et outragée’. 16 A.D.N., M. 626/13, f. 287. ‘Cet après-midi une bande considérable, plusieurs portant rubans tricolores aux chapeaux de fantaisie, ouvriers mineurs, femmes et enfants, se sont réunis au Trieu de Fresnes pour attendre quelques ouvriers revenant du travail. Une femme a été remarquée habillée en homme à la tête des autres. Un autre jeune homme de 15 ans a crié voyant la gendarmerie « Il faut taper dessus ». Voulant saisir ce provocateur le brigadier de gendarmerie s’est trouvé assailli par une femme. À mon arrivée avec les deux gardes le calme a été rétabli et tout le monde est rentré dans l’ordre. Enquête est faite par gendarmerie en notre présence au sujet du charivari’. 17 Le Temps, 7 April  1884. ‘[Les gendarmes] remarquèrent un attroupement nombreux, mineurs avec leurs femmes et leurs enfants, chantant, criant, gesticulant aux abords du puits. Ils ne s’opposaient pas à la sortie de leurs camarades; ils leur donnaient simplement un charivari. La sortie de chaque ouvrier était accueillie par des hourrahs, des danses un tapage infernal de pincettes frappées sur des casseroles. Par instants, un des grévistes nommé Corroène entonnait la Marseillaise sur un vieux trombone, et toute l’assistance accompagnait en chœur. On s’amusait. Les gendarmes rirent en passant; malheureusement un des manifestants, un jeune homme coiffé d’un bonnet rouge, se porta vers l’un deux et l’injuria. Le gendarme lui mit la main au collet et voulut l’emmener. Aussitôt ils furent environnés; hommes et femmes se précipitèrent sur eux pour leur arracher le mineur des mains. La femme du trombone, déguisée elle-même en mineur pour que le charivari fût complet, saisit le brigadier par le collet; les gendarmes furent culbutés dans le fossé et le prisonnier délivré put s’échapper. L’attitude des mineurs et de leurs femmes, au nombre de huit cents environ, était si furieuse, que les gendarmes durent dégainer pour se frayer un passage à travers l’attroupement et regagner leur brigade campée à peu de distance de là, dans la commune de Vieux-Condé’.

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18 A.D.N., M. 626/13, unnumbered, letter from the commissioner to the prefect, 7 April 1884. ‘Une manifestation a eu lieu à Fenain au moment où les ouvriers rentraient de leur travail, la femme Leclercq Charlemagne a jeté de la terre à deux de ces hommes pendant que d’autres femmes frappaient leurs sabots l’un contre l’autre’. 19 A.D.N., M. 626/13, unnumbered, letter from the subprefect to the prefect, 19 May 1884. ‘Le 7 avril dernier, grâce à sa ferme attitude, il parvenait à dissiper un rassemblement de cent femmes qui se disposaient à faire un charivari aux mineurs non grévistes rentrant des fosses’. 20 This bodily commitment necessitated by the strike must have required a significant and sustained effort, and certainly came at great cost for the strikers, who suffered from very poor conditions. Women and children were forced to beg daily for food and money in the villages surrounding Anzin. Many records attest to the great distress and the poor physical condition of the strikers during the conflict. 21 Carnaval was a very popular celebration in the Nord and among workers. It involved dressing up, music, noise, songs and procession across town. See e.g. Arnold Van Gennep, Le folklore de la Flandre et du Hainaut français (Brionne: Gérard Monfort Éditeur, 1981 [1935]). 22 Gazette des tribunaux, 7 and 8 Avril 1884. 23 M 626 / 14, f. 229. 24 M 626 / 14, f. 220. 25 Bernard Plessy and Louis Challet, La vie quotidienne des mineurs au temps de ‘Germinal’ (Paris: Hachette, 1993), p.  236. ‘Sitôt la porte de la maison franchie, il se déshabille entièrement, suspend son vêtement pour qu’il sèche et se plonge dans la cuvelle –  le baquet de bois, parfois un demi-tonneau – où son épouse a versé l’eau qu’elle tenait prête sur le poêle. Et de se frotter au savon noir – au risque de jaunir ses cheveux, diton – acceptant volontiers que la ménagère lui prête main-forte’. 26 Mattéi, Rebelle, rebelle! 27 Louis Reybaud, Le fer et la houille (Paris: Lévy, 1874), p. 203. 28 The Musical Society was created in 1867 and kept a record of all the musicians. Centre Historique Minier de Lewarde, CHM/6812. 29 Mme Celnart [Elisabeth Canard], Manuel complet des jeux de société (Paris: Librairie encyclopédique de Roret, 1836), p. 340. 30 Charles Combes, Traité de l'exploitation des mines, Tome 2 (Paris: Carilian-Gœury et V. Dalmont, 1844), p. 9. 31 Emile Zola, ‘Mes notes sur Anzin [1884]’, La fabrique de Germinal (Paris: Sedes, 1986), pp. 389 and 394. 32 Following the law of 19 May  1874, women were forbidden to work underground. When they were employed by the company, it was above ground, sorting the coal or loading it into barges or train wagons. They were given the name of ‘Cafu’. 33 Zola, ‘Mes notes sur Anzin [1884]’, p. 404: ‘L’arme véritable du mineur est le caillou. Jamais avec ses outils’. 34 Diana Cooper-Richet, Le peuple de la nuit (Paris: Perrin, 2011 [2002]), p. 327. 35 Le Capitaliste, ‘Cahiers de doléances des mineurs français’, 13 Septembre 1882. In Anzin, the tools were kept in a locker. They were taken by the miners each day before going down the pits and putting them back on their return. Zola, ‘Mes notes sur Anzin’, p.  389. In 1882, Julien Turgan also wrote that the tools, in Anzin, ‘are the property of the company which supplies and replaces them. The worker is only responsible for his clumsiness or negligence.’ Julien Turgan, Les grandes usines, vol. 15 ‘Anzin’ (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1882), p. 42. ‘Ces outils sont la propriété de la compagnie qui les fournit et les remplace. L’ouvrier n’est responsable que de sa maladresse ou de sa négligence’. 36 A.D.N. M 626/13, f. 27. The prefect then adds: ‘they say aloud in the streets that the miners should take revenge on the Company, blow up the mine shafts’. (‘Je sais déjà que les femmes commencent à exciter leurs maris, elles disent tout haut dans les rues que les mineurs devraient se venger de la Compagnie, faire sauter les puits’).

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37 A.D.N. M 626/13, unnumbered, letter from the prefect to ministers, 13 March 1884. ‘[E]lles n’entendent rien à la politique, se laissent aller à toutes leurs passions’. 38 Michelle Perrot, Les femmes ou les silences de l’histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1998), pp. 183– 184. ‘Descriptions classiques du rôle incitateur et expressif que les femmes jouent dans toutes les formes de rassemblement populaire, du Carnaval et du Charivari aux manifestations de grève, et où il n’est pas toujours facile de démêler la réalité du stéréotype’. 39 Ibid., p. 11. ‘[F]emmes vociférantes, mégères dès qu’elles ouvrent la bouche, hystériques dès qu’elles gesticulent’. 40 Michèle Riot-Sarcey, ‘La place des femmes dans l’histoire ou les enjeux d’une écriture’, Revue de synthèse, 118 (1997), 107–128, p.  112. ‘[F]aire l’histoire de cette catégorie, en tant que donnée, c’est risquer de redoubler les présupposés essentialistes qui l'accompagnent et reproduire, par la description des comportements, les effets d'une construction culturelle sans mettre au jour les enjeux de pouvoir qui la déterminent’. 41 Louise A. Tilly, ‘Gender, Women’s History, and Social History’, Social Science History, 13 (1989), 439–462. 42 Riot-Sarcey, ‘La place des femmes’, p. 107. 43 Ibid., p. 125. 44 The rules of the Musical Society of Anzin state that ‘The aim of this institution is the moralization and education of the workers attached to this vast establishment’ and that ‘Any political discussion is forbidden’. CHM/6812. 45 François Ewald, La condition du mineur (Paris: Grasset, 1978), p. 43. 46 Guy Baudelle, ‘Le système spatial de la mine: l’exemple du bassin houiller du NordPas-de-Calais’, unpublished PhD thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1994; Guy Dumont, ‘Le charbon et le territoire. La compagnie des mines d’Anzin et son espace dans la première moitié du xixe siècle’, in Denis Varaschin (ed.), Travailler à la mine, une veine inépuisée (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2003), pp. 95–104. 47 ‘Les logements sont malsains; de plus, les mineurs sont parqués comme des troupeaux de moutons sous la direction d’un agent salarié par la compagnie. Il passe plusieurs fois par jour [dans les logements] et, comme il doit faire aussi le bénéfice de ses chefs, il impose une amende aux ménagères dès qu’il apprend que les ordres qu’il a donnés ne sont pas exécutés.’ Cited in Mattéi, Rebelle, rebelle! p. 100. 48 See, among others: Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James (eds.), Le pouvoir des femmes et la subversion sociale (Genève: Adversaire, 1973); Perrot, Les femmes ou les silences de l’histoire; Silvia Federici, Caliban and the witch (Brooklyn: Automedia, 2014); Viewpoint, 5 (2015) on ‘Social Reproduction’, [Consulted on 1 June 2019]. 49 Louise A. Tilly, ‘Coping with Company Paternalism’, Theory and Society, 14 (1985), 403–417. 50 For a definition and overview of the notion of ‘social reproduction’, see Barbara Laslett and Johanna Brenner, ‘Gender and Social Reproduction: Historical Perspectives’, Annual Review of Sociology, 15 (1989), 381–404. 51 Dominique Le Tirant, ‘Habits de mineurs, deux aspects du vêtement de travail dans le milieu des femmes des mines’, in Coralie Damay and Sylvie Gassmann (eds.), S’habiller pour travailler (Lyon: Éditions lyonnaises d’Art et d’Histoire, 2010), pp. 60–69, p. 66 ‘Les épouses en effet jouent un rôle primordial de soutien à la production par l’assistance permanente qu’elles assurent auprès de leurs maris. Cette activité relève du registre du Care, elle est aussi la part invisible du travail dans l’économie de production du charbon’. 52 As Le Tirant notes, in most cases, the company asked women to quit their work at the mine immediately after their marriage. ‘The reason given by former managers was that two people in a couple could not earn two salaries in the social context of the mining company.’ Dominique Le Tirant, Femmes à la mine, femmes de mineurs (Lewarde: Centre historique minier, 2002), p. 26. 53 Because they were rarely employed by the company, women did not belong to the miner’s union. More generally, the trade union movement did not at that time consider

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the social struggle of women as part of its mission. On the history of trade unionism and its relations with women and feminism, see: Marie-Hélène Zylberberg-Hocquard, Féminisme et syndicalisme en France (Paris: Anthropos, 1978); Marie-Hélène ZylberbergHocquard, Femmes et féminisme dans le mouvement ouvrier français (Paris: Les éditions ouvrières, 1981). 54 ‘The principle of political interlocution is thus disagreement; that is, it is the discordant understanding of both the objects of reference and the speaking subjects. In order to enter into political exchange, it becomes necessary to invent the scene upon which spoken words may be audible, in which objects may be visible, and individuals themselves may be recognized.’ Jacques Rancière and Davide Panagia, ‘Dissenting Words: A Conversation with Jacques Rancière’, Diacritics, 30 (2000), 113–126.

11 POLITICAL FASHION Elegance as subversion in the Congos of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries1 Manuel Charpy

Recently in Brazzaville, a plastic pendant bearing a portrait of João I, ruler of the kingdom of Kongo from 1470 and 1509, has been all the rage. By wearing the pendant, which depicts the king in full ceremonial dress in the 1490s, today’s fashionable youths celebrate the pre-colonial power of the great kingdom of the Kongo, reflected in the king’s royal trappings.2 Yet, in fact, this engraving has been repurposed as a political symbol in spite of itself. The image is curious: João wears an imported blue cotton or damask cloth around his hips, copper bracelets on his arms and legs, and a splendid, tall, mitre-shaped headdress, with several gilded, colourful tiers (Figure 11.1). He holds a spear tipped with two arrow points. In the 1780s, long before the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library published the portrait online, the image had been sold alone or as part of a collection in Paris.3 At the time, the printer Duflos had published a series of engravings of dignitaries, particularly the kings ‘of all existing nations,’ in ‘authentically historical’ costume. The illustration is captioned: ‘Jean, king of Congo, leading his armies, and the first Christian convert.’ It also cites the source, a collection of travel articles published in 1740 by Abbé Prévost. In fact, Prévost himself had never been to Central Africa.4 The series of converted kings he named was based mainly on a book published in 1591 by the Italian explorer Filippo Pigafetta, Le Royaume de Congo & les Contrées environnantes. Pigafetta had not been to Kongo either, but he reprinted an account by the Portuguese friar Duarte Lopez.5 Pigafetta says of King Dom Diego that He was so fond of the Portuguese that he abandoned the colours of his Nation to embrace their customs. His magnificence burst out (éclatait) . . . in his dress. . . . He had adopted a custom of wearing his outfits only once or twice. After that, he made gifts of his clothing to his retinue.6

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FIGURE 11.1 ‘Jean

Roy de Congo, à la tête de ses armées et le premier fait Chrétien.’ in Recueil d’estampes, représentant les grades, les rangs & les dignités, suivant le costume de toutes les nations (Paris: Chez Duflos, 1780).

Source: Gallica/BnF.

The entirely imaginary portrait published by Duflos thus presents a strange interpretation of the combination of glorious raiment and political power, between the nudity of the noble savage and splendid European-style court dress. Rather ironically, the students, young workers and the young unemployed who have appropriated this image see themselves as dressing in a style which harks back to before

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the arrival of the Europeans. These men consider themselves as the epitome of Congolese style, rejecting European clothing, whereas other groups such as the ‘Sapeurs,’ or members of the ‘Société des Ambiancieurs et des Personnes Élégantes,’ who have attracted recent attention, express their dandyism through European clothes.7 The central point, however, and the one which we will explore in this chapter, is that fashion has long been the hub of a political game, which draws on the tension between Europe and the Congo, during the specific political situation of colonialism but also afterwards, when the new Republics of the Congo tried to create new political identities. Clothing has long been central to political play in the Congo. We do not need to go so far as to posit kinship between late fifteenth-century royal attire and practices that have been routine and popular since the nineteenth century, to note that the attire of a king of the Kongo obviously packs a political punch. Yet the processes that made European clothing into a political object during colonization are not always so obvious or straightforward, and merit detailed historical investigation. There are innumerable examples of garments to which political significance has been attributed in the modern world: baggy trousers, wide cuffs or bras, for example.8 Particular fashions can acquire meaning as a consequence of specific events – a revolution, a rebellion, a carnival – but also as a result of deeper seismic shifts that can be difficult to identify in the flow of daily life. Clothing that makes a political statement is not only a matter of eloquent signs and symbols, openly brandished and proudly displayed. Garments also shape the wearer’s daily routine. They predispose him or her to certain movements, attitudes and approaches, making others impossible. As a result, they regulate relationships to work as well as social relationships and ways of speaking.9 Fashion is therefore one of the realms where power, opposition and rebellion are expressed and exercised. The unusual image of João I is only one element of a broad panorama which this chapter will explore. It runs through kings in accoutrements which seemed ridiculous to European eyes in the 1880s, ‘house boys’ showing off their tweeds and twills in the 1900s, the ‘Evolved’ (‘évolués’ in French) of the 1930s, and the ‘Sapeurs’ in the 1970s. Contrary to what one might expect, the sources are plentiful. Fashion does not only generate pictures but also commentary and inquiry, and even police investigation. A space where politics is invested in clothing can be mapped at the crossroads between the dandies’ social progress and the careers and appropriations of daily objects. None of this is peculiar either to clothing or to the Congolese people. It is rather that a series of circumstances, from colonization to migration into former colonial powers, made clothing into a distinctive kind of political weapon in the Congo. With just a few clothes, Congolese people questioned and occupied the whole range of political situations, from the power of state to the exercise of power in everyday life.

Political uses of exotic clothing in the Congo before and during colonialism The claim of descent from the kingdom of Kongo prompts us to consider the long history of the political uses of costume in this region, starting with the first contacts

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between the Congolese and the Portuguese in the 1480s. Pigaffeta, writing in 1591, a century later, confirmed, Since they began trading with the Portuguese, the way they dress has changed. In fact, the nobles and the king dress in the Portuguese fashion today. They wear hats, leather shoes, and stockings . . .; only the poor, for lack of means, have remained loyal to traditional dress.10 In portraits, the emissaries sent by the kingdom of Kongo to Europe are clothed in a way that indicates they had converted to Catholicism and were entering world diplomacy.11 A  century later the Franciscan missionary Cavazzi, a guest at the Kongo court, wrote, ‘the diversity of garments is the sign of social rank.’12 How much of this remained in the nineteenth century, when the missions resumed and colonization began? On the European side, accounts by Pigaffeta and Cavazzi fleshed out travel anthologies, and forged a legend contrasting kings with sumptuary customs and a population of ‘savages’ imagined as naked. Even though by the nineteenth century the kingdom of Kongo was but a memory, the fragmented Congolese powers were still attached to clothing as a constituent element of social prestige and an expression of power. This could be seen notably in the use of copper jewellery, woven raffia cloth and the oxtail (queue de bœuf).13 Appearances have, of course, always counted for every political regime in the world. Yet the region’s particularity lay more in the way exotic objects were introduced into its daily political economy, even as similar questions were being raised during the same period everywhere from Japan to Latin America.14 Unfortunately, in this case, the sources are so rare that it is difficult to avoid the colonial view of these political elites. The few clues we have come from the voluminous correspondence written between 1876 and 1911 by King Félix Denis Rapontchombo, son of King Denis of Gabon, on the west coast of Africa. Boasting that he had ‘a better education and taste than those of [his] race,’ Félix Denis dressed in Parisian styles.15 When he needed the support of public figures in continental France, he appealed not only to republican and abolitionist senator Victor Schoelcher but also to Jules Jaluzot – not the conservative deputé, but the founder of that Parisian institution, the department store Printemps, of which he was a loyal customer.16 Colonists and travellers inadvertently provide some more information. They expressed amazement at traditional funeral ceremonies for local aristocrats, in which masses of imported fabrics were mobilized, and an accumulation of exotic objects was heaped on tombs and in burial vaults.17 Imported wares possessed a political power reaching beyond the grave. Stanley describes the corpse of King N’Combé ‘crowned with a cap and bells, made in Europe for some theatrical role as jester,’ wearing an imported ‘silver vest,’ and ‘handsome loincloths.’ The dead king was buried with his canes and an ‘enormous umbrella, of which the late king had been so proud, while living.’18 Accounts confirm that imported goods, especially clothing, were central to political symbolism. In 1907, the agricultural engineer Jean Claessens wrote, concerning the Mayombé: ‘On a chief ’s grave, I observed

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bottles, jugs, ewers, bowls, and teapots; old rifle barrels, an old suit coat, and a crushed bowler hat; everything had been made unusable, to avoid theft.’19 Photographs confirm that imported goods were omnipresent in graves and burial vaults: plates, bottles, garden gnomes, pitchers and basins, along with straw hats, helmets and umbrellas. Jackets and trousers were placed inside caskets (Figure 11.2).20 It is evident that local powers were not simply aping European military powers. Instead, they used these objects imported from afar to create a treasured place where symbolic and political economic and social forces were manifest. In the nineteenth century, another element positioned European products in political territory: barter. Textiles were central to triangular trade. They were also at the core of treaties signed between local powers and Europeans. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Gabon and Loango were the main contact points for commerce between Europeans and Africans. In 1839, Bouët arrived in Gabon and, in France’s name, purchased a parcel of land from King Denis for ‘20 bolts of assorted fabrics; ten 5-pound barrels of gunpowder; twenty singlestroke rifles; two sacks of tobacco; a barrel of distilled spirits; ten white hats.’21 Cloth had long been a measurement of value: in the eighteenth century, the ‘bolt of India’ was a unit of exchange for purchasing slaves. After 1850 and the abolition of slavery, the term paquet d’ivoire designated the collection of objects

FIGURE 11.2 ‘Une

curieuse tombe moderne . . . d’un “civilisé” ’ [A curious modern grave  .  .  . of a ‘Civilized’ person], Katanga, Belgian Congo, November 1933, Archives de l’Office pontifical missionnaire, Lyon.

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traded for an ivory tusk: a rifle and lengths of cloth.22 As late as the 1930s, department stores offered ‘trade merchandise,’ often mixed with ‘products for Europeans.’23 New and used clothing and fabric were at the centre of exchanges and purchase of territories by ‘explorers’ and missionaries. Father Prosper Augouard, of the Congrégation du Saint-Esprit, founded a number of missions from the 1880s onwards. From the Gabonese coast to Brazzaville, he loaded his caravan with ‘embroidered outfits and collapsible top hats.’24 In Linzolo, next to Brazzaville, where he settled his first mission in 1884, he bought the land by paying ‘each chief a gold suit and hat, a silver watch chain and knife, a large blanket, a 12-handkerchief piece of cloth, a belt made of rich stuff, and a rich pearl necklace.’25 Such practices led the Congo Free State (1885–1908) to create a trade museum listing, for the benefit of Belgian investors, the items sought after for barter. Textile goods were classified according to an endless nomenclature.26 Imported goods became means of gauging the balance of power. The merchants and traders conducting these exchanges were surprised by their customers’ demands. In 1839, Bouët and Broquand addressed the following request to their suppliers in Europe: ‘It would be desirable for Marseille to cease sending [merchandise] that is in such poor condition that it discredits the quality of French [merchandise] in the eyes of African consumers.’27 This was all the more important in view of the fact that the British treated ‘the naturals’ as discriminating customers. In 1848, a mariner insisted that ‘Negroes have their own way of evaluating the quality of the products offered to them.’28 Another trader, plying the Gulf of Guinea, reported, ‘The British are copying Alsace labels, but the blacks are not fooled.’29 In the 1860s, traders appointed by the Ministère des Colonies pointed out that when Europeans did business in fashion accessories, Indian cloth, watches, porcelain, wallpaper, and furniture, the merchandise should be ‘chosen with the greatest care in the highest quality.’30 As late as 1929, a colonial monthly advised that ‘it is a mistake . . . to think that Congolese natives are easily hoodwinked. Blacks disdain trinkets, and willingly pay high prices for objects they want to own, because they can recognize that it is well-made and attractive.’31 Even before colonization in the strict sense, cloth and garments became both the main units of exchange between Congolese and Europeans, and the object of political and cultural interactions.

Ousted kings and second-hand clothes Even though the ‘consumers’ were demanding, Europeans viewed these appropriations as ridiculous ‘aping’ of the colonial powers. A picturesque stereotype was constructed, according to which the inhabitants of the Congo were exceedingly vain and attentive to their appearance, although they were dressed in rags. This stereotype was spread by written accounts by travellers who had never actually visited the region.

176  Manuel Charpy

In the 1780s, Grandpré, who had sailed the Loango coast, reported, Their vanity is attached only to their apparel. Nothing is more amusing than to see them strutting about dressed in a fancy jacket or brocaded waistcoat, the worn-out remnants of handed-down finery. . . . Like the monkeys who live in their forests, they are imitators, and this tendency announces their first steps towards civilization.32 The Europeans mocked these kings as pacotille, or ‘tinhorn.’ Pacotille, the French term for the beads and necklaces they used to trade in Africa, took on its pejorative connotation in the 1820s, coming to be defined as cheap imitations. This sham apparel came to stand for what the Europeans perceived as the awkward, clumsy imitation sovereignty of the Congolese chiefs. By the 1840s, although relations with local rulers concerned only a few stations, trading posts or military outposts, a journalist could warn Europeans to beware of ‘the ignorant arrogance of most savage tribal chiefs who, ensconced in their smoky huts, believe themselves to be the equals of the most powerful European monarchs, especially when, through barter, they have acquired some cast-off finery once worn by a colonel or drum-major.’33 These accounts emphasized the poor quality of the clothing, reflecting the writer’s scorn for the local political powers. Implicitly, they were no match for a thriving and expanding empire. Second-hand clothes robbed local chiefs of legitimacy, making a mockery of them. In France, this theme became a cliché.34 In 1855, Félix Mornand noted that secondhand clothing dealers in Paris’ Temple neighbourhood ‘ship the overflow from their wardrobes to the Congo, Senegal or the West Indies, where the castoffs will delight the Negro kings and plantation foremen in San Domingo or Barbados.’35 The press jeered at the ‘enregimented darkies’ of the worrisome Haitian state, dressing its army in uniforms previously worn by the Parisian National Guard.36 In 1886, the Grande Encyclopédie confidently asserted that ‘the petty Negro lords deck themselves out in the uniforms of generals, prefects, and even members of the Académie, or lackey livery,’ emphasizing the lack of understanding of the social hierarchy the garments symbolized.37 The Belgian geographer Gochet exclaimed, in 1890, about the Congo: One cannot imagine the amount of worn-out and faded jackets, threadbare vests, shiny trousers, outmoded tunics, and other rumpled, useless apparel consumed by the Western coast of Africa. The old red or blue uniforms of British or French soldiers are treasured. Worn finery, trimmed with ribbon and braid, is in great demand.38 An export guide points out the link between trade and politics: ‘Second-hand uniforms, helmets, etc. are highly sought after by village chiefs and, in general, anyone with some authority.’39

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The archives of the customs administration and the Catholic missions emphasize the reality of this consumer trend, and its diffusion throughout the population. Quite separate from the reality of this phenomenon, however, is the consistent, very political interpretation which Europeans placed upon it. At a time when a large part of the European poor clothed themselves in cast-off uniforms, the Europeans proceeded to interpret the phenomenon politically, as a demonstration of the poverty and inadequacy of local leaders in the Congo.40 European travel writers adopted the same viewpoint. Exploring the Ogowe River in 1872, Victor de Compiègne described a village ‘Majesty,’ whose ‘face is that of a monkey’: ‘On his head, he wears a dilapidated top hat, and he is dressed in a gendarme’s overcoat.’41 Repeating Grandpré, other texts asserted that the kings aped European political life. Stanley provides a picturesque description of his introduction to a parade of chiefs of Vivi, across from Matadi. The senior lord was short of stature . . . dressed in a blue lackey’s coat, a colourful knit Phrygian cap, and a lower-cloth of gaudy pattern. No. 2, Ngufu-Mpanda, . . . a veritable Uncle Tom, in an English red military tunic, a brown felt hat, an ample cloth of check pattern round the lower parts of his body, anklets of brass wire, and a necklace of elephant hair wove through a few fetish relics for good luck. Stanley saw a bright future for this export market: The garments shed by the military heroes of Europe, . . . the club lackeys, and the liveried servants of modern Pharaohs, the frock-coat of a lawyer, a merchant, or a Rothschild; or perhaps the grave garbs of these my publishers, may here find people of the rank of Congo chieftainship to wear them, and strut about en grande tenue while on ceremonious visits.42 European missionaries, competing with local political and religious authorities, also ridiculed these trappings of power. From Lândana in Cacongo, Augouard described ‘kings and princes’: Like their subjects, they are almost naked, but they have absolute power over their lives, and rule  .  .  . with tyrannical authority. However, on important ceremonial days, they don some picturesque European suit, usually a cast-off national guard uniform. Capped with a red or blue top-hat, this outfit represents the most valuable crown jewels.43 Before leaving Paris, Augouard purchased ‘generals’ uniforms.’ He also packed a supply of folding top hats for barter with the chiefs, described as ‘savages who are more difficult than one might suppose.44

178  Manuel Charpy

In the late 1890s, visiting Tumba, Belgian writer Pierre Varhaegen chuckled about a ‘Negro king’ with ‘an old English army uniform, with a faded red coat,’ wearing a theatrically plumed ‘carabinier helmet straight out of Offenbach,’45 while the Belgian lieutenant Lemaire scoffed at a chief with ‘red clothing trimmed with gold ribbon,’ and ‘a stack of four hats on his head, topped by a fez,’ and firemen’s helmets. He concluded his acerbic denial of the man’s political power: ‘Is he not a slave to fashion?’46 By the 1870s, these texts were illustrated with a flood of images: magazine engravings, coloured lithographs for advertisements and caricatures (Figure  11.3). Hundreds of postcards, especially those sold by the missions, featured these ragged kings and ‘sorcerers.’ Paradoxically, one of the photographs that was most widely circulated in the press was made by Hezekiah Andrew Shanu, a

FIGURE 11.3  ‘Un

roitelet africain’ [An African petty king], from Henri-Nicolas Frey and Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (illus.), Illustrations de Côte occidentale d’Afrique: vues, scènes, croquis (Paris: Marpon et Flammarion, 1890).

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Nigerian photographer living in the Congo Free State. Around 1890, he captured the ‘nine kings of Boma,’ then the capital. They were attired in European castoffs as faded as their power.47 Second-hand clothing was thus used to discredit and undermine local powers symbolically in the three ways. First, in the eyes of Europeans, these clothes appeared like ridiculous fancy-dress costumes, outside the codes of European manners. Second, the fact the garments were used and worn out provided evidence of the economic weakness of these political leaders, signifying a condition just before or after nakedness. Finally, sporting the uniforms of defeated regimes was a sign of ‘archaic’ powers that no longer had any meaning. Thus, at a time when European gentlemen were collecting exotic curiosities, Congolese rulers were drawing upon the European wardrobe to signify their own powers. Yet until the 1910s, these practices were interpreted by Europeans as a harmless carnival, except that here the pantomime king really was a king.

Clothing the savage With the beginning of colonization in the strict sense in the 1880s, missionaries and colonists worked to establish a new dress code that both made society easier to read and signified the scope of its political transformation, reaching into daily life. Since castoffs were worn throughout society it was initially difficult for settlers to identify the authorities amid the pageantry. Some clear signs were needed. The Belgian Congo minted ‘indigenous chieftaincy’ medals from 1908 onwards (Figure  11.4), and the French administration permitted ceremonial rifles.48 This desire for legibility was not new in itself. In the 1640s, Capuchin friars had established a mission in São Salvador du Congo (Mbanza-Kongo), then the capital city. They commissioned a chart for the use of newly arrived missionaries which illustrated the history of the christianization of the Kongolese in which ‘each character appears in the dress, colour, attitude, age, costume, order, and rank that are suitable to him.’49 Even before clothing itself, its presumed absence was at the heart of the new order established in the late nineteenth century. Since the eighteenth century, Europeans fed on the myth of the ‘noble savage’ had long imagined the indigenous people as ‘nearly naked.’50 This perception persisted in the nineteenth century. Even those travellers who actually went to the region reported that inhabitants went naked or in ‘an accoutrement of dried grasses’ despite their regular experience to the contrary.51 This nakedness was also political. Violently stripped of political power, enslaved by the Europeans, the indigenous people were also stripped of clothing. In the 1780s, Grandpré asserted that women were dressed only in beaded necklaces and men in copper bracelets. He went on to specify, ‘As for our slaves, cleanliness obliges us to keep them completely naked. But they are not at all embarrassed by their nakedness, because modesty is a feeling that is unknown to them.’52 This active representation lasted beyond the end of slavery. The post-1850 ethnographic eye noticed only ‘primitive’ traces of raffia garments as daily wear, conveniently

180  Manuel Charpy

FIGURE 11.4  Chief

with a medal: ‘Grand Chef des Bekalelwe.’ Yakaumbu, Kabinda (Belgian Congo), Postcard, 1910s.

Source: Manuel Charpy.

ignoring centuries of consumption of imported fabric and clothing.53 This particular viewpoint gained a colonial counterpart starting in the 1890s with amateur photography and the postcard, when photographers had no compunction about stripping the women. Europeans therefore saw these bodies as virgin territory, waiting for the arrival of the government and the garments they were supposed to lack.

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Tailors and dressmakers who ‘traded sewn outfits for natural products’ thought that in the Congo there was a market of ‘savage’ bodies to be conquered.54 The question of clothing was also primordial for missionaries. Evangelism and trade went hand in hand. Burning fetish figures and covering nakedness went together as part of the same campaign.55 Hence Father Prosper Augouard’s obsession with clothing. As the apostolic vicar for the French Upper Congo and Ubangi, he settled in Brazzaville in 1885. In letter after letter to his superiors, he begged for clothing and sewing machines, to set up workshops.56 Clothing was a flag planted on conquered bodies. ‘Christian weddings’ were asked to dress ‘European style’: jacket, shirt and trousers for men, and a ‘mission’ dress for women (Figure 11.5).57 Christenings and weddings were made manifest by garments, and Carrie, ­Augouard and Guichard celebrated them with photography. In addition, missions clothed catechists, schoolchildren, boarders and orphans in uniforms, themselves produced in the mission ‘tailleries’ and ‘coutureries.’58 ‘Missionaries did have to deal with questions of costume,’ wrote Holy Ghost Father Briault, ‘The need to clothe the children who board with us imposed the question on us.’59 Protestant missions were also preoccupied with clothing. They usually opted for civilian wear charitably donated in Europe, even though they doubted that a foreman parading in a bathrobe as if it were a ‘robe of state’ was any indication of conversion.60 In any case, dress remained one of the battlegrounds between traditional

FIGURE 11.5 Couple converted to Christianity. ‘Un jeune ménage à Brazzaville, Congo

français’ [A young married couple in Brazzaville, French Congo], 1890s. Source: Manuel Charpy.

182  Manuel Charpy

authorities and the churches. In 1911, at the mission in Yakusu (near Kisangani) a minister from the Baptist Missionary Society noted, The chief, of course, heard of these clothed young rebels and unfrocked them all. It will be many a day before the clothing question makes much headway amongst his 2,000-odd people. What is worse, the spiritual outlook which at one time looked very promising in that place is now, and has been for many months, at the lowest ebb. He would be rash indeed who said there was no connection between the two things.61 Dress logically became an arena where Catholics and Protestants tried to outdo each other. In 1888, writing from Brazzaville, Father Augouard said, ‘The three Protestant denominations in the Congo are trying to crush us with their luxurious dwellings and frilly frocks; they dress boys and girls in European clothing.’62 He complained that his ‘catechumens’ (those he was preparing for baptism) were straying towards Swedish Lutherans for ‘gifts,’63 and that once the Congolese converts obtained clothing, they stopped going to church. The political authorities leading the battle also organized donations. In Léopoldville in 1935, the district commissioner gave away ‘decent clothing for indigenous veterans.’ In Brazzaville, the governor-general’s wife provided ‘uniform suits’ for schoolboys in Poto-Poto and Bacongo who were ‘very poorly dressed . . . children of the jobless, who are now presentable enough to go to school.’64 In the postwar period, the government gave clothing to ‘needy veterans.’65 Textiles were central to public charity. In this environment, lines of division drawn by race, power and wealth were manifested in clothing, and the outfits worn by missionaries and settlers were the most valuable of all. Catholic missionaries bet on finery to convert souls. Starting in 1890, the evangelical fathers Carrie and Augouard, followed by Guichard in 1924, held more and more ceremonies in the greatest pomp, donning the cappa magna and having Swiss Guard uniforms and robes made for sacristans and altar boys.66 (Figure 11.6) In daily life, dress had to express religious power: missionaries wore priest’s cassocks and pith helmets. It is important to note that after the 1890s, the dress of Europeans in the Congo became fixed and clearly defined. For both settlers and soldiers, guides to proper hygiene recommended loose-fitting beige or white clothing and ‘special’ underwear supposed to limit perspiration.67 Finally, the pith helmet was believed to be essential, to avoid apoplexy due to the equatorial sun.68 Full dress uniform (waistcoat-vest-trousers) was demanded only of top-ranking civil servants during ceremonies.69 The ‘tropical’ clothing covering Europeans in white from head to toe expressed distance from manual labour. It also required the mobilization of considerable domestic labour to launder and bleach the clothing and polish the helmets. In other words, it signified political status. In a 1944 essay, George Orwell ridiculed the mystique surrounding the pith helmet: ‘But why should the British in India have built up this superstition about sunstroke? Because an endless emphasis on

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FIGURE 11.6 Monseigneur

Augouard in full regalia in Brazzaville, c. 1900. Fonds Augouard, Congo, Archives de l’Office pontifical missionnaire, Lyon.

the differences between the “natives” and yourself is one of the necessary props of imperialism.’70 A dazzling white suit and a safari helmet soon outfitted every white man in the Congo.71 It is not easy to capture the Congolese viewpoint on these odd wardrobes. But, in the 1890s, when a Loango man drew a ‘malicious . . . accusation’ of the Europeans, they were depicted wearing pith helmets and top hats, holding glasses.72 The colons, figurines representing Europeans, are dressed the same way, with the safari helmet. In the 1920s, when employees staged satirical plays about the Europeans, they donned ‘whiteface’ – and dressed like colonial bosses.73 (Figure 11.7)

Shaping the ‘Evolved’ through European clothing Within the colonial political space, the administration designated a minority of the population to be ‘Europeanized,’ just as the missionaries did with those they taught catechism. The idea was to train an elite to serve as administrative and political middlemen, to make up for the small number of Europeans in the colonies.74 The term used for these subordinates was ‘the Civilized.’ From the 1920s, they were referred to as the ‘more highly evolved’ or ‘Evolved Indigenous.’ In 1927, an attempt was made to create a legal category called ‘Elite Indigenous,’ but it went into effect only in 1942 in French Equatorial Africa (AEF) with the classification ‘notable évolué.’75 The Belgian Congo created an equivalent status.76 In the early 1900s, before this classification system was established by law, recruitment for this ‘elite’ generated thousands of reports. Individuals were evaluated for their fitness

184  Manuel Charpy

FIGURE 11.7 Catalogue

of La Belle Jardinière, Paris for French and foreign colonies,

1921. Source: Manuel Charpy.

to become writer-interpreters, shipping clerks, bookkeepers, primary-school teachers, assistant railway stationmasters, and so forth.77 The administration examined their language skills and their loyalty to the colonial system. It was careful to exclude ‘Communists.’78 The ‘Evolved’ person who worked closely with the Whites, and who might even possess a little of their power, also had to adopt their dress code. Tailored clothing was a sign of good manners and the assimilation of European culture. For example, pupils at ‘indigenous schools’ studied ‘lessons’ on ‘clothing,’ and were encouraged to ‘dress up’ for school.79 The masculine body was at the hub of this political wheel. Colonial rulers were masculine, and only male ‘indigenous’ were entitled to aspire to a share of this power, be they chiefs, catechumens or writerinterpreters. By the 1920s, the material signs of ‘conversion’ had extended to the bicycle and gramophone. But the basics had long been the suit jacket and necktie, accessorized with hat, eyeglasses, wrist or pocket watch and umbrella.80 These articles of a man’s wardrobe made administrative structures and their power over the body legible. Briault, a settler who observed ‘these fashionable evolved natives who live European style today, wearing our suits and our cork helmets, and carrying our umbrellas,’ points out that this ‘fraction of urban population’ is ‘evolved

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through and by costume.’81 Colonial society trusted in the orthopaedic properties of clothing.82 The administration was nevertheless wary of a superficial conversion to the new values. European clothing was supposed to attest to deep personal commitment. For this reason, Briault decries the ‘gentlemen’ who ‘show an excessive taste for finery . . ., return to a filthy hut at nightfall . . ., and ball up their fancy clothing to stuff it into a shipping crate.’83 In the 1940s and 1950s, French and Belgian sociologists sent to the Congo studied the clothing expenses of the ‘Evolved’ by tracking household budgets.84 In 1947, after a field study in Bacongo, Poto-Poto and Ouenzé, the sociologist Josette Chaumeton authoritatively stated, The Evolved have more intellectual pretensions. They spend more than they earn. Men and women are characterized by their imitation of the European in the clothing they wear. The cut of the garments is European, but they are made of bright colours and worn tight. Plastic belts are much appreciated. Men wear watches which often do not work; they wear black glasses, and often carry only the cap of a pen, but displayed prominently. In other words, their dress is apparently impeccable, but it hides sordid underwear.85 In the Belgian Congo, Juliana Lumumba recalled that if you applied ‘to be classified as “Evolved,” they came to see whether your children slept in pyjamas.’86 The determination to make bodies legible was reinforced by urban segregation in both Léopoldville and Brazzaville, as if the colonizers had copied the chart

FIGURE 11.8 Club of ‘evolved people,’ amateur photograph, c. 1930, Boma (?), Belgian

Congo. Source: Manuel Charpy.

186  Manuel Charpy

commissioned by seventeenth-century Capuchin friars to assign a place and a dress style to everyone. In Brazzaville, ‘indigenous neighbourhoods’ were built alongside the ‘white city.’87 In 1909, the administrator Butel created neighbourhoods called Bacongo and Dakar for West African immigrants. In 1911, Dakar and Mariage, a district for Christian Congolese, were incorporated into a newly created town called Poto-Poto.88 The same strategy was used in Léopoldville. In 1913, a ‘buffer zone’ was built between the European and ‘indigenous’ neighbourhoods.89 Nominally, the goal was sanitation, but the plan also aimed to secure the European area by using curfews and passes to control traffic.90 Both dress and urban planning were means of policing bodies.

The subversive potential of elegance In this context, the ‘Evolved’ developed their own social and political strategies. Although the settlers mocked their pretensions,91 clothing was a way of blazing a trail in the new social order and setting themselves apart from the ‘peasants.’92 As Georges Balandier observed, the majority of young city-dwellers had broken their ties to their traditional background.93 In 1947, Josette Chaumeton could note ‘the attraction of Poto-Poto, this cosmopolitan hub where everything seems permitted and possible’ due to its distance from traditional settings.94 When Lamam, a ‘Sapeur’ born in the 1930s, worked as a house servant in the home of the chief justice of Brazzaville, dressing in European clothing, he remembered his past as a poor villager clothed in burlap bags.95 In the 1950s, young interviewees told sociologists they preferred clerical jobs that enabled the employee to wear ‘fine clothing.’96 The proposal worked both ways: elegant dress was the key to these positions, just as these positions were the key to elegant dress. Sociologist Roland Devauges noted that jobless people in Brazzaville were trying, ‘within the Western framework,’ to ‘conspicuously show their wealth to others, in order to replace them.’ They achieved this show of wealth ‘by dressing in expensive clothing, by purchasing a scooter or a house made of cinder blocks, by throwing parties,’ and by giving gifts. Devauges emphasizes that ‘schooling is an important value (est une ‘valeur’); the literate man ranks high in the social hierarchy.’ Education was the gateway to ‘the supreme value: economic power.’97 After all, did not Gallo, one of the oldest suit shops in Brazzaville, display a sign advertising it as a ‘habilleur de classe,’ linking classy dressing and social class? Male fashion was a passport for young men arriving alone, from the countryside, starting in the 1900s. Until then, the dandies of Brazzaville, Libreville and Léopoldville were a joke. But as a missionary observed, the haphazardly dressed ‘cartoon Negroes’ were being replaced by elegant black gentlemen who played upon European dress codes like virtuosos.98 Instead of emulating the colonial administrators and missionaries, they wore outfits that suited their ideas of the way ‘Parisians’ dressed, according to the illustrations they had seen in department store catalogues and magazines.99 Although the colonial institutions had initially encouraged the conversion to European dress, the zeal with which it was pursued soon aroused concern. These illicit borrowings challenged the legibility of the order that was being established.

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Likewise, by the 1920s, Europeans worried about ‘natives who have adopted European last names.’100 The goals of the colonial administration were ambiguous. On the one hand, it wanted converts who moved freely between the two worlds; and on the other, subordinates who stayed in their place. This was how it became clear that elegant grooming had been adopted by urban youth who owed nothing to the colonial powers. They were scrambling the colonial social and political system. One manifestation of this new concern was an anxiety about the behaviour and clothing of ‘houseboys.’ Until about 1900, postcards depicted them in tweed suits, cravats and white suede shoes, and so on, (Figure 11.9) but in the settlers’ eyes, they were simply imitating Europeans. It was easy to imagine servants simply salvaging their masters’ castoffs.101 However, starting in the 1910s, these well-dressed

FIGURE 11.9 ‘Congo

Brazzaville. Boys Loango habillés à l’Européenne’ [Loango ‘Boys’ dressed in European style], postcard, Vialle photographer, Brazzaville, printed in France by Meyrignac et Puydebois, c. 1905.

Source: Manuel Charpy.

188  Manuel Charpy

domestic servants became a source of anxiety. The newspaper L’Étoile de l’AEF warned, ‘the best and most fashionable boys are as clever as can be, and . . . you should keep a watchful eye on them during and after work hours.’102 Not only were they better dressed than their masters but they had not been endowed with the share of political power implied by the way they dressed. Even worse, their clothing disturbed their assigned place in colonial society. As Thorstein Veblen pointed out in 1899, the fitted white vest and jacket, the cravat, pince-nez and polished shoes demonstrate an aristocratic refusal of manual labour.103 Yet apart from the ‘Evolved,’ the indigenous population was thought to be good only for manual work. ‘Dressed for success,’ these servants whose bodies were supposed to carry burdens instead threatened the established order.104 Fashionable male clothing was also a source of anxiety on construction sites, on the docks, and on plantations. Around 1900, the Europeans were amused by the sight of labourers, launderers, warehouse workers and construction foremen, like Casingana in Tuba (Belgian Congo), posing with a pipe, a Byronic knotted scarf, hat and umbrella (Figure 11.10). In 1931, the reader of Tintin in the Congo was supposed to laugh at a man wearing a Panama hat, cravat and starched white shirt with collar and cuffs, who refused to work ‘to avoid getting dirty.’ Colonial administrators instead became increasingly alarmed by this implied rejection of manual labour. In 1930, the lieutenant-governor of the French Congo, Marchessou, submitted a report to the governor general of FEA to explain an outbreak of violence in Brazzaville: In the past year, and especially recently, when I returned from a six-month journey elsewhere, I have been struck by the attitude taken by a certain category of natives, in their direct dealings with Europeans: they show no outer respect towards officers who have authority. On construction sites, there is a constant snickering from labourers and workers, directed at their employers and site managers.105 He went on to say: This black elite is inordinately proud, because it is silk and satin (étoffée) both literally and figuratively. These natives have achieved a comfortable standard of living that makes them difficult to handle. . . . These people treat Europeans with contempt when they think they can get away with it. In 1930, Brazzaville police chief Brun recorded incidents between ‘blacks and whites’ – clashes between employees and bosses, or houseboys and masters.106 He could not take legal action against the blacks, because the ‘Whites’ had been beating them, ‘exasperated by the hateful and threatening attitude of the natives, who are becoming more and more arrogant and rebellious, making statements to the effect that they are in every way equal to whites.’ Social life was becoming increasingly politicized. In the run-up to independence, the ‘defiant’ attitude of these

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FIGURE 11.10  Congo

français. Le contre-maître Casinga à Tuba (Rivière Kouilou), [French Congo. The foreman Casinga in Tuba (Kouilou river)], postcard, printed by Albert Bergeret et Cie, in Nancy, France, 1907.

employees, who were supposed to serve the colonial cause, increasingly raised concern. Even after independence, elegance as rebellion persisted. Reading the reports of colonial administrators, it is impossible not to be reminded of the immigrant African ‘Sapeurs’ in Paris, a movement which started in the 1970s. In 1981, Djo Balard stated his case: ‘Blue jeans are for mechanics. My body can’t stand to wear denim.’107 Another ‘Sapeur’ told Justin Gandoulou, ‘Some of the Africans in Paris embarrass us (the Malians) . . . . You won’t see a Congolese man pushing a broom

190  Manuel Charpy

or astride a trashcan.’108 The Sapeurs rejected the stereotype of the immigrant labourer, dressed in rags. They joked that if they were ‘on the line,’ it wasn’t the assembly line, but the line of well-dressed men strutting their finery on the Place de la République, Paris. They called their clothing exchange ‘the mine.’ These men developed a whole series of puns on the working-class practices they disdained.109 This reversal of values was accompanied with a reversal of budgets. Whereas French workers had been obsessed with balancing the household budget since the nineteenth century, the Congolese, astonishingly, even scandalously, would spend every bit of money they had on clothing. In 1913, the lawyer and writer Jehan De Witte could note that ‘the natives in the Brazzaville region simply overdress. On Sundays, those who own several pairs of trousers or several jackets don layer after layer of this clothing, to display their wealth.’110 Extravagant spending on suits and accessories, which had been a subject of amusement in the 1900s, began to arouse suspicion. In 1930, the Holy Ghost missionary Father Briault spluttered, ‘Evolved youths . . . spend beyond their means on clothing.’111 He went on, The Blacks in all of these regions [FEA] show an excessive taste for fashion, and devote their earnings to dressing in the European style. Nothing is too beautiful or too expensive, especially if it is quite useless: cork helmets, umbrellas, pince-nez on a chain, gloves, gold teeth, the polished dancing shoes of the society gentleman, etc.112 Anti-colonial organizations formed by ‘Evolved’ Africans were convicted of ‘fraud’ in the 1930s: elegance was thus a subversion of the economic order.113 In 1930, Camille Diatta himself, an interpreter, and a member of such an organization, the Société Amicale des Originaires de l’AEF, expressed his surprise in a letter to one of his colleagues: You know, in Brazzaville and Kinshasa, all the “gentlemanns” [sic] dress Popo style. In other words, they wear Ollivant helmets costing around 150 francs, pure silk shirts, suits made of poplin or other fabrics, as long as they cost 250 or 300 francs, at least, and trousers that reach all the way down to the heels of their feet.114 Colonial sociologists from the 1940s to 1960s studied the budgets of the ‘Evolved,’ the ‘literate jobless’ or workers who spent a large chunk of their income on clothes. In Brazzaville in the mid-1950s, wardrobe was the second biggest expenditure of both young women and men, amounting to around 20% of their income, almost as much as they spent on food. Three or four times a year, they invested huge sums in clothing, diverting money from other forms of expenditure.115 Ten years later, the same type of study was conducted in France. Immigrants were not supposed to be conspicuous consumers. Yet ‘Sapeurs’ were ready to live ten to a room to save on rent, so that they could devote their income to buying expensive clothes.116 This ‘irrational’ spending undermined the colonial structure, based on adopting not only the signs of ‘civilization’ but also its economic customs (Figure 11.11).

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in the ‘native village’ (village indigène) in Brazzaville, amateur photograph, 1920s.

FIGURE 11.11 Party

Source: Manuel Charpy.

Elegance, language and political sociability These practices annoyed the colonial administration because they worked like language. It was not so much that they formed a system of signs but rather that they brought out the tight bond between language and clothing.117 The colonial programme, built upon uniforms for school and for clerics, and the European clothing of the ‘Evolved’ tied clothing to language. As early as 1880, Augouard wrote: The Blacks honour those who have been educated by the Europeans. For example, according to their own customs, a Black man cannot wear shoes unless he knows how to read and write. If a Black wearing shoes travels through a village where he is a stranger, he is immediately stopped, and his ability to read and write is tested. If he fails, his shoes are taken away.118 Fluency in French was used as a measuring stick in the hierarchy of the colonial system. Examinations given to the ‘Evolved’ made French literacy central.119 A number of wardrobe accessories symbolized this fluency: spectacles, pens clipped to the shirt pocket, the leather briefcase in hand, and so forth. Lieutenant-Governor Marchessou, of the French Congo, commenting on the rioting in Brazzaville in 1930, wrote: This sort of elite, of which there are many members, lives mainly in Brazzaville. They do their best to imitate our customs, dressing expensively if

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not elegantly. As writers, their vocabulary is recherché, and they consult the dictionary at length to find the rarest if not the most appropriate terms for what they wish to say in the many letters they exchange with each other.120 It is worth noting that when the police were conducting their investigation, they confiscated large quantities of letters in Brazzaville and Paris, all of which mentioned political issues, the purchase of shirts and enrolment in spelling classes in Paris.121 The same amazement was expressed in the 1950s, regarding these ‘literate unemployed,’ who met together in ‘clubs,’ where they held discussions and also ‘set each other spelling tests, maths problems, and assigned readings.’ ‘There’s talk, a lot of talk,’ in these clubs, commented anthropologist Gérard Althabe.122 In the aftermath of the 1959 riots in Brazzaville, French and municipal authorities were surprised at the highly detailed descriptions of clothing and accessories, including the model name and the type of fabric or material, provided by victims seeking compensation.123 These youth clubs flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, despite attempts to repress them after 1963. They were forums for speech. With names like ‘The Existos’ and ‘The Gallo-Romans,’ in sarcastic homage to the Roman colonization of Gaul, and the imposition-appropriation of Latin.124 Members granted themselves ironic titles like ‘Doctor’ or ‘Professor,’ or degrees from the imaginary ISSAV or ‘Institut Supérieur des Sciences Académico-Vestimentaires’ (‘The Advanced Institute of Academico-Vestimentary Sciences’).125 Another politico-linguistic joke made the rounds in the 1980s: the few Sapeurs whose cheques bounced would shrug and call it ‘the colonial debt.’126 Ways of ‘exasperating the French,’ as one of today’s Sapeurs put it, thrived in this borderline zone between clothing and politics, in a satirical vein. Already in the 1930s, Jean de Puytorac noted that his house boys copied the colonial governor’s memoranda, to make ‘farces’ and ‘songs’ with them.127 Later in the twentieth century, making a mockery of the language of power was the Sapeurs’ specialty. The term SAPE itself, coined in the 1970s, is a triple play on words. First, it undermines (in French: saper) or saps the foundations of power. Second, it honours French argot, with the slang word ‘se saper,’ meaning to dress with style. Third, it is an acronym for the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elégantes. Acronyms were everywhere in the colonial world: FEA was French Equatorial Africa, but the shipping companies were also referred to by their initials: the CFHC, the SCKN, and the CCSO.128 The CFHC had warehouses in Brazzaville and the PEK was in Kinshasa. Use of acronyms continued after independence, with the single party MNR preceding the advent of the PCT. The retroacronym SAPE is clearly a parody of economic and political powers.

Clothing as political territory Clothing, like all ordinary objects, speaks an equivocal language. Kings dressed in castoffs, houseboys in three-piece suits and ‘fashionable’ (meaning dandy-ish)

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rebels are clues to the importance of clothing in relations between the colonized and the settlers, but one must know how to read between the lines. The colonial authorities themselves were slow to react. Until after the Great War, they may have expressed irritation about the behaviour of these fancy dressers, and their pretensions, but they lacked the perceptiveness to fear their anti-colonialism. However, in the late 1920s, clashes with settlers reached a climax with the political riots following the trial of Matsoua Grenard and the leaders of the ­Societé Amicale des Originaires de l’AEF. They had been tried and convicted in Brazzaville for ‘swindling’ (escroquerie), following a fund-raising drive.129 The police confiscated letters written by the ‘agitators’ Grenard, Balou and Diatta. They did not know what to make of these letters  – which were quite well-­ written, the lieutenant-general noted. They were a mixture of political theory, financial issues and orders for tailored shirts. Moreover, the authorities were all the more embarrassed by the fact that they had encouraged and funded these organizations of ‘Evolved’ indigenous people. The Association had a Paris branch, too, headquartered at Grenard’s home on the Rue de Cléry.130 This cluster contained another association with an even more satirical name: the Société de l’Étoile des Savoyards de Brazza, with offices in Bordeaux, Gabon and Brazzaville.131 The name of the club was subversive on several levels. First, L’Étoile de l’AEF was the colonialist newspaper. Second, an explorer named Savorgnan de Brazza was a hero of French imperialism. Finally, in Paris, immigrants from the Savoyard Alps worked as chimney sweeps, their faces black with soot. The Amicale des Originaires de l’AEF – in which ‘originaires’ is a highly ambiguous term, if ever there was one – was perceived as a nest of both elegant dressers and anti-colonialists. Mere coincidence? Its members mastered both French language and French fashion, and managed to make themselves heard. The police saw the Amicale as the tip of an iceberg: the visible part of a ‘deep movement.’ The crowd of over a thousand demonstrators that protested against the convictions of Grenard, Mayassi, Balou and N’Ganga proved it. So did the military occupation of the ‘native districts’ Poto-Poto and Bacongo.132 The practices of this fashionable literate elite came to reflect the political ‘pretensions’ of young city-dwellers. The lieutenant-governor himself was convinced that elegance and anti-colonialism were closely related. In April 1930, he wrote, ‘I refuse to grant Grenard and his consorts more prestige than they had before. Nevertheless, their actions in France and here filled one part of the native population with pride: the young men who dress up, write, and therefore believe they think.’133 He also specified that those he scornfully called the ‘half-evolved’ were ‘scribes, clerks, workers, and servants’ in contact with settlers. The Brazzaville central police station agreed: ‘All of our educated assistants, all the units of our local indigenous cadres are heated white-hot [sic], throwing themselves into politics, where they turn insolent and even threatening.’ ‘Excited’ by the Senegalese activist Diagne Birane, who had settled in Kinshasa and worked as a clerk before opening a shop in Poto-Poto, they demanded the right to ‘French citizenship, like the Senegalese people.’134 Grenard, who had served in the French army during the Rif War, joined in by releasing a photograph of himself in uniform. It

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seemed to be addressed to the police: ‘Enclosed, a portrait of Mr. André Grenard, dedicated to my state in rebellion against France, my Fatherland.’135 For both sides, ‘European dress’ reflected a demand for civil rights and French citizenship. In 1947, Josette Chaumeton, pointing out the ‘Evolved’ preference for ‘European suits,’ attested to this persistent link: one characteristic emerging among the Evolved is the desire for education, a will to catch up with the Europeans. They wish to learn quickly, and devour the press, feeling an imperious need for the political education they lack. This must be seen as the principal reason for the success of certain political circles.136 Clothing style was a powerful threat, dynamiting hierarchies and barriers. It proclaimed the equality the Whites rejected. The relationship between dress and politics was strengthened by the fact that the business suit offered public visibility in segregated, controlled urban areas. Even before the riots, the Elegants’ fashion shows caused problems. While such displays of employee ‘laziness’ seemed natural enough, their strolls in city streets became increasingly subversive activities. To make matters worse, in a nonchalant display of dignity and sophistication, they strode around holding canes and umbrellas. In 1913, Jehan De Witte noted with surprise that they are proud to keep abreast of Paris fashions, and aware that in the old days, Europeans made fun of the Blacks’ love of top hats, which were so unsuitable for the tropics and which sometimes looked utterly ridiculous with a loincloth; most have replaced this headwear and, instead, are crowned with elegant Panama hats.137 Parading their excellent taste in the streets, the Elegants struck back at the mockery of the Whites. Starting in the 1920s, as if in reaction to mounting anxiety, the stream of postcards showing these urban displays suddenly dried up: the question of visibility had assumed political implications. Indeed, such practices eluded governmental control. How could you regulate the way a person walked down the street, or make laws against certain types of hats? The police did break up ‘tam-tam’ gatherings, where elegantly dressed men danced to traditional and imported music. By 1904, these noisy parties, which might also attract Whites – Portuguese or Greek – were permitted only on Saturday nights.138 The traditional catholic Mardi Gras parade also caused problems. It was controlled in the Congo and was regularly banned in neighbouring Angola, starting in the 1920s. There, Blacks disguised themselves as Europeans, using whiteface, and men often dressed in drag (Figure 11.12). Although the Mardi Gras Carnival ultimately consolidated the established order, in this case it led to some confusion between the time when dressing up was permitted and the time when allegiance to colonial rule must be shown.139 To re-channel this unseemly enthusiasm for fashion shows

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FIGURE 11.12 Loanda.

Carnival of Cabindas, Angola, 1910s.

Source: Manuel Charpy.

in the city streets, the colonial government attempted to set up youth programmes in Poto-Poto and Bacongo.140 The drama also played out in Paris, where many Congolese lived from time to time or for several months a year. Grenard, Balou and other members of the Société Amicale des Originaires de l’AEF had homes in ‘the capital of fashion’ in the late 1920s. The question of visibility was again a hot-button issue. Although nineteenth-century white cartoonists had ridiculed the Congolese attention to appearance with vicious racist caricatures of them as country boys lost in cities, the question of European style was again being debated.141 In his study of laughter, philosopher Henri Bergson asked, ‘Why does the sight of a Black man wearing European clothing make Whites laugh?’142 It is significant that in its last issue, in 1931, the activist Revue du Monde Noir announced it would poll readers on the question ‘How should Blacks living in Europe dress?’ There were two parts to the question: Was it a good idea to dress in the settlers’ clothing, and how should one prepare to appear to others in the street? Readers of both sexes agreed that freedom of choice was essential, in terms of clothing. But opinions diverged as to whether it was better to blend in with the crowd – ‘Blacks living in France should dress like the local natives,’ wrote one of the magazine’s editors143 – or to be proud of a Black heritage. Several writers referred the question back to the colonized lands: ‘Blacks

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have nothing to gain in dressing like Europeans, especially in their native land,’ since they were liable to lose ‘the qualities of their race.’144 In response to a request from Brazzaville, the Paris police investigated the members of the Société des Originaires de l’AEF, but reported all they found were workers ‘with good reputations’ living in the Paris garment district Le Sentier, in commonlaw marriages with garment district seamstresses. Grenard rotated through the offices of Paris hospitals as an assistant accountant. The others were cooks, especially at the nightclub Le Bœuf sur le Toit, a famous watering hole for stars of the art and jazz worlds. When Grenard was released from prison and returned to Paris, his letters were again confiscated by police. This time, he wrote to Brazzaville ordering ‘phonographs and records in Balali dialect, as well as shirts, knits, razor blades, etc.’ for the purposes of trade.145 The police grew wary of the phonograph as a metaphor for political power. Lieutenant-Governor Marchessou reported that it is dangerous to spread certain ideas among brains that might simply record all that they hear, without understanding it;  .  .  . likewise, the progress of European civilization, which is spreading rapidly, especially since the war, and the fact that more and more natives have been able to live in France, has caused many a crude and primitive mind to capsize, so to speak. Colonialist opinion fretted to see Paris becoming the capital of ‘pan-Negro ­movements.’146 L’Ami du Peuple and Le Figaro, both owned by the extreme-rightwing perfume manufacturer François Coty, decried the Brazzaville riots, fomented, they said, ‘by the international call of the “Comité Universel” of Paris’ “Institut Nègre” ’ and the lenient punishment the courts meted out to Grenard, Mayassi, Balou and N’Ganga.147 In Brazzaville and Léopoldville, the press covered the ‘activities’ of the ‘Evolved’ in Europe. In January  1931, the Étoile de l’AEF expressed ­outrage that the minister of the colonies ‘gives an audience to such pathetic puppets: Grenard and his consorts’ – an accusation which was incidentally false. It went on ‘When a Minister of the Colonies happens to see a Black with a celluloid c­ ollar, cocked hat, and shiny shoes, he is always inclined to address him as a member of Parliament, “the Honourable Mr. Such-and-Such”!’148 Sounding like a police report, the newspaper observed that a meeting of the Paris chapter of the League for the Defence of the Negro Race . . . was held on Wednesday, 19 November, at the café La Petite Source, 130, boulevard Saint-Germain. Dr. Léo Sajous [a Haitian], president of the Institut Nègre of Paris, and engineer Émile Faure, its treasurer, . . . officiated. The fear was indeed of a ‘red peril in black Africa.’149 After all, were not anticolonials from the AOF and AEF seeking ‘to carry out instructions for insurrection, massacre, and fire, learned in Moscow?’ Another great fear was that these ‘Evolved’ Africans would connect with other anti-colonial movements. The Brazzaville

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police were alarmed when Grenard hired an attorney Albert, ‘an Annamite, decorated with military medals,’ who had settled in Paris.150 François Coty, determined ‘to save the colonies,’ perceived the movements of 1930 as ‘another Santo Domingo rebellion, but widespread, extended to the whole of Africa.’151 This allusion was a reference both to the insurrection that led to Haitian independence and to the ‘pretensions’ of Dakar’s voters (électeurs). By 1910, it could be written that the blacks of Sierra Leone are even more unbearable than the voters of Dakar. They are all dressed in the latest fashions from our country. To celebrate the Anglican Sunday, they all stroll around in waistcoat and top hat, even though the temperature is 100°[Fahrenheit] in the shade.152 This obsession with ‘polished boots’ and ‘waistcoats’ can also in part be explained by international events in the 1920s and 1930s. In India, the Swadeshi movement was again on the rise. It promoted the boycott of British goods, notably textiles, and placed Indian homespun cloth at the centre of its anti-colonial strategy.153 The opposite strategy was Ataturk’s 1925 ‘hat law,’ forcing Turks to give up the fez and Islamic headscarves for Western-style clothing. Both cases nevertheless demonstrate the political power of textiles.154 One might have thought that statehood for the two Congos in 1960 would have lessened the political weight associated with ‘European-style garments.’ But leaders continued to make fashion statements, mobilizing clothes for political reasons, both in Africa and in Europe. The first president of the Republic of the Congo, Fulbert Youlou, notable for his anti-Communist policies, was a particular specialist of this mode of expression. A defrocked priest, he bore the nickname ‘the abbot in Dior robes’ for his spending on clothing.155 Later, however, starting in 1963 with the election of Alphonse Massamba-Débat and the establishment of the National Movement of the Revolution (NMR), the Elegants became the target of repression. The NMR was strongly influenced by Maoism, and the Socialist Education Movement, the prelude to the Cultural Revolution, was on the rise in China. The Massamba-Débat regime created a youth league dedicated to fighting ‘juvenile delinquency.’ One particular sign of delinquency was replacing the austere uniform they promoted with luxury Western menswear. During the crackdown, Elegants were sent to the countryside for ‘rehabilitation.’ They were regularly beaten up, and their fine clothing ripped up, by youth league volunteers. Their ‘clubs’ were accused of ‘zero attendance’ at neighbourhood meetings, and they were placed under surveillance or banned.156 This violent crackdown on ‘extravagant’ wardrobes was not the first. In the 1940s, the zootsuiters of Los Angeles had been stripped and shaven by police; the Soviet Union pursued its stilyagi in the 1950s; and Chinese cultural revolutionaries had railed against young people ‘in extravagant outfits.’157 Starting in the 1950s, groups of young men in Kinshasa abandoned the Elegants’ business suit for the cowboy clothes they had seen in Westerns.158 Government repression made clothing the centre of the struggle once more. In 1971, proclaiming a ‘return to authenticity,’

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Mobutu Sese Seko imposed a patriotic ‘Zairean’ outfit. Its name was explicit: the Abacost (A-ba-cost) stood for ‘A bas le costume!’ (‘Down with suits!’).159 Larissa Zakharova, writing about the stilyagi in the USSR, notes that ‘political repression – against “cosmopolitanism” – is what made this fashion a way of making a political statement.’160 Apparently, the dictatorships in the Congo reactivated the political dimension of clothing. Because the ‘Evolved’ and the Elegants were city-dwellers, Brazzaville was associated with Paris and Kinshasa with Brussels. As a result, the clothing issue was on the agenda again, starting in the 1930s, as indicated by La Revue du Monde Noir. Moreover, migration had made the Congolese capital cities the twins of the European ones. In Brazzaville, a Paris métro ticket gained the holder admission to certain nightclubs from the 1960s onwards.161 A  nightclub named after the Château-Rouge neighbourhood in Paris was located in Brazzaville’s Château d’Eau quarter, which was itself named after another Paris landmark. This way of creating a spatial continuity laid the groundwork for creating political continuity. When they left the Congo for Paris, often as political exiles, young Congolese were making a ‘pilgrimage’ to the capital of fashion. Appropriately, they were housed at the MEC, which as well as sounding like the French word for Mecca (‘la Mecque’), also happened to be the acronym for the ‘Maison des Étudiants Congolais,’ the Congolese Student House.162 After the Marcellin-Fontanet circulars of 1972, which limited residency permits for immigrants from former French colonies, the question of migration became an inescapable political question. It played a prominent role in the presidential election of 1974, and again in 1981, in the backlash against the socialist decision to grant citizenship to Congolese immigrants. Implicitly, French Whites would not accept Congolese unless they were discreet, low-profile, practically invisible labourers. A ‘good immigrant’ was an immigrant who saved his wages in order to ‘fit in.’163 The Sapeurs retaliated by maximizing their conspicuousness. They dressed ostentatiously and danced a wild and boisterous danse des griffes – playing on ‘griffes’ meaning both ‘claws’ and ‘brand label’ – reminiscent of the Charleston, in short quite the opposite of the decency and modesty expected of workers and an offence to bourgeois reserve. They dressed in colourful, exaggerated styles in the midst a ‘funereal’ fashion landscape, as they themselves noted, like true Baudelaireans. They paraded through Paris, maintaining a visible presence at luxury boutiques in the Opéra and Champs-Elysées districts. Finally, strutting the boulevards in the distinctive style known as the ‘diattance,’ with unexpected kicks, sudden stops and slow-motion steps, they stood out from the flow of workers (Figure 11.13). From the 1970s onwards, the Sapeur dandies, identifying themselves as ‘actors on the big stage,’ provided a complex, two-part response to the question La Revue du Monde Noir asked in 1931: ‘How should Blacks living in Europe dress?’164 Though they wore the Western suit their goal was not to blend in with the crowd. On the contrary, they wanted to be conspicuous. Their outfits were political reappropriations, addressed to the former colonial power. There is no other way to understand the Sapeurs, striding through Paris in golfers’ knickerbockers and safari helmets, or

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FIGURE 11.13 The

Sapeur Bachelor on the Boulevards of Paris, end of the 1970s. Private collection of Bachelor (Jocelyn Armel).

buttoned into the replica of a uniform worn in the 1900s by a local chieftain – a uniform that was originally second-hand.

Conclusion A necktie pin, white leather shoes, a tweed suit: to the casual observer, there is nothing especially political or subversive about these articles of clothing. On the contrary, they simply reflect the conventions of masculine high society. Yet transported to the colonial world, and especially to the two Congos, they become political objects. Ordinary clothes in Europe, they became extraordinary in these situations. They do so, paradoxically, because people wore them there on an everyday basis and not only as formal costume. The intertwining trajectories of dandies and these exotic objects attest to a series of situations that continually bolstered the importance of clothing, although sometimes in contradictory ways. One of these paradoxes runs back to the beginnings of colonization. On the one hand, from the Europeans’ viewpoint, the second-hand European clothing favoured by local African leaders robbed them of credibility, on the other, the colonial government and missions imposed European-style attire, a sign of the conversion of bodies imagined as naked. In turn, the ‘Evolved’ made their spectacles, briefcases and pens into signs that they deserved citizenship, and even freedom. Even after independence,

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European-style clothing still packed a political charge. On both sides of the Congo River, in the new postcolonial political environment it was viewed by some as both a mark of colonialism and a counter-revolutionary luxury to be stamped out, with violence if necessary. Finally, for migrants to the capitals of former colonies such as Paris and Brussels, clothing was again at the centre of a political game, when the men’s suit expressed a refusal to be reduced to the status of a labourer. Clothing can thus be viewed as a ‘contact zone’ with many different layers. First, it was part of the most practical, everyday routines: the lived world of work, fabrics, the price of things and colonial social and political violence. Second, it was a territory where the naked savage of the European imagination intersected with the elegant gentleman of the Congolese imagination, dressed in the latest Paris fashion. It is sometimes the case that particular events turn clothing into a symbol. Yet in the case studied in this chapter, major events such as World War I or the riots of 1931 and 1959 tell more of established practices than exceptions to the rule. The very fact that this clothing was worn on a day-to-day basis, going from home to work, on ordinary days and on holidays, gave it a meaning and a disruptive power. In the most immediate sense, it reflected the wearer’s refusal to be a colonial labourer and the desire to accede to citizenship. A ‘total social fact,’ it touched upon both private and public life.165 The dream of colonial society was to use clothing to refashion the body in a manner that was fully aware of clothing’s orthopaedic power, the way it could dictate an absolute rule of how to be. Yet familiar routines and recurring practices are not necessarily synonymous with unconscious practices or naivety. The Congolese dandies demonstrated that they were also the product of deliberate daily discipline – physical, economic, social, and so forth – involving continuous effort and costly appropriations. Discussing colonial societies in general, Homi K. Bhabha coined the concept of the ‘ironic compromise of mimicry,’ pointing out that mimicry is in this case both ‘resemblance and threat.’166 Imitation is simultaneously a copy and a parody, a plagiarism and a mockery. It can signify submission to the colonial order, a desire to don camouflage in the view of the settlers or, on the contrary, it can denote subversion as a result of its ambivalence. Although the Europeans began by ridiculing the Congolese for ‘aping’ Europeans, with time they became suspicious and alarmed as the ambiguity of mimicry became clear. Indeed, the dressing practices we have described were not truly imitations in the strict sense. Alongside the strategy of hypervisibility, the opposite of camouflage, the Congolese constantly reinvented the practices associated with these objects, the meaning of which was renewed depending on the situation. As Adrien Quièvre describes, subalterns reinvented through objects – and no object is neutral – a space of reinvention of themselves, besides and against assigned political identities. These ‘poachings’ (braconnages) from colonial culture, as Michel de Certeau calls them, demand an ongoing re-interpretation of practices.167 Finally, perhaps the challenge is not so much to grasp what these practices say, but what they do. There is no need to try to reduce fashion to a discourse. Ultimately, recurrent practices are inevitably equivocal. Their ambivalence increases

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when they are part of the constant flux of daily life, outside the context of a political event that explicitly defines their meaning. If a practice like ‘la Sape’ has remained alive for over 150 years, despite efforts to stifle or discredit it, perhaps its resiliency can be attributed to its flexibility: its power to remain equivocal, to parse and reparse the statements made by fashion in situations that threaten to paralyze it.

Notes 1 Translated by Anita Conrade. 2 Georges Balandier, La vie quotidienne au royaume de Kongo du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1992 [1965]); Cécile Fromont, ‘Foreign Cloth, Local Habits: Clothing, Regalia, and the Art of Conversion in the Early Modern Kingdom of Kongo’, Anais do Museu Paulista: História e Cultura Material, 25: 2 (2017), 11–53; Cécile Fromont, The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). 3 Recueil d’estampes, représentant les grades, les rangs & les dignités, suivant le costume de toutes les nations . . . (Paris: Chez Duflos, 1780). 4 Abbé Prévost (ed.), Histoire générale des voyages . . . (Paris: Didot, 1747), vol. 4 on the Congo. 5 Filippo Pigafetta, Le Royaume de Congo & les Contrées environnantes (1591), ed. Willy Ball (Paris: Chandeigne, 2002). 6 Prévost, Histoire générale des voyages, vol. 17, book XIII, p. 151. 7 On the latter see what follows, and the central work of Justin-Daniel Gandoulou, Entre Paris et Bacongo (Paris: CCI, 1984). 8 See e.g. Christine Bard, Une histoire politique du pantalon (Paris: Seuil, 2010); Luis Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance During World War II (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008). 9 See Manuel Charpy, ‘How Things Shape Us: Material Culture and Identity in the Industrial Age’, in Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (eds.), Writing Material Culture History (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), pp. 199–221. 10 Duarte Lopes and Filippo Pigafetta, Le Royaume de Congo  & les contrées environnantes (1591), Fr. trans. Willy Bal (Chandeigne/Unesco, collection Magellane, 2002). For an Eng. trans. see Filippo Pigafetta, A Report of the Kingdom of Congo: And of the Surrounding Countries; Drawn Out of the Writings and Discourses of the Portuguese Duarte Lopez, trans. Margarite Hutchinson (London: John Murray, 1881). 11 See the portrait sent by the king of Kongo to Holland given to King Frederik III of Denmark by John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen (Dutch governor of the Brazilian colonies) in 1654: Jaspar Beckx, Don Miguel de Castro, emissary of Kongo (c. 1643). National Museum of Denmark, Ethnography department, n°KMS7. 12 Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, Istoria descrizione digli tre regni Congo, Angola, Matemba (Bologne, 1687), bk. I, § 343. 13 See an essential article on the social uses of clothing and traditional political powers, Phyllis M. Martin, ‘Contesting Clothes in Colonial Brazzaville’, The Journal of African History, 35 (1994), 401–426. 14 Andrew Gordon, Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), p. 304. 15 Aix-en-Provence, Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer [hereafter ANOM], Gabon-Congo IV/16, 4 April 1891, to the ministère des colonies. 16 ANOM, Gabon-Congo IV/ 16, letters to Schoelcher (1886) and to Printemps (1900). 17 See e.g. L’Illustration, 3 November 1894, p. 36; Albert Jullien, Par monts et par vaux. Au Mayumbe (Brussels: J. Goemaere, c. 1895); Cyrille Van Overbergh, Les Mayumbe, collections de monographies ethnographiques (Brussels: A. de Wit, 1907), p. 282.

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18 Marquis de Compiègne, ‘Voyage d’exploration dans l’Afrique équatoriale’, Le Correspondant, 62 (1875), p. 119. 19 Van Overbergh (ed.), Les Mayumbe, p. 282. Similar observations in Jullien, Par monts et par vaux. 20 Lyon, Œuvres Pontificales Missionnaires’ archives, [hereafter OPM], Fonds Fides, GVII Katanga, 1933. 21 Paris, Archives Nationales [hereafter AN], F12/2588, ‘Esquisse commerciale de la côte occidentale d’Afrique depuis Gallinas [Sierra-Leone] jusqu’au Gabon par Mr  Bouët Edouard lieutenant de Vaisseaux commandant la canonnière brig la Malouine, années 1838–1839’, Report made for the Chamber of Commerce of Bordeaux, 6 May 1839. 22 Emmanuel Ratoin, Nos nouvelles Colonies. Le Congo (Tours: Mame, 1890). 23 L’Éveil de l’AEF, October 1932, see advertisements of La Sangha (Brazzaville) and Silva et Andrades (Léopoldville et Brazzaville). 24 Prosper Augouard, 28 années au Congo: lettres de Mgr Augouard, vol. 1 (Poitiers: Chez l’Abbé Augouard [his brother], 1905), p. 450; see also, p. 52 about the king of SainteMarie du Gabon (8 avril 1878). 25 Ibid., vol. 2, Linzolo, January 1884, pp. 470–471. 26 Charles Liebrechts and Théodore Masui (eds.), Guide de la section de l’État indépendant du Congo à l’Exposition de Bruxelles-Tervueren en 1897 (Brussels: Impr. Veuve Monnom, 1897), pp. 472–494. 27 AN, F12/2588, Bouet and Broquant’s mission in West Coast of Africa, 1838–1841, ‘Esquisse commercial’, f. 6. 28 AN, F12/7208, Report written by the Lieutenant de Vaisseau Méquet about commerce and agriculture in Gabon, 1 June 1848. 29 AN, F12/7208, Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies, Direction des colonies; Report from Rade de Gorée, briq. le Bougainville, 2 February 1848 (copy) by Chaigneau, captain, 15 July 1848. 30 AN, F/12/7209, Angola 1862–1863; letter to Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies, Gabon, 24 December 1862. 31 ‘Le commerce d’importation vers le Congo’, Le Monde colonial illustré . . ., October 1929, p. 269. 32 Louis Marie Joseph Ohier comte de Grandpré, Voyage à la côte occidentale d’Afrique fait dans les années 1786, vol. 1 (Paris: Dentu, 1801), p. 79. 33 AN F12/7208, ‘Assinie et Gabon’, Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 30 October 1843, p. 1. 34 See Philippe Perrot, Les Dessus et les dessous de la bourgeoisie, une histoire du vêtement au XIXe  siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1981), pp.  69–92; Manuel Charpy, ‘Formes et échelles du commerce d’occasion au XIXe siècle. L’exemple du vêtement à Paris’, Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle, 24 (2002), 125–150. 35 Félix Mornand, La vie de Paris (Paris: Librairie nouvelle, 1855), p. 198. 36 Albert Monnier, ‘Le Temple. Étude de mœurs parisiennes’, Le Figaro, 15 March 1857; ‘Vêtements confectionnés’, in Dictionnaire universel théorique et pratique du commerce et de la navigation (Paris: Guillaumin, 1859–1861); and Paris, Archives de Paris, D3R4/21/ n° 2510 et sq. 37 ‘Friperie’, La Grande encyclopédie, vol. 18 (Paris: Lamirault, 1886). 38 Alexis-Marie Gochet, Les Congolais, leurs mœurs et usages. Histoire, géographie et ethnographie (Alost: Procure générale and Liège, Dessain, 1890), p. 157. 39 ‘Les importations d’articles d’habillement au Congo belge’, Bulletin trimestriel de l’Union des employés de commerce, de commission et d’exportation, October 1913, p. 160. Extract from Robert Blondeau, Le Commerce d’importation au Congo belge (Paris: Office national du commerce extérieur, 1913). 40 Charpy, ‘Formes et échelles’. 41 Marquis de Compiègne, L’Afrique équatoriale (Paris: Plon, 1876), pp. 85–86.

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42 Henry Morton Stanley, Congo and the Founding of its Free State (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1885), vol. 1, p.  130. Quoted by Alexis-Marie Gochet, La France coloniale illustrée . . . (Tours: Mame, 1886), p. 207; Lemaire, Au Congo, pp. 104ff. 43 Augouard, 28 années, vol. 1, p. 191, letter from Lândana, Congo, 25 August 1880. 44 Augouard, 28 années, vol. 1, p. 305, letter from Lândana, 26 June 1883. 45 Pierre Verhaegen, Au Congo: impressions de voyage (Ghent: Siffer, 1898), pp. 30 and 100. 46 Charles Lemaire, Au Congo: comment les noirs travaillent (Brussels: C. Bulebs, 1895), pp. 104–107. 47 See the archives of Hezekiah Andrew Shanu in AfricaMuseum, Tervuren. The photograph was published, for example, in Le Congo Illustré, 1: 19 (1892), p. 149. 48 See Hein Vanhee, ‘Maîtres et serviteurs: les chefs médaillés dans le Congo colonial’, in Jean-Luc Vellut (ed.), La Mémoire du Congo: le temps colonial (Tervuren: Musée Royal de l’Afrique centrale / Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika and Ghent: SnoeckDucaju & Zoon, 2005), pp. 79–82; Boussoukou Boumba, ‘L’organisation de la chefferie indigène à Ntima et à Divenié (Congo), 1923–1941’, Présence Africaine, 107 (1978), 111– 134; and Archives nationales de la République du Congo [hereafter ANRC], Police générale, GG 429, ‘Attribution des fusils d’honneur aux chefs indigènes ou notable’. 49 Joseph de La Porte, Le voyageur françois, ou La connoissance de l’ancien et du nouveau monde, vol. 14 (Paris: L. Cellot, 1772), p. 136. On the Capuchins in Congo, see Brève relation de la fondation de la mission des frères mineurs capucins du Séraphique Père Saint François au Royaume du Congo, et des particularités, coutumes et façons de vivre des habitants de ce royaume, écrite par le Père Frère Jean-François de Rome (Rome, 1648); P. Auguste Roeykens, ‘Les Capucins et les Missions Congolaises au XIXe siècle’, Aequatoria, 4 (1948), 128–136. 50 ‘Costumes’ in Grandpré, Voyage à la côte occidentale d’Afrique, p. 70. 51 Stanley, Congo and the Founding of its Free State, vol. 1, p. 130. 52 Grandpré, Voyage à la côte occidentale d’Afrique, p. 75. 53 Van Overbergh (ed.), Les Mayumbe, p. 282; Jullien, Par monts et par vaux; Emil Torday and T. A. Joyce, Notes ethnographiques sur les peuples communément appelés Bakuba, ainsi que sur les peuplades apparentées. Les Bushongo (Brussels: Falk fils, 1910). 54 Lémann, De l’industrie des vêtements confectionnés en France (Paris: Dupont, 1857), pp. 16 and 54; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Société de géographie, colis n°15 notice 2607, Tailor’s letter, Cusset, 1 June 1884. 55 Jehan de Witte, Un explorateur et un apôtre du Congo français, Prosper Philippe Augouard (Paris: Émile-Paul frères, 1924), p. 352. 56 OPM, série K, Fonds Augouard, letters between 1890 and 1910. 57 See postcards published by Prosper Augouard; and OPM, Congo/iconography. 58 OPM, série K, Fonds Augouard and Monseigneur Carrie, Coutumier de l’Œuvre des enfants dans le vicariat apostolique du Congo français (Loango: Impr. de la Mission, 1890), pp. 43–44, quoted by Martin, ‘Contesting Clothes’. 59 Maurice Briault, Dans la forêt du Gabon (Paris: Grasset, 1930), p. 159. 60 H. Sutton Smith, ‘On Clothing’, in Yakusu, the Very Heart of Africa: Being Some Account of the Protestant Mission at Stanley Falls, Upper Congo (London: Marshall, c. 1911), pp. 69–76. 61 Ibid., pp. 75–76. 62 Augouard, 28 années, vol. 1, p. 500, Brazzaville, 28 November 1888; Ratoin, Nos nouvelles Colonies, pp. 228–229. 63 OPM, série K, Fonds Augouard; Jehan De Witte, Monseigneur Augouard, archevêque titulaire de Cassiopée, vicaire apostolique du Congo français: sa vie. Ses notes de voyage et sa correspondance (Paris: Émile-Paul frères, 1924), p. 84. 64 ‘La façon de faire le bien’ in L’Étoile de l’A.E.F. (Brazzaville, Léopoldville), 3 January 1935, p. 13. 65 Archives municipales de Brazzaville [AMB], Affaires politiques, 1F, ‘Demande d’attribution de vêtements aux anciens combattants nécessiteux’, end of 1950s. 66 OPM, série K, Fonds Augouard; and several postcards (author’s collection).

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67 Doctor Jaeger produced in Germany wood especially for colonies and La Belle Jardinière fabric in peat wadding (ouate de tourbe) ‘created by the Docteur Rasuret for colonies’ (Belle Jardinière’s catalogue, 1920s). 68 ‘De l’acclimatation des Européens. Vêtements. § 2. Habillement’, in Dr Georges Treille, De l’acclimatation des Européens dans les pays chauds (Paris: Doin, 1888), p. 121; see also, several patents in Institut national de la protection industrielle. 69 Albert Donny (ed.), Manuel du voyageur et du résident au Congo, vol. 1 (Brussels: Société belge d’études coloniales, 1900), p. 29 and sq. ‘Vêtements superficiels’ and ‘Équipement imposé par l’État à ses agents’, pp. 34–39. 70 George Orwell, ‘As I Please’, Tribune, 20 October 1944. 71 Jean de Puytorac, Makambo, Une vie au Congo (Brazzaville-M’Bondo), vol. 1 (Paris: Zulma, 1992), p. 90, and p. 87. 72 Guy Tomel, ‘La Mission Maistre’, Le Monde illustré, 23 April 1892, p. 269. 73 Jean de Puytorac, Retour à Brazzaville. Une vie au Congo, vol. 2 (Paris: Zulma, 1995), p. 104 (‘Ils s’étaient blanchi le visage et avaient revêtu des vêtements à l’européenne’). 74 Natal De Cleene, ‘Les Chefs Indigènes au Mayombe. Hier. Aujourd’hui. Demain’, Africa, 8 (1935), 63–75. 75 Note relative au projet de décret sur la création d’une catégorie dite d’« indigène d’élite », présentée par M. Bernard Lavergne, 10 April 1927. 76 See Journal official de l’AEF, 1942, ‘Décret fixant le statut des notables évolués, n°377 du 29 juillet 1942’, p. 373. On the AOF, see Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism Between the Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Odile Goerg, ‘Domination coloniale, construction de “la ville” en Afrique et dénomination’, Afrique & histoire, 5 (2006), 15–45; Jean-Hervé Jézéquel, ‘Grammaire de la distinction coloniale. L’organisation des cadres de l’enseignement en Afrique occidentale française (1903-fin des années 1930)’, Genèses, 69 (2007), 4–25. 77 ANRC, Affaires politiques: GG 258, Situation du personnel indigène (1892–1959): Personnel indigènes; Écrivains interprètes; Expéditionnaires comptables; Écrivains auxiliaires; Plantons 1934; Reclassement du personnel africain 1949; Correspondances diverses (Penalties and indemnities for bicycles and typewriters). 78 ANRC, Instruction publique et enseignement 1911–1960: GG 484–2, Rapport annuel de l’Enseignement 1931–1932 and Certificats d’études indigènes 1928–1935; Affaires politiques et administrations générales: GG 122, Affaires politiques: Rapports sur la propagande révolutionnaire dans les pays d’Outre-Mer (1931–1934). 79 ANRC, Instruction publique et enseignement 1911–1960: GG 479–1 to GG 479–3, Enseignement: Rapports de l’école urbaine de Brazzaville; Enfants métis; Rapport sur l’Enseignement des Indigènes; correspondance générale sur les questions scolaires 1911– 1923, Rapports par école. 80 See Phyllis M. Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and AMB, 8D, Indemitisations (around 250 files) after the 1959 urban riots. 81 Briault, Dans la forêt du Gabon, p.  185 and the chapter ‘L’Afrique équatoriale ­française’, p. 20. 82 Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Charpy, ‘How Things Shape Us’. 83 Briault, Dans la forêt du Gabon, p. 20. 84 See Louis Baeck, Enquête budgétaire sur les congolais évolués de Léopoldville (Elisabethville: Centre d’Étude des Problèmes Sociaux Indigènes, 1957) held in the Africamuseum; Gerard Althabe, Le chômage à Brazzaville: étude psychologique (Paris: ORSTOM, 1959), p.  163, multigr. (Documents du Conseil Supérieur des Recherches Sociologiques Outre-Mer), chap. I ‘Vie Matérielle – 2e L’habillement’, pp. 8–10; Affaires politiques et administrations générales, Grand conseil de l’A.E.F.: GG 186, Problèmes des évolués; réalisations culturelles et sociales; urbanisations; affaires soumises au grand conseil 1947–1952; C ­ urriculum vitae des Conseillers représentatifs 1947–1948; Collège autochtone 1946–1948.

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85 See Josette Chaumeton, ‘Note préliminaire sur les niveaux de vie dans les villes indigènes de Poto-Poto, Wenzé et Bacongo’, Office de la recherche scientifique et technique Outre-Mer, étude n°2398 (1947), 42 held in the Archives de l’Institut d’Études centrafricaines. 86 RTBF [Belgian radio broadcast], 28 June 2010, 11:25 AM. 87 Georges Balandier, Sociologie des Brazzavilles Noires (Paris: Armand Colin, 1955). 88 See Balandier, Sociologie; Martin, Loisirs; Jean-Jacques Youlou and Scholastique Dianzinga, ‘Une capitale dans l’histoire’, in Robert Edmond Ziavoula (ed.), Brazzaville, une ville à reconstruire (Paris: Karthala, 2006); AMB, 8D, Gestion des communes mixtes; population européenne et population africaine, 1926–1951; indémnisations après les émeutes de 1959. 89 Francis Lelo Nzuzi, Kinshasa: planification & aménagement (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011). 2,531 Europeans and 37,634 Congolese lived in Brazzaville. 90 ANOM, 5 D78, Laissez-passer, pièces n°359ff. 91 See e.g. Pierre Bonardi, ‘L’élégance masculine aux pays noirs’, Monsieur: Revue des élégances, des bonnes manières et de tout ce qui intéresse Monsieur, no. 13 (Jan. 1921), pp. 57–58. 92 See Balandier, Sociologie; Martin, Loisirs. 93 Balandier, Sociologie. 94 Chaumeton, ‘Note préliminaire’, p. 44; Balandier, Sociologie. 95 Interview with Lamam, Brazzaville, Château d’Eau quarter, September 2018. 96 Althabe, Le chômage à Brazzaville, pp. 130–131. 97 Roland Devauges, Le chômage à Brazzaville en 1957: étude sociologique (Paris: Conseil Supérieur des Recherches Sociologiques Outre-Mer / ORSTOM, 1959), p. 84. 98 Briault, Dans la forêt du Gabon, p. 160. 99 See de Puytorac, Makambo, p. 50: ‘The “fayette” is the Loango tailor. . . . Catalogues from grands magasins arrive and tailors copy them, or try to’. 100 ANRC, État civil et curatelle, 1892–1951, GG 411, Indigènes portant des patronymes européens, 1928–1942. (Circular of 1928 concerning Indigenous who ‘add European names to their name’). 101 See Daniel Roche, ‘Du vol à la revente: un autre aspect de la diffusion des vêtements’, in his La culture des apparences. Une histoire du vêtement XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1989); Chaumeton, ‘Note préliminaire’. Lamam received some garments from his patron. 102 L’Étoile de l’A.E.F (Brazzaville, Léopoldville), 9 January 1936, p. 15. 103 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class. An Economic Study of Institutions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1899). 104 Concerning this profession, see ‘Gens de maison’ in Althabe, Le chômage à Brazzaville, p. 137. Althabe records only a few negative answers concerning these professions. Reasons given for a negative image:’45% refuse to put up with insults and mistreatment; 16% fear being accused of theft and going to jail; 23% do not want to stick to a schedule that leaves them very little freedom; 16% others reasons, including unemployment when the boss returns to France, dishonourable profession etc.’ 105 ANOM, AEF/GGAEF/5D88, AEF, Colonie du Moyen-Congon, n°134c, Rapport confidential du lieutenant-Gouverneur du Moyen-Congo à Monsieur le Gouverneur général à Brazzaville, 12 avril 1930. 106 ANOM, 5D88, Commissariat central de Police, Colonie du Moyen-Congo, Incidents during February and March, Commissaire Brun. 107 Thomas Gilou, Black Mic-Mac [film], 1986. 108 Gandoulou, Entre Paris et Bacongo, p. 67. 109 Ibid. and interview with Bachelor (Jocelyn Armel), May 2018. 110 Baron De Witte, Les deux Congos (Paris: Plon, 1913), pp. 164–165. 111 Briault, Dans la fôret de Gabon, pp. 184–185 on ‘évolués fashionables’. 112 Briault, Dans la fôret de Gabon, p. 20. 113 ‘Les incidents de Brazzaville’, Le Journal, 11 April 1930, p. 5; Le Figaro, 6 April 1930, ‘Les troubles à Brazzaville’, p. 3.

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114 ANOM, AEF/GGAEF/5D88, letter from Diatta to Henri Kwikale (PTT clerk in Bangui) seized during the investigation into the independentist Grenard Matsoua, Brazzaville, 19 March 1930. 115 During the 1950s, a sociological obsession emerges for the urban unemployed in colonial Africa. Marcel Soret, Démographie et problèmes urbains en A.E.F.: Poto-Poto, Bacongo, Dolisie (Montpellier: Charité, 1954), p. 91 wrote that Congolese ‘Clothing expenses take place three or four times a year. These months they deprive themselves of other items in their budget’. From around 1000 budgets, he noted:’53 % for food; 7 % for beverage; 21 % for clothing; 10 % for entertainment, futilities, gifts. . . .; 5 % for rental and taxes; 4 % for savings’. See also Althabe, Le chomage à Brazzaville, pp. 8–10 and ch. 1, ‘Vie Matérielle – 2e L’habillement’, p. 84; Devauges, Le chomage à Brazzaville, pp. 87–89: ‘Les ressources relatives au vêtement’; Baeck, Enquête budgétaire sur les congolais évolués; Archives générales du Royaume 2 (AGR2), Belgique, Bécéka / Fonds Edgar Van der Straten, 5252–5256, Commission pour l’étude des problèmes sociaux indigènes au Comité intérieur colonial de la société générale de Belgique 1954–1956; 5297, ‘Situation politique et sociale à Léo’, étude de M. Jeanty, janvier 1957; 5298, Lettres sur la situation au Congo écrites par différents observateurs, 1957–1958; 5263, Comité de Travail du comité intérieur colonial de la Société générale de Belgique concernant les Problème des politique sociale au Congo, 1958. 116 Interview with André Sita, Paris, June 2018 and Justin-Daniel Gandoulou, Entre Paris et Bacongo. 117 Roland Barthes, ‘Histoire et sociologie du vêtement’, Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations, 12 (1957), 430–441; Roland Barthes, Système de la mode (Paris: Le Seuil, 1967); Algirdas Julien Greimas, La mode en 1830. Langage et société: écrits de jeunesse (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000). 118 Augouard, 28 années, vol. 1, letter from Landana, 25 August 1880. 119 Among hundreds of files, see e.g.: ANRC, Affaires politiques et administrations générales, GG 186, Problèmes des évolués; GG 258, Situation du personnel 1892–1959, Situation du personnel indigène; Écrivains interprètes; Expéditionnaires comptables; Écrivains auxiliaires; Plantons 1934; Reclassement du personnel africain 1949. 120 ANOM, 5D88, Commissariat central de Police, Incidents during February and March, Commissaire Brun. 121 ANOM, AEF/GGAEF/5D88, letter from Diatta to Henri Kwikale seized during the investigation into the independentist Grenard Matsoua, Brazzaville, 19 March 1930. 122 ‘b. Vie intérieure de ces Groupes’, in Althabe, Le chômage à Brazzaville, pp. 46–47. 123 AMB, 8D, Gestion des communes mixtes; population européenne et population africaine, 1926–1951; indémnisations après les émeutes de 1959. 124 The Gallo Romains’ invitation states: ‘Gaul was a Roman province for over 400 years. The Gauls imitated the Romans. They got used to it and lived like them. They learned their language, Latin. Little by little we no longer distinguished the Gauls from the Romans. All the inhabitants of Gaul were called Gallo-Romans.’ (La Gaule a été une province Romaine pendant plus de 400 ans les Gaulois ont imité les Romains ils se sont habitués et ont vécu comme eux ils ont appris leurs langue le Latin peu à peu on n’a plus distingué les gaulois des Romains tous les habitants de la gaule ont été appellé des gallo romains). Personal archives of Justin-Daniel Gandoulou. 125 Private archives from Séverin Mouyengo, Brazzaville, Madibou, 1970s. 126 Gandoulou, Entre Paris et Bacongo. 127 De Puytorac, Makambo, vol. 2, p. 173. 128 See Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Le Congo au temps des grandes compagnies concessionnaires 1898–1930, vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 2001). 129 ANOM, AEF/GGAEF/5D88 and 5D78. 130 ANOM, AEF/GGAEF/5D78. 131 Ibid., n°359 (founded in 1926).

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132 ‘The tirailleurs (infantrymen) . . . had to intervene energetically in the city of BasCongo, which is the lair of many Communist elements and which shelters Indigenous passing through Brazzaville’, Le Figaro, 6 April  1930, p.  3; Le Figaro, ‘Les troubles à Brazzaville’, 28 May  1930, p.  4; ANOM, AEF/GGAEF/5D88;  AEF, Colonie du Moyen-Congo, n°134c, Confidentiel, Brazzaville, 12 April 1930. 133 ANOM GGAEF 5D88, Marchessou’s Rapport, 12 April 1930. 134 ANOM GGAEF 5D88, Commissariat central de Police, Colonie du Moyen-Congo, ‘Incidents’, February-March, Brun’s report, April 1930. 135 ANOM GGAEF 5D78 (the photograph has disappeared). 136 Chaumeton, ‘Note préliminaire’, p. 44. 137 De Witte, Les Deux Congos, pp. 164–165. 138 See Martin, Leisure and Society. 139 David Birmingham, ‘Carnival at Luanda’, The Journal of African History, 29 (1988), 93–103. 140 Le Figaro, 6 April 1930, p. 3; Le Figaro, ‘Les troubles à Brazzaville’, 28 May 1930, p. 4; ANOM, AEF/GGAEF/5D88; AEF, Colonie du Moyen-Congo. N°134c, Confidentiel Brazzaville, 12 April 1930. On public space and fashion, see Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot; Ken Gelder, Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 2007); Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London and New York: Routledge, 1981). 141 See e.g. the caricatures ‘Au Luxembourg, le salon du Congo’, Le Rire, 12 August 1899. 142 Henri Bergson, Le Rire: essai sur la signification du comique (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1900). 143 La revue du monde noir/ The Review of the Black World, 5 (March 1932), pp. 55–56. 144 Ibid., n°4, p. 52. 145 ANRC, GG 98–1, Dossier Makoko (chiefdom of Batékés); copies of Matsoua’s letters from Paris to Brazzaville, 1937–1938; ANOM, GGAEF, 5D78, Balou, 120 boulevard de la Chapelle (cook; his girlfriend was a worker in the fur industry); Pierre N’Ganga was a food preparer in Le bœuf sur le toit (1200 fr. by month; 90 fr. by month for the hotel); Grenard worked in 4 hospitals (Laennec (1927), Ivry (1928), Cochin (1928), Laennec (1929). 146 See Michael Goebel, Paris, capitale du tiers monde. Comment est née la révolution anticoloniale (1919–1939) (Paris: La Découverte, 2017). 147 Le Figaro, 28 May 1930, p. 4. 148 L’Étoile de l’A.E.F., 24 January 1931, pp. 10–11: ‘Pour ceux qui ne voient jamais rien. Le péril rouge en pays noir’. 149 François Coty, Sauvons nos colonies: le péril rouge en pays noir (Paris: Grasset, 1931). See for example AGR2, Bécéka / Fonds Edgar Van der Straten, 5314, Le communisme au Congo, dossier confidentiel; List of Congolais with links to international communism; biographical files of individuals ‘considérées comme étant les plus dangereuses’, 1961. 150 ANOM, 88, Marchessou, 27 July 1930, ‘Agissements de l’Association des originaires de l’AEF’ (also concerns ‘demi-évolués’ from Brazzaville). 151 Coty, Sauvons nos colonies, p. 183. 152 L’Expansion belge, 3 (1910), p. 348. 153 Christopher Alan Bayly, ‘The Origins of Swadeshi: Cloth and Indian Society, 1700– 1930’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 154 See Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann, Ottoman Costumes: From Textile to Identity (Istanbul: Eren, 2004); Robert Ross, Clothing, A Global History: Or, the Imperialists’ New Clothes (Cambridge: Polity, 2008). 155 Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga, Les voies du politique au Congo: essai de sociologie historique (Paris: Karthala, 1997), p. 53 et sq. 156 AMB, 328D, Commerçants et associations de Brazzaville; Rapport, Parti Congolais du Travail, Département de l’organisation, Commissariat politique, Comité du parti de la ville de Brazzaville, secrétariat permanent, 23 Dec. 1981: ‘Situation particulière de

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Bacongo’, p. 6 and interviews with Justin-Daniel Gandoulou (April 2017) and with Séverin Mouyengo (September 2018). 157 Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot; Larissa Zakharova, ‘Ministère de l’industrie légère et stilyagui. La mode soviétique des années 1950–60, entre normes socialistes et goût occidental’, Modes pratiques. Revue d’histoire du vêtement et de la mode, 2 (2017), 356–374; Sun Peidong, ‘Abolir la mode. Enquête sur la Révolution culturelle chinoise et la répression des “tenues extravagantes” ’, in Ibid., 125–146. 158 C. Didier Gondola, Tropical Cowboys. Westerns, Violence, and Masculinity in Kinshasa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). 159 AGR2, Sibéka, 5293, ‘Congo – documentations politiques’, 1960–1972. 160 Zakharova, ‘Ministère de l’industrie légère et stilyagui’, p. 372. 161 Interview with Justin-Daniel Gandoulou, April 2017. 162 Ibid. and interview with Bachelor (Jocelyn Armel), Paris, June 2018. 163 Abdelmalek Sayad, La double absence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré (Paris: Le Seuil, 1999). 164 [Consulted on 23 April 2014]. 165 Roland Barthes takes up the notion coined by Marcel Mauss in Barthes, ‘Histoire et sociologie du vêtement’. 166 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 86. 167 Michel de Certeau, L’Invention du quotidien, vol. 1, Les arts de faire (Paris: Gallimard, 1998 [1980]), p. 292.

12 ‘CITIZEN BROWNING’ The banality of a revolutionary object, c.1905–c.1912 Éric Fournier

There is . . . one ballot paper on which all revolutionaries agree . . .: it is the Browning ballot paper, a registered trademark guaranteed by the Belgian government. I hope that all militants will shortly get their hands on this remarkable instrument of emancipation and resistance to police violence. Comrades, abstain no longer! All vote for citizen Browning, the only candidate for La Guerre Sociale.

These were the closing words of the editorial in La Guerre Sociale of 24 April 1910, written by Gustave Hervé, an antimilitarist figure and leading voice in the insurrectional minority of the SFIO, the French section of the Workers’ International. ‘Citizen Browning’ was thus born, but this immediately raises questions. What, or whom, was Hervé talking about? Was ‘Citizen Browning’ solely a handgun – a specific model of automatic pistol? Or an arm that came preloaded with a little bit of sovereignty? Was it the bearer of the weapon? Or an animate object? Or else some hybrid of the two? Far from clarifying these matters, the next issue of La Guerre Sociale further conflated the gun and its bearer, suggesting that the pistol had acquired its own life in militant action. ‘He [or it: il, which could be either] is not a bloodthirsty monster,’ Hervé writes, quite the contrary.1 If one criticism may be made, it is not against his/its sabre rattling but his/ its pacific declarations. “Citizen Browning” never intervenes for the pleasure of it, but because he/it cannot bear that free men, . . . at the most pacific demonstration, be beaten with truncheons.2 For more than a year thereafter, ‘Citizen Browning’ became a familiar image in the pages of La Guerre Sociale, which happily maintained this conflation between man and gun.

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At first sight, ‘Citizen Browning’ appears to be a fanciful and even fantastic figure in the French revolutionary social imagination of the early twentieth century. But it deserves to be taken seriously given that La Guerre Sociale had a readership of 60,000, and 10% of socialists were in favour of the insurrectional motions Hervé’s faction presented at SFIO conferences.3 Moreover, Hervé’s many opponents hardly ever upbraided him for it. ‘Citizen Browning’ was quickly acclimatized, and even became briefly commonplace. Far from being some picturesque or insignificant detail, this figure brought out how troubled the social movement’s farewell to arms  – seemingly enacted in the wake of the Commune  – actually was. Given how incongruous weapons were meant to have become in the supposedly pacified republican political realm, in a society where a more ‘controlled’ form of masculinity was slowly supplanting a more ‘offensive’ one, the presence of handguns, in both the imagination and in practice, raises acute questions about the interaction between objects, politics and daily life.4 Indeed, with the law of 14 August 1885, it became legal for firearms to be freely traded and owned. Virtually everyone had the right to bear arms, although the law on this matter was complex. Handguns were thus an almost mundane object, a type of consumer good, with many models presented in the mail order catalogues of the Saint-Etienne manufactory, for example. So what was mundane about ‘Citizen Browning’ was precisely the gun itself. What was less commonplace was its presence in social combat. Lastly, the conflation of man with gun comes across as frankly surprising, not to say ludicrous – unless, that is, we manage to catch ‘Citizen Browning’ in the nets of historicity and interwoven timeframes. This will enable us to solve the enigmas posed by this firebrand, jumping from the columns of La Guerre Sociale into the revolutionary imagination. How could such a man-gun hybrid appear familiar? To what extent were handguns banal, legitimate objects in the revolutionary constellation? And why Browning, as opposed to some other make of gun? After presenting ‘Citizen Browning’ and the chronology of this figure’s appearance, this chapter will consider the various legal and material issues concerning guns at that time. I will then consider the role played by handguns in social combat of the 1910s, raising the question of the ‘hand-to-hand’ contact between the pistol and its bearer in action, before turning to the fusion implied by the expression ‘Citizen Browning.’ As an epilogue, I will examine how the figure very soon became anachronistic, and rapidly retreated from view, without, however, ever completely disappearing.

The chronology of the emergence of a colourful figure Let us resume the confrontations in which ‘Citizen Browning’ was involved in the columns of Hervé’s newspaper. In Paris, and sometimes in Berlin,5 in demonstrations confronting the police or the strike-breakers at factory gates, ‘Citizen Browning’ took offence, intervened, and demonstrated alongside family members. He (or it) also often ‘spoke,’ or ‘raised his (or its) voice,’ that is to say ‘fired’ – but always coldly, without ‘fooling around,’ and reasonably, ‘knocking sense into people

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with a clear voice.’6 This figure, a concentrate of determination, noble sentiments, and revolutionary sangfroid, forever on the verge of insurrection, was, according to La Guerre Sociale, ‘our favourite’ or perhaps ‘our beloved representative’: l’élu de notre cœur.7 These flights of lyricism need putting in perspective, for even Hervé’s supporters appear to have been largely unmoved. Of the thousands of comments accompanying replies to activist appeals for funds launched by La Guerre Sociale, in the space of two years only four referred to ‘Citizen Browning.’8 However, while Hervé’s detractors in revolutionary circles berated him for his unrestrained appetite for weapons of war – machine guns, mortars and howitzers, which could scarcely figure as everyday objects – they spared ‘Citizen Browning,’ which apparently struck them as more banal than ludicrous.9 To deconstruct the apparent strangeness of this motif, let us focus on the various contexts in which it appears under Hervé’s pen. We find it at the intersection of issues, themes and political memories specific to revolutionary circles, while also partaking in a more general zeitgeist. ‘Citizen Browning’ thus figures in debates about self-defence on the part of honest citizens against ‘ruffians’ and other criminals.10 When in May  1910 Le Temps relayed a campaign supporting regulations to the bearing of handguns, La Guerre Sociale portrayed this as an attack ‘against Citizen Browning,’ decrying an attempt to limit the right to bear arms exclusively to ‘members of the nationalist, clerical, or republican bourgeoisie.’ La Guerre Sociale predicted that should such a law be introduced, smuggling from Belgium would ‘ensure the arming of French workers, who do not want to let themselves be massacred by the Apaches of police headquarters without riposting.’11 Equally, a poem glorifying ‘Citizen Browning’ described this figure as a defence against all types of ruffian, be they from police headquarters or the underworld: ‘he/it does not accept being stabbed  .  .  ., and when attacked defends himself/itself.’12 In the recurrent worried debates of the 1910s about criminality in ‘the age of the revolver,’13 ‘Citizen Browning’ was a fairly plastic figure, familiar yet odd, though ultimately alarming. For while this good citizen was intent on being armed against the ‘ruffians,’ the latter were in fact policemen, a detail which makes all the difference. For at this precise time, many revolutionary activists, faced with repression by Clemenceau’s men,14 wanted to have the firepower to defend themselves on equal terms against the forces of law and order – a point I shall return to later. Lastly, Citizen Browning figured in many memories of revolution, first that of the citizen combatant, directly exerting his sovereignty, rifle in hand, a key actor in the social republic of 1792, 1830, 1848 and 1871.15 Returning to 1792 helps us to establish the genealogy of the man-weapon hybrid. Ever so gradually, the pike in the sans-culotte’s hand evolved into an actor toiling for freedom, while being invested with demiurgic power, laying tyrants low and regenerating the nation. This power and this weapon were indissociable from the people bearing it, who eventually became identified with it: ‘the pike was the symbol of the sovereign people in arms and the new order. It was exalted, becoming the holy pike, and ended up designating the sans-culottes themselves,’ Albert Soboul writes.16 Then, in the mid-nineteenth century, the most famous revolutionary conflation of man

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with weapon appeared with the ‘intelligent bayonet,’ taken from Pierre Dupont’s Chant des soldats (1848): Soldiers, let us stop this horde! Threatening to invade, A Danube of blood, overflowing, All the past, all the future. Cannons with your gaping mouths Stop the Tsar’s march. Intelligent bayonets, Let us form a rampart for the idea.17 Starting from the stereotype of the citizen-soldier holding a rifle dispensing justice, up to and including tyrannicide, the songwriter then imperceptibly shifts to autonomous weapons – ‘cannons . . . stop the Tsar’s march’ – before closing on the explicit conflation of arm with bearer. Pierre Dupont did not invent the expression ‘intelligent bayonets,’ already in use around 1830 to designate the National Guard which, having risen against Charles X, was expected to throw its weight behind the ‘sovereignty of reason’ dear to Guizot. Still, Dupont did much to acclimatize it to the revolutionary imagination. ‘Citizen Browning’ thus ceases to be incongruous when we consider this motif in the light of over a hundred years of revolutionary memory and against the backdrop of the events of the moment when it emerged. Its banality, its commonplaceness, also stemmed from another realm, that of material culture. Since the late nineteenth century, firearms were traded almost without restriction, and can thus be considered as commonplace objects.

The mundanity of firearms To appreciate what was taking place in the law concerning weapons, including as part of social combat, let us look briefly at La Lutte Sociale, a short-lived a­ narchist journal that favoured ‘the propaganda of the deed.’ It sought to raise funds in 1886 by holding a tombola where the main prizes were: ‘a musket – a revolver – a ­pistol – a hunting knife’ then a ‘tobacco pot – a match holder – a pipe (in Siberian wood, Tatar origin) – a bottle of champagne – a bottle of old wine.’18 The journal was found guilty . . . of having held an unauthorized lottery, not of having p­ roposed as prizes arms which, since the law of 14 August  1885, could be freely traded and owned.19 The 1885 law sought to close a debate which went back to the abolition of privileges in 1789, before which the right to bear arms had been the exclusive preserve of the nobility. After the abolition of feudalism on 4 August 1789, were nobles to revert to the jus commune, with everyone forbidden from bearing arms? Or, on the contrary, following the example of the American Republic, was this a natural right to be extended to all?20 The second approach won, even though the

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gradual introduction of a variety of exceptions subsequently made the actual bearing of arms more complicated.21 Among those banned from carrying weapons were convicted criminals, and all people in fairs, trains, markets or at election assemblies. The trade and manufacture of weapons were also closely controlled, until the law of 14 August  1885 extensively liberalized this market. Only the trade in ‘reglementary’ arms (i.e. those provided to the French army) was monitored – which did not, however, mean that it was impossible to procure them. Although citizens could henceforth purchase virtually any handgun or rifle, bearing arms remained a complicated matter, for this law still forbade ‘offensive, hidden, or secret arms,’ a vague and negotiable formula. In short, under the Third Republic, while bearing arms was considered to be a right governed by complex, not to say obscure, legal rules, the trade in and possession of virtually any individual arm was guaranteed by the 1885 law which, in the eyes of the French arms lobby, would later seem a golden age.22 An illustration of this banalization is afforded by the emblematic catalogue of the Manufacture française d’armes et cycles de Saint-Étienne. Over 120 handguns plus their munitions were on sale, ranging from an ultra-compact pocket revolver for selfdefence, the ‘Gaulois,’ to a terrifying 12-round revolver, the ‘Explorateur.’ Cheap revolvers were available for a dozen francs, but they were obsolete and short on power, disparagingly described as ‘jokers’ by La Guerre Sociale. For 45 francs you could acquire a French army-issue revolver. Imported guns were more expensive, a German Mauser pistol cost 90 francs, and a Browning between 45 and 90 francs.23 Good quality guns were thus fairly expensive, and price would appear to have been the main limiting factor on the number of people buying them, even though there was a lively market in used arms from second-hand dealers.24 In an open arms market, why choose specifically a Browning, rather than some other model, such as a ‘Citizen Colt,’ or a generic type even, a ‘Citizen Revolver,’ for example? First of all, a precise reference and specific brand of automatic pistol has a strong effet de réel, anchoring the colourful figure of ‘Citizen Browning’ in the possibility of really carrying this gun. As Hervé noted in introducing this motif, Brownings were produced under licence in Belgium, one of the countries with the freest trade in weapons, thereby guaranteeing a smuggled supply if the law changed in France. But in addition to its availability, and its simple materiality, the success of the Browning may also be explained by the imaginative meanings vested in it though advertisements and by the media regime. When these automatic pistols first appeared in the pages of the Saint-Étienne catalogue, the sales description considerably exaggerated their power, rapidity, ease of handling, safety, and range. The 7.65mm Browning was, for example, ascribed an effective distance of 600 metres, an instance of marketing hyperbole, not ballistic fact.25 Judging by these sales texts, which became more measured over the following years, Brownings, Mausers and Lugers – which were also on sale but a lot more expensive – were endowed with a firepower hitherto unknown for revolvers, thus promising revolutionaries greater firepower than the police. At the same time, an American stereotype was at work, that of the city-dwelling private detective, a rebellious dispenser of justice,

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embodied by the dime novel character Nick Carter, a detective who never set foot outside without his Browning. These detective serials, translated into French in 1907, met with considerable success, with 171 titles being published by 1914.26 ‘Citizen Browning’ was thus a motif packed with meaning at the intersection of material culture and the social imagination. The final section of this chapter will now turn to the question of practice, examining the role that guns played in social struggles during Clemenceau’s radical republic.

Did Citizen Browning exist? When Gustave Hervé asserted that the Browning was a ‘remarkable instrument of emancipation and resistance against police violence,’ he was summing up an opinion shared by many activists in the social movement. Between 1905 and 1910, activists acquired guns at an unparalleled rate. A few months before the appearance of ‘Citizen Browning,’ protests at Draveil, at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, and against the execution of the Catalan anarchist Francisco Ferrer were doubtless among the most heavily armed in the history of the Third Republic prior to 1934.27 Protests against the monopoly on legitimate physical violence culminated in the assertion of the right to bear arms to ‘fight on equal terms in the event of being attacked’ by the police, in the words of a trade unionist from Brest in 1909.28 When Hervé had ‘Citizen Browning’ saying how unbearable it was to see ‘free men . . . beaten with truncheons, struck by sabres, or revolverized,’ he was illustrating how the most determined activists thought in terms of an unbroken continuum in the violent use of weapons by the forces of order, running from truncheons to revolvers. Indeed, truncheons were considered to be murderous ‘skull crackers,’ just as dangerous as a firearm. In facing such deadly truncheons, the Browning was deemed a legitimate form of self-defence for activists, a proportionate riposte.29 Still, it was rare for protesters to discharge their firearms. Between 1905 and 1910, a dozen policemen and soldiers received gunshot wounds fired by the social movement  – one fatally. Handguns were more often exhibited and brandished than actually used. For instance, at Villeneuve Saint-Georges on 5 June  1908, nearly 2,000 demonstrators attended the funeral of a striker who had been killed by gendarmes. During this very tense demonstration, marked by the presence of anarchists, the authorities maintained a prudent distance, as was traditional during political funerals, and were incapable of responding to the lively provocation of this determined cortege. Many protesters wore a red dog rose in their buttonhole, and ‘most were armed with clubs and had revolvers in their pockets,’ the police noted with concern. A police captain looked on helplessly as the authority of the Republic was humiliated, ‘the sub-prefect had his sash ripped off; one of the demonstrators waved his revolver in his face on several occasions, proffering threats.’30 This eminently seditious contestation of the Republic’s authority and its monopoly on violence illustrates how it was possible, gun in hand, to subversively exert one’s portion of sovereignty, in an ephemeral minor-key rerun of the insurgent citizen of the first half of the nineteenth century. Additionally, these particular activists were

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convinced that fighting with a Browning in their hand could potentially crack open insurrectional breaches: ‘the revolution starts with blows of a whistle, and continues with revolver fire. It finishes with rifle fire,’ Hervé wrote.31 Thus, the fact of taking up arms could be enough to transform an individual, even briefly, into a revolutionary activist. This is one of the possible meanings of the expression ‘Citizen Browning,’ positing the determining influence the arm had on its bearer. The topic had been one of intense debate among revolutionary movements since the pikes of 1792 and the ‘intelligent bayonets’ of 1848, and at the end of the nineteenth century was acquiring renewed topicality with references to ‘liberating rifles’ and ‘revolutionary rifles.’32 But ‘Citizen Browning’ was the first time a civilian arm embodied this potential for emancipatory action, resulting from the conflation of man with weapon. All these highly imagistic figures echo a central issue in the study of ‘material culture’: the use of an object cannot be reduced to the materialization of some a priori meaning, no more than it translates the sole will of the person bearing it. Objects in action are caught up in a ‘hand-to-hand’ interaction between object and bearer.33 The object may resist, dissent, or be reinterpreted via its usage. Bruno Latour, taking precisely the example of guns, has tackled this topic head on in Pandora’s Hope to ‘understand precisely what things make us do.’ He concludes that action is the product of a ‘fusion,’ a ‘composite’ man-weapon: ‘which of them, then, the gun or the citizen, is the actor in this situation? Someone else (a citizen-gun, a gun-citizen). . . . This “someone else,” the hybrid actor comprising . . . gun and gunman.’34 This is exactly what ‘Citizen Browning’ suggests. Once reinserted in this long genealogy, situated in the context of the struggles of pre-First World War France, and examined in the light of present-day questions in the social sciences, Citizen Browning suddenly seems a lot less bizarre.

Epilogue: Citizen Browning retreats from view Nevertheless, the existence of Citizen Browning was fleeting, and the figure suddenly disappeared from the columns of La Guerre Sociale barely one year after first appearing. Nor did it return, notably, during the Bonnot Gang affair of 1912. For this unusual citizen was an immediate anachronism, being born at the precise moment when self-defence with equal firepower came to be seen as a dead-end, disappearing in favour of the ‘trustworthy men’ (hommes de confiance) of the SFIO – the first modern security unit in France.35 This shift was part of a larger trend described by Anne-Marie Sohn, who has demonstrated that a transition occurred in the nineteenth century between ‘two regimes of masculinity,’ the first ‘offensive,’ the second ‘controlled,’ a shift which, she argues, was particularly chaotic from the 1860s to the 1900s.36 Be that as it may, the role weapons played in revolutionary circles stretches the period of ‘offensive’ masculinity a little further, up to the 1910s, demonstrating the coexistence of two ‘regimes of masculinity’ – as also shown by ‘Citizen Browning,’ a figure seeking to hitch violence to sangfroid, virility to the self-possession of the armed citizen. But

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it needs emphasizing that in the early twentieth century, the aggressive masculinity of the first half of the nineteenth century was in its dying phase, hence ‘Citizen Browning’ had but a fleeting existence. After the First World War, it was unthinkable for ‘Citizen Browning’ to return, as Communists asserted the inevitability of ‘armed uprising’ and the need for ‘selfdefence.’ Postwar revolutionaries no longer had any fascination with firearms. The pistol was now associated symbolically with officers, a militarist artefact. The mangun hybrid was abandoned to pro-fascist groups, the only ones to adopt it, though in ways wholly incomparable to the figure of ‘Citizen Browning.’ In the case of the far right, there is no subversive wielding of an individual share of sovereignty against state violence to be detected. Instead, one witnesses a disturbing bodily interaction with a machine gun compared to a femme fatale, and fascination with a revolver promoting leader worship and an apologia for a warmongering mystique.37 Lastly, the material and legal conditions pertaining to weapons continued to evolve during the interwar period. In the 1920s, laws on owning and bearing handguns became even more complex, even more hesitant (with gunsmiths being gradually asked to keep a register of purchases), and introduced even more numerous exceptions. Importing handguns had been forbidden since a decree of 22 March 1917. Many traders got around this by claiming to be running down old stock, which was, in fact, smuggled in from Spain or Belgium.38 The contrast in the Saint-Étienne catalogue is flagrant, which now only offered a few locally produced handguns for sale, rather than several hundred models.39 The political crisis of the 1930s resulted in a decisive turn. Weapons were increasingly controlled under the decree of 29 March 1934, with gun purchases being more closely monitored, and further restrictions on carrying them being introduced, particularly pistols and revolvers. Next came the legal decree of 23 October 1935, obliging all those possessing a firearm to declare it at the préfecture. This was followed by the law of 10 January 1936, on the dissolution of combat groups who ‘would provoke armed demonstrations in the street (Article 1).’ Finally, the Daladier decrees of 1939, issued against the backdrop of imminent war, banished weapons from everyday contexts, thereby turning the norm on its head. The status of all weapons now depended on the French Ministry of Defence.40 These new legal dispositions, which still largely frame present-day legislation, made it considerably harder to carry and possess arms. Apart from hunting weapons, possessing and carrying firearms (especially handguns) became the exception rather than a right, the exclusive preserve of the military authorities – and hence increasingly incongruous in the public domain. These decrees amounted to a large-scale break with a revolutionary legacy dating back more than a century, which had finally recognized the right to arms. But this legacy, legitimized above all by the right to property and the possibility for ‘good’ citizens to protect themselves against crime, also authorized the presence – albeit often ghostly, intermittent and threadbare  – of various shades of citizen-combatant in the first half of the nineteenth century, cropping up now and then in minor key in the field of politics. With the decrees of 1939, the Daladier government settled the matter, adjudicating that

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the presence of arms in daily life, in the public domain, and hence in politics, was illegitimate. ‘Citizen Browning’ and its main enigma, the man-gun hybrid, this ‘someone else’ emerging from the ‘hand-to-hand contact with the object,’ has not entirely disappeared, however. To conclude this discussion, we can briefly mention two examples echoing it in more recent times. During the ‘years of lead’ in Italy, the Red Brigades called on their ‘Comrade P-38.’41 In referring to this specific gun, these militants were placing themselves in a line of legitimate resistance, for P-38s were Wehrmacht-issue pistols captured by partisans, who then passed them on to the Red Brigades. More recently, and more directly, the question of knowing whether a gun is a neutral object wholly subservient to its bearer, or if someone else appears when a gun is taken up, is at the heart of current controversies surrounding the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the United States. Against widespread opposition, the NRA argues that the gun is in no way to blame, and it is the person bearing it who has solely responsibility. This is the main argument it puts forward against any changes to the law. Devised in comparable circumstances – the legitimate everyday presence of guns – the fanciful ‘Citizen Browning’ points to the contrary; and this, assuredly, suggests we should take this figure seriously.

Notes 1 In French, the third-person singular pronoun il (meaning he or it) is used to refer to male individuals and to masculine nouns (such as citoyen, citizen). Hervé can thus maintain the conflation between man and object, in a way that is not possible in English. A similar conflation is possible with the possessive pronouns (sa, son, ses, meaning his or its). Consequently, the inelegant he/it and his/its are used to maintain this ambivalence. 2 La Guerre Sociale, 27 April–3 May 1910. 3 Gilles Heuré, Gustave Hervé. Itinéraire d’un provocateur. De l’antipatriotisme au pétainisme (Paris: La Découverte, 1997), p. 124. 4 Anne-Marie Sohn, “Sois un homme!”. La construction de la masculinité au XIXe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 2009). 5 La Guerre Sociale, 5–11 October 1910. 6 La Guerre Sociale, 4–10 May  1910, 11–17 May  1910. The expression Hervé uses in French is mettre du plomb dans la tête. This has two meanings: to make someone see sense, and to put a (lead) bullet in their head. 7 La Guerre Sociale, 27 April–3 May 1910. The expression Hervé uses in French is l’élu de notre coeur. This has two meanings: figuratively, it means ‘the love of our life’, but more literally, it can refer back to the editorial of 24 April 1910, speaking of the wished-for elected representative. 8 La Guerre Sociale, 1910–1911. 9 La Bataille Syndicaliste, 2 October 1912. 10 Dominique Kalifa, L’Encre et le sang, Récits de crimes et société à la Belle Époque (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 132–136. 11 La Guerre Sociale, 4–10 May 1910. 12 La Guerre Sociale, 11–17 May 1910. 13 Kalifa, L’Encre et le sang, p. 132. 14 Jacques Julliard, Clemenceau, briseur de grèves (Paris: Gallimard “Archives”, 1973); Anne Steiner, Le Goût de l’émeute. Manifestations et violences de rue dans Paris et sa banlieue à la “Belle Époque” (Paris: L’Échappée, 2013).

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15 Louis Hincker, Citoyens-combattants à Paris (1848–1851) (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2008). 16 Albert Soboul, Les Sans-culottes parisiens en l’an II (Paris: Librairie Clavreuil, 1958), p. 653. 17 Pierre Dupont, Le Chant des soldats (Paris: L’Auteur, 1848). 18 La Lutte Sociale, 26 September 1886. 19 Entry for DERVIEUX Jean, Célestin [Dictionnaire des anarchistes] by Jean Maitron, completed by Laurent Gallet and Rolf Dupuy, , version published online on 10 March 2014, last modified on 7 May 2014. 20 Bernard Gainot, ‘Aux armes, citoyens! Questions autour du droit naturel et du monopole de la violence dans la période de transition 1770–1795’, La Révolution française, 9 (2015), published online on 16 November 2015. . 21 Paul Renard, Les Armes et la loi pénale (Paris: Sirey, 1911). 22 André Collet, Les Armes (Paris: PUF, 1986). 23 Manufacture française d’armes et cycles (Saint-Étienne), catalogue for the years 1895, 1903, and 1912. 24 Renard, Les Armes et la loi pénale, p. 148. 25 Manufacture française d’armes et cycles (Saint-Étienne), 1903, p. 154. The practical range of a handgun is a few dozen meters. 26 Dominique Kalifa, Histoire des détectives privés en France (1832–1942) (Paris: Nouveau Monde éditions, 2007), p. 110. 27 Éric Fournier, La Critique des armes. Une histoire d’objets révolutionnaires sous la IIIe République (Paris: Libertalia, 2019), pp. 161–164. 28 Archives Nationales (AN) F/7/ 13053: listes d’anarchistes, propagande, surveillance, congrès (1897–1921), rapport du 11 novembre 1909. 29 Fournier, La Critique des armes, pp. 169–171. 30 Archives départementales (AD) Val-de-Marne, Mi 716: rapports de gendarmerie maijuin 1908, 5 juin 1908, correspondant spécial de la préfecture; AN F/7/ 12914: Grève de Draveil-Vigneux (1908–1909). Historique de la grève et de ses causes, événements du 2 juin 1908, interpellation à la Chambre, rapports de la gendarmerie (1908), rapport du 4 juin, Sabatier commissaire spécial adjoint en charge à Vigneux. 31 La Guerre Sociale, 10–16 March 1909. 32 AN F/7/ 13326: antimilitarism and sabotage. Rapports d’ensemble (1912); AN F/7/ 12910: surveillance des menées antimilitaristes et procédures judiciaires (1905–1908), affiche antimilitariste ‘Bravo l’armée antimilitariste’ (1907). 33 Marie-Pierre Julien and Jean-Pierre Warnier (eds.), Corps-à-corps avec l’objet. Approches de la culture matérielle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999). 34 Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 179–180. 35 Danielle Tartakowsky, Le Pouvoir est dans la rue. Crises politiques et manifestations en France (Paris: Aubier, 1998), p. 48. 36 Sohn, ‘Sois un homme!’ pp. 389–421. 37 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, La Bataille de Tripoli (Milan: Edizioni futuriste di “poesia”, 1912), p. 19; Marcel Bucard, ‘Mon Revolver’, Le Franciste, 20 January 1935. 38 AN F/7/14671. Antimilitarisme: rapports, dossier de presse (1907–1912) – Contrebande d’armes: note de la direction générale des douanes (1920) – Application de la législation concernant les armes, correspondance (1934). 39 Manufacture française d’armes et cycles (Saint-Étienne), catalogue for the years 1919, 1925, and 1934. 40 Collet, Les Armes, pp. 7–13. 41 Isabelle Sommier, La Violence politique et son deuil, l’après 68 en France et en Italie (Rennes: PUR, 2008).

13 BRINGING AUDIBLE PROPAGANDA INTO THE EVERYDAY The politicization of the phonograph record from its origins to the SERP, 1888–2000 Jonathan Thomas

Those conquering or wielding political power have always known that song and oratory are powerful instruments for acting on crowds or the listening public, persuading them to support their projects to change the world or to preserve its current organization. These political uses of sound have been recently investigated alongside parallel phenomenon in the emerging field of sound studies.1 The chapter by Adrien Quièvre earlier in this volume on one episode of the use of sound in a workers’ resistance movement is itself an example of this development. When it is used to secure or to exercise power of party or state institutions, sound, whether broadcast over loudspeakers or radio, or produced by singers and orators, communicates ideas, but above all it moves its listeners affectively. It plays a part in winning their adherence, and in predisposing them to act for a political project. From this point of view, one could say that sound has its own political power. Yet, before the invention of techniques for recording and reproducing sound in the late nineteenth century, this power could only be used in the exceptional environment of meetings, parades and demonstrations, and the subsequent development of mass audio media. These developments made it possible to think of the political power of sound in terms of its potential for mass diffusion in time and space, and to come up with new usages for it. In particular, sound could be included in a set of practices that seem to be involved in creating what Jacques Ellul calls the ‘continuity of propaganda,’2 whose aim is to ‘slowly create a climate first, and then prevent the individual from noticing a particular propaganda operation in contrast to ordinary daily events.’3 This introduction of sound propaganda into everyday life took place in two ways: first, through the multiplication of events where sound propaganda could be used thanks to the spread of the technical means of sound reproduction; second, through the penetration of these objects into the private space of the home as means of family entertainment, as one might describe the diafilms described by Alexandra Ilina in the next chapter in this volume.

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Henceforth dependent on being relayed by technical means, this new and soon ordinary audio power should be termed more precisely the political power of recorded sound. It became contingent on the state of social and technical development of the media used to broadcast it, and on the practices to which it gave rise. A history of the practices of recorded audio propaganda thus needs to be grounded in the history of audio media and practices,4 and of those who produced these new objects for political communication. This chapter sketches a brief history focusing primarily on 78-rpm and vinyl discs that were used to disseminate political ideas and projects throughout the twentieth century. Developed outside of the field of political practices as objects for entertainment but also for education, these were most often used by the institutions of parties which were not in power and which sought to achieve it. In this context, these objects are viewed as attempts to insert propaganda into the everyday soundscape. As a result, I will not here analyze the reception of the recordings under consideration, looking instead at how they were originally conceived and what intentions lay behind them. To this end, this chapter examines the main labels producing what I, in the wake of Pascal Cordereix and Antoine Provensal, will be referring to as ‘political records,’5 defined as records produced at the initiative of political or trade union agents and/or organizations.6 Consideration of the United States of America, where recordings of political speeches were produced as early as 1896, allows us to understand better the historical trajectory of political recordings in France.7 We shall then see how the political power of recorded sound evolved depending on its kind – oral discourse or music – the extent to which records are a mass media, and the resulting listening practices. In the course of this chapter, we shall see that records were objects which lead us to concentrate our research, not just on discourse or words but also on all kinds of sounds once they were invested with political power.

A prehistory of political recordings – from the exception to the rule In late 1877, Thomas Edison filed a US patent for the phonograph, a prelude to the production of the first commercial machine capable of recording sounds on a tinfoil sheet and playing them back. Most of the usages Edison envisaged were centred on conversation and reproducing the human voice, and were not for entertainment purposes. Just six months later, in France, Pierre Giffard came up with ideas related to the political usages of recorded sound: For official speeches by the head of state, for any proclamation by the government, instead of turning to the Imprimerie Nationale to print the speech, it will suffice to have it reproduced by galvanoplasty and dispatched to all the towns, equipped in advance with a verified official phonograph. The mayor will operate the apparatus and the population gathered on the village square will hear the revered tones of the head of government.8

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But the first phonographs were not yet technically mature. They were heavy, the media used were not interchangeable, and the sound reproduction poor. As a result, their first uses were limited to experimental functions. It was not until 1888 that a perfected version of the phonograph went on sale, now using a cylinder as the medium, paving the way to the uses imagined by Edison and Giffard. Indeed, political speeches immediately started to be recorded – and have continued to be so through to the present day. In October 1888, news spread that the former British prime minister, William Gladstone, wished to engrave one of his speeches on a few cylinders. He wanted his words to be heard in places where he could not be present, but he also sought to conserve and transmit his oratory after his death.9 The following year, members of the Italian parliament experimented, to their satisfaction, with recording their debates.10 In 1902 Abbé Magne, a parliamentary candidate for the département of the Lot, was apparently the first person in France to use the phonograph as part of an election campaign. But Magne did not only use it to compensate for his absence,11 since he would sometimes stand next to the machine while it played back his speech.12 As for the leader of Action Libérale, Jacques Piou, who recorded himself in 1909, he wished to increase the opportunities for being heard during political meetings, and to draw on the vogue for the phonograph to attract a curious audience, while making the cylinder of his speech a readily available merchandise.13 Though Magne’s and Piou’s usages were probably the first of their kind in France, US presidential campaigns since 1896 provided precedents. Piou may have taken his inspiration from the 1908 campaign, apparently the first to attract the attention of the French press, which reported on its phonographic productions.14 Richard Bauman writes that the Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan recorded several speeches, with the support of the National Phonograph Company founded by Edison.15 Bauman notes that several articles in the Edison Phonograph Monthly, a journal for Edison’s sellers, emphasized how, thanks to the phonograph, people could listen to Bryan’s public oratory at home, thus enjoying the privilege of listening in private.16 This privilege was enjoyed on a massive scale, with 600,000 cylinders being sold, so actually it was not exclusive as the advertisements implied. But it played a part in defining social connotations and assumptions concerning the audio diffusion of political ideas. Its effectiveness in this role still resided in the exceptional, extraordinary character attributed to it, despite being a mass domestic phenomenon. Whether used at home or at political meetings, recorded sound acquired political power by being out of the ordinary. It was still a rare occurrence testifying to the power of science, capturing the listeners’ attention. But the advent of the audio disc or ‘record’ in the modern sense would soon help make recorded sound commonplace, altering the way its political power was imagined to work in practice. Audio discs appeared in 1887 and, in the following decades, adopted different formats. Most of these competing formats disappeared during the 1910s. In this same period, discs supplanted the cylinder and supported the emergence of recording technologies as a mass product.17 The only format at the time were discs with a

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diameter of 10 to 12 inches (25-30 cm), read at a speed which stabilized at 78 rpm in the mid-1920s, containing 3 to 5 minutes of sound on each side. Those discs rapidly became a primarily musical medium, thus taking part in a profound change in the socialization of music and in how people listened to it.18 Records became a mass media by being musical rather than verbal, emerging as an everyday object with strong social effects. In 1909, the Association Phonique des Grands Artistes (APGA), which subsequently launched a series of royalist (1910)19 and republican (1911)20 records, came to an agreement with the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO: known informally as the Socialist Party) to commercialize a series of records of political songs. This series, going under the name of the ‘socialist phonograph’21 or ‘phonograph with a conscience,’22 was sold by mail order through the socialist newspaper L’Humanité and its bookshop. A two-page advertisement presented the APGA offer, setting out arguments for buying it.23 The terms of sale for the phonograph and the records were devised for affordability. A selection of 100 records of opera arias, dances, songs and ‘declamations’ (mainly readings) accompanied the 17 records of political songs. These could make up all or part of the total purchase of ten records stipulated under the terms of sale. It was up to purchasers whether they bought any political records, which were not clearly distinguished from generalist ones. This non-differentiation might be attributable to the business agreement concluded between the APGA, whose aim was to sell records, and the SFIO, who wanted to win new adherents. But it may also be noted that the power of political records, rather than being openly celebrated, was evoked only in discrete terms: the advertisement published in L’Humanité starts by stating that ‘socialists should not neglect any means of propaganda,’ thereby presenting political songs as relatively unimportant for the moment, perhaps in comparison to other forms of propaganda such as public speeches or the press. The implicit suggestion was that this form of propaganda was more indirect than cylinder recordings of speeches. And it was deployed by the SFIO for precisely this reason: according to the advertisement, ‘propaganda through song is one of the most discreetly suggestive and thus best.’ The mission of the socialist phonograph was thus to ‘[popularize] socialist tunes just as others’ had been previously, especially ‘in circles where friends meet on Sundays,’ outside the framework of political meetings or trade union festivities. It was thus a way of boosting the presence of the Socialist Party and its symbols in daily life, by passing them off as music rather than as political ideas. In this, we may detect the emergence of a new form of propaganda through recorded sound, operating more from the perspective of leisure than political struggle, whose effectiveness was rooted in winning listeners over through entertainment rather than via direct mobilization. Irrespective of the terms of the partnership between the APGA and political parties, its series of records of political songs confirms that by the early twentieth century, recorded sound was thought of as a way to expand the social and temporal field of propaganda beyond the ambit of political gatherings, as the case of Bryan had already suggested. But it also shows that recordings and the promise they held

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for the future were reconfiguring how the political power of recorded sound was conceived. This power no longer resided solely in the exceptionality of listening to the orator’s voice as a kind of rarity or privilege but instead in repeatedly listening to political songs without giving them one’s full, conscious attention. By 1909, then, lessons were being drawn from the ongoing musicalization of records and the possibilities this offered for reaching a mass audience, thus shifting audio propaganda away from political meetings and turning it into an ordinary musical background. This new way of thinking about the political power of recorded sound was lasting. It was boosted by a major technical development in the 1920s, namely the electrification of audio recording and playback.

The first political record labels – from speeches to songs The electrification of sound recording and playback was a technical leap forward that also had consequences for political practices. In terms of sound reproduction, electricity made loudspeakers possible, which were used for political purposes as of 1924, amplifying in both a literal and figurative sense the possible uses of sound for political purposes.24 At the same time, in terms of recording, electricity made microphones and electromechanical recording possible, replacing purely mechanical recording.25 The sound produced by discs became clear, voices and instruments were easier to hear, and the layers of sound could be distinguished. Reproductions of recorded sound thus became easier to understand, and listening more pleasant. Lastly, records became cheaper and more readily available to the general population. Sophie Maisonneuve argues that, though records were still expensive, ‘the construction of a mass market’ took place during the interwar period.26 Thus, in the 1920s everything was in place to intensify the audio dimension of mass political practices. It was in 1929 that records took their full place in this technological and political shift, with the emergence of a company dedicated to this task, with a lasting catalogue of records produced by them and structured as a series.27 La Voix des Nôtres (LVDN), founded by the propagandists Jean-Lorris and Compère-Morel, announced its arrival in the pages of the Populaire, the Socialist Party’s daily newspaper, with an advertising campaign whose intensity suggests a desire to reach a mass audience. Its records were principally sold by mail order subscription through the Populaire, at the ERSA store in Paris, and at the Librairie populaire in the Socialist Party’s headquarters on Rue Victor Massé in Paris. In early February  1930, Compère-Morel wrote in the Populaire, in capital letters, that 5000 LVDN records had been shipped.28 LVDN advertisements generally presented its repertoire and offers, together with the settings in which the records could be listened to: political gatherings, party-political meetings, as well as in the family circle – producers of records were particularly keen on this latter setting, perhaps because they deemed it well-suited to anchoring and transmitting political sensibilities and ideas.29 The first LVDN catalogue, from early 1930, provides an overview of the AGPA series of audio discs and cylinders of speeches, and hence of the various ways of drawing on recorded sound. It comprised 22 recordings of speeches by the main

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socialist orators, two pieces of music from the socialist repertoire, and 16 pieces of varied music. A guide on how to use its records and phonographs gave advice on how to programme and conduct an LVDN listening session, both for political meetings and for the family circle.30 They seem to conceive listening to political records as both an entertaining and an instructive experience. The seventh of the guide’s ‘commandments’ thus recommends ‘To avoid tiring your listeners, pleasantly alternate between discs of speech recordings, of songs, and of orchestras. Compose and vary your programs.’31 The LVDN thus apparently based the political power of audio in an economy of attention and entertainment, in which the fatigue caused by concentrating while listening to political speech, hence useful listening, is regulated by the mental repose procured by music. Having thus fixed the means for political records to be effective, the guidelines generate a strategy of adapting the various types of content – songs, dance music, political speeches and performances – to the types of audience and occasions for listening foreseen by the LVDN producers. In 1931, its catalogue was structured into various series, each with a particular function: La Voix des Nôtres including socialist propaganda speeches; La Voix du Travail including trade union propaganda speeches; Les Chants du Monde du Travail comprising songs for listening to with the family or during festivities.32 A new series, ‘Hier et demain’ (Yesterday and tomorrow), was intended to attract the young to socialism and dispense instruction.33 It was composed solely of speech/music pairings, aestheticizing political speech by bringing it into resonance with the music.34 This attempt was short-lived. Between 1932 and Germany’s occupation of France in 1940, when the LVDN suspended its activity, the company brought out 18 new records of speeches and 36 records of music, and reissued 24 records of speeches and 36 of music, but it published no further speech/music pairings. This decision seems to have been based on a rejection of combining the aesthetics of oratory and the aesthetics of music as a way of communicating political ideas more forcefully. It also seems to stem from the stabilization of record-based propaganda practices. On the one hand, political speeches were associated with meetings, and songs and music with festivities, and the ‘artistic’ parts of meetings involving singing, listening to music or theatre, but also and especially with domestic settings.35 Perhaps this may be explained by the need to adapt to activities and practices situated in these places for political records to retain their effectiveness. In seeking to exert its political power in an everyday family setting, the LVDN needed to adapt to this leisure-time context, and the attendant practice of distracted listening. In a world that was changing due to the socialization of technical objects for recording and reproducing sound, distracted listening emerged with the mass takeup of loudspeaker apparatus, namely the phonograph and wireless. In the 1930s, distracted listening started to be stigmatized as a practice that stimulated the affects to the detriment of the intellect and critical analysis, thus leaving the listener vulnerable to propaganda.36 From this perspective, the insertion of a carefully selected

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speech into a period of distracted listening could only be beneficial to a political organization. Precedence was given to music, however, as an object of leisure and an entertaining audio garb for other activities. Music thus became the means for daily education in political adhesion, based less on the history and ideas of a political project than on the affective and aesthetic transmission of its worldview and assumptions. Given that listening to a political record was intended to shape the listener into a permanent adherent of the cause, it appears that the SFIO conceived of this listening subject less as a thinking being than as a feeling being, and a docile one at that. This shift of focus of audio propaganda towards music and its affective and evocative power appear complete, for the 1930s, in the catalogue of Le Chant du Monde (LCDM), devised as part of the Popular Front’s cultural policy.37 Launched at the very end of 1937, the LCDM did not publish any political speeches, only music and a few political songs. It may nevertheless be considered to be a political record label. It was set up under the wing of the French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français or PCF) with the assistance of Léon Moussinac, and shared certain political objectives, as well as some of the musicians credited for its catalogue with the Fédération Musicale Populaire, a wing of the Popular Front that promoted education in and through music.38 Thus, the LCDM catalogue contained some proletarian and Soviet songs, and above all 28 French folk songs arranged by contemporary composers who were Communists or else close to the party.39 They were intended to provide the working public with music that was both popular and learned, accessible without being easy, and which could play a part in the aesthetic and intellectual edification of the people. A record thus did not have to be a recording of an orator’s voice or a song associated with the cause in order to be conceived as a political record.40 By serving the Communist Party’s cultural policy and, by extension, the Popular Front, the LCDM could help it attain its educational goal, together with other types of political objective. For example, it distributed several records of Spanish and Catalan music published by the PCF’s ‘Éditions sociales internationales’ (‘International social publishers’), providing cultural support for Republican Spain. In the course of the 1930s, the divide thus became clear between speeches made at political gatherings, which were meant to transmit ideas directly, and the slower process, mixed in with the everyday, whereby music set to transmit affects and to mould political conceptions and assumptions. This separation continued after the Second World War, driven by major technical and industrial developments.

The era of vinyl – from the explicit to the implicit The years of war and occupation forced the LVDN and the LCDM to suspend their activities. But they reappeared in 1945 in largely similar form to before the war; though it would appear the LVDN stopped publishing recordings of speeches. The format of records was for the moment unchanged, though it evolved in the mid-1940s, upending the recording industry and scaling up its social effects to an

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unparalleled level. Vinyl discs now had microgrooves which could be read at a slower speed of 33 or 45 rpm, giving a longer playing format of about 10 to 50 minutes per side. There were continual improvements to sound quality. In the early 1960s, records became the main medium for the mass consumption of music, as much as and whenever the listener wanted.41 They were sold in record sleeves that could illustrate its sound with images, emphasize the aesthetic approach behind it, express the identity of a label, a musical style, or performer, and provide information about its content via sometimes very detailed sleeve notes.42 The sleeve thus played an important part in how the record was perceived and received, both preparing and acting as an extension to the intellectual and aesthetic listening conditions. In addition to enveloping the disc, it enveloped the meaning listeners would attribute to it by providing a particular perspective on how to understand it. For all these reasons, records became even better suited for the dissemination of what we might call ‘political cultures’ in the sense of the interlinked groups of ideas, behavioural norms, practices, signs and aesthetics associated with a political organization. What is more, it was a genuine mass medium that was easy to produce, thus making political records cheaper and more practical. The ease with which records could be produced meant it was no longer necessary to sell very large numbers, meaning it could now occupy niche editorial positions. The 1960s and 1970s saw political record companies such as Unicité, the LCDM, and Société d’Etudes et de Relations Publiques (SERP) exploiting these new qualities. Unicité, set up in 1972 by the PCF, was an audio-visual company which mainly produced flexi-discs, always with at least one speech, at times accompanied by a music track.43 These records were cheap and mass produced during elections, for example, or to support strikes, in volumes of 120,000 or more at times. They were distributed in the local press, door-to-door or in letterboxes, and were intended for individual, not collective listening. These records were produced in the wake of exceptional events, in which they sought to involve the listener. Unicité records acquired their political power through being both a mass object and an exceptional object with a short timeframe – the exact opposite of LCDM records. Seized during the occupation as a Jewish asset, the LCDM resumed operations after 1945.44 It continued to be very close to the PCF and to publish records which could be linked to elements of party cultural policy. Mention should be made of records by Soviet performers and composers, of which there were many in the 1950s and 1960s, and records by communist singers or those identified as left wing, such as Atahualpa Yupanqui, Colette Magny and Léo Ferré, or else those associated with the American folk revival, such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.45 The LCDM thus sought to embody a popular and internationalist alternative to what, before the war, had been deemed bourgeois musical products, and were now decried as capitalist, commercial or imperialist. At the same time, it expanded the musical spectrum covered by its catalogue. Through the range of different musical genres they published, which corresponded to as many different political signs, LCDM records were the most fully developed form of leisure political records. They were designed to disseminate tirelessly, on a daily basis, the aesthetic forms of

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political cultures, to listeners with varied musical tastes. This project was adapted to a world where unparalleled volumes of recorded music were being listened to, and where this music was a powerful tool in the identity definitions of different social groups. Political music records became established as objects which could operate over a long timeframe, capable of becoming objects of memory and emotional attachment. In this they differed once again from records of speeches, which worked on a short timeframe. It was also one consequence of their capacity to exist both within and without the political realm. The LCDM may thus be viewed as a fusion between a political record label and a generalist one. It sought to insert propaganda into daily life by giving it the form of a music whose signs were not immediately referenced as political: or, to put it another way, by making this musical propaganda ordinary. With SERP, this type of propaganda expanded to encompass the sounds of history.

SERP: from the marginal to the ordinary The SERP was a public relations company established in 1963, one of whose main founders and directors was the far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.46 Its initial business was a rapid failure, and a few weeks after being set up it opportunely converted into a record company. Up until 2000 it published records of military music, songs and great orators of the twentieth century, together, especially with historical records of songs and audio documents relating to the French far right and to European totalitarian regimes. The most significant part of SERP’s catalogue was vinyl LPs. It adopted audiocassettes in 1980 to republish some of its back catalogue and for new releases, turning similarly to CDs as of 1988. But these two formats lacked the thematic variety of SERP’s initial catalogue, and came with less informative sleeve notes than the vinyl discs. Vinyl is thus the format that best emblematizes the company’s production and manner of existence, and its editorial and political work is best characterized by its historical records. These records, whose educational function was promoted by Jean-Marie Le Pen,47 were also presented by SERP as objective and unbiased.48 They were available by mail order, from the SERP store in Paris, as well as in general outlets such as the FNAC.49 They were thus intended for daily use, potentially as part of the record collection of anyone who was curious about history, irrespective of their political preferences. Although in 1963 Le Pen had no party or institutional position, from the moment of its entry into the record business SERP was clearly a political record label, with an editorial line dictated by the interests of its boss, and more specifically his need to exist politically. This line initially corresponded to that of the vanquished of French Algeria, with whom Le Pen made common cause, addressing them through SERP and coming to their assistance. It then grew in scale, expanded and diversified, becoming a more effective instrument in the complementary fields of business and politics. SERP records were soon introduced into political practices, such as the losing 1964 presidential campaign by far-right candidate Jean-Louis

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Tixier-Vignancour, run by Le Pen. After this failure, Le Pen used SERP records to keep alive the sparse far-right political cultures on which he subsequently based his political practice with the Front National, the party he co-founded in 1972. SERP records were sold at party events or from the store at party headquarters. I have not been able to consult any company archives that may exist, and the sales figures remain a mystery. Le Pen himself gave some indications of order of magnitude, though these cannot be checked. He thus said that it took ‘ten years to sell the 2000 copies’50 of a record of papal speeches51 but equally that he had ‘done four records on the German army, which each sold over 100,000 copies.’52 But it is also known that the remaining SERP records, often vinyl, are still available today at affordable prices on online platforms, from individual sellers who do not necessarily adhere to their political content. They may also be collectables or memory objects. It is, however, certain that the company did not do very well. SERP drew on the mass market for records to exist as a niche publishing company. Its far-right marginality was a source of power that also threatened its existence. SERP existed in a context in which the French far right had been on the losing side from the Second World War through to the Algerian War, and where civil society opposed its resurgence, activities and positive memories. The same is true of European farright movements, especially Nazism, a criminal and ultimately genocidal occupying regime. Their cultural material was thus controversial, not to say toxic. Any use of this material was suspect and might lead to prosecution. Any SERP publication too readily identifiable as placing positive value on these cultures – that is to say, as propaganda – would thus imperil not only the company’s political power but also above all that of Le Pen himself. He was clearly identified as the head of this record company whose far-right character was denounced as of 1965.53 The SERP catalogue needed to be normalized as a matter of urgency, yet it was a theoretically tricky operation. It was necessary for the company to continue to exist, but without thereby ceasing to be recognized by far-right activist groups as a place that valued, propagated and reinvigorated their political cultures. This step became imperative in late 1968, when SERP was sentenced for having published Voix et chants de la révolution allemande, a record of Nazi songs whose outer sleeve and content, when taken as a whole, implied an apology for war crimes.54 The record was banned, and Le Pen, though not sentenced to prison, was fined. He then progressively altered the SERP catalogue to lend its editorial approach an apolitical and pluralist appearance. To Hitler, Mussolini, Pétain and the Action Française, it was now possible to oppose Israel, Lenin, de Gaulle and the Front Populaire.55 But safeguarding the political power of SERP records was also grounded in the ambiguous perception of its catalogue as both a compilation of audio documents and a collection of politicized records. This ambiguity was already orchestrated by Le Pen’s pronouncements and SERP advertisements, designating the political signs of the far right as purely historical or aesthetic content, that is, as apolitical loci of impartiality and artistic appreciation.56 It was furthered by the fragmentation of the political signifying power of SERP records, combining photos, sleeve notes, and audio content, acting as the pieces of a puzzle to assemble to perceive the grand

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plan which lay behind them. The evolution of the sleeve illustrations and notes of Voix et chants de la révolution allemande provides a first example of this. We unfortunately cannot reproduce the sleeve of this record here, since Le Pen, and the inheritors of the founders of the SERP, Léon Gaultier and Pierre Durand, retain the reproduction rights. Both the initial 1965 and subsequent, modified editions are, however, readily available on online auction sites, which provide images of them.57 On the front outer sleeve of the 1965 edition, Hitler may be seen ascending a flight of stairs, probably towards a celebration of his person and power, surrounded by flags and members of the Nazi Party. The sleeve notes on the back, on which the 1968 ruling placed particular emphasis, read as follows:58 The ascent to power of Adolph Hitler and the National Socialist party was characterized by a powerful mass movement, all in all popular and democratic, since he triumphed after regular electoral contests, a circumstance which is generally forgotten. In this phenomenon, the oratorical propaganda of Hitlerian leaders (chefs hitlériens) and political songs expressing a collective passion played a role. This record reproduces their spirit using original documents of inestimable historic value.59 On the front sleeve of the republished version, published after the trial, there is a change in perspective. Hitler has been replaced by the regimented mass of German soldiers ready to go to war. The lines of their ranks converge towards the platform at the centre, where the Führer stands, now invisible due to his distance from the camera, but nevertheless detectable by the power of attraction exerted by his presence, orchestrating the entire space. The representation of the glory of the Nazi regime and its leader is thus replaced by the representation of its order, its power and its devotion to a single man, whose charisma is no longer shown but suggested through the effects it has. In place of the original sleeve notes, the following words may be read, now found on all SERP records about Nazism: The publisher specifies that this has no apologetic purpose. The sole ambition in publishing these audio documents is to help, to whatever little extent, free men to better understand the history of their times. This different, and now legal version of the object deemed criminal in 1968, is careful to disrupt the signifying power of the system of signs the record sleeve and record bear. The figure of discord is no longer shown, and the listener is left to make his own choice, ranging from horror to fascination. The warning enjoins the listener to appreciate and understand the history of the Third Reich unabetted, that is say, without any moral appraisal or explanation by historians. The freedom which the record claims for the listener is a part of the appeal this record coyly exhibits. This precaution is, however, attributable to the 1968 ruling, and disappeared a few years later with, for example, the record Hitlerjugend; 1926–1945 (1976). The

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listener’s freedom of reception is phony, for the signs on the sleeve and record, which are more explicit and numerous than on the 1971 record, resonate more readily with one another, thereby encouraging a benevolent perception of Nazism. Since similar problems of copyright and reproduction apply in this case also, a short description must suffice, although again, this record sleeve is readily viewable on online auction platforms.60 The front is composed of six propaganda posters promoting the Hitler Youth (HJ [Hitlerjugend]). Each poster shows a different figurative design, in which red and brown predominate, each with its own slogan which generally calls on the viewer to join the Hitler Youth. On two of them, an adolescent boy beats a drum, on a third a similar figure sounds a bugle, on a fourth he holds a flag decorated with a swastika, a symbol which is present on five out of the six posters. On another, we see the head and shoulders of a model young girl, smiling, wearing a short-sleeved blouse and a tie, represented in three-quarter profile in front of a Nazi banner flying in the breeze. Finally, a poster shows the Führer’s hand in the foreground, over a group of youths in rank, carrying numerous flags. The record thus shows two ways which the Hitler Youth made themselves present through sound, as well as Hitler’s authority over them, their devotion to Nazism and its flag, and their openness to German girls. This record sleeve thus deploys an arsenal of symbols which assert that the future of Nazism resides in its youth, which represents its seed. Inside the folding sleeve is the warning quoted here, and notes describing the Hitler Youth in the following terms: The HJ had played an important role in the political battle enabling it to conquer power, but had paid a heavy price. In the year 1932 alone, 26 HJ were killed in street battles. One of them, Herbert Norkus, a twelve-yearold schoolboy, was assassinated by communists and became a legendary HJ martyr and hero of the film ‘the Hitler youth Quex.’ . . . Special training was provided to spur the youths to emulation and provide the army with future specialists. . . . They were very carefully instructed, and the special training courses were extraordinarily prestigious. . . . Hitler was able to draw extensively on this formidable reservoir of devotion and courage at the time when the final act was about to commence.61 Let us read these excerpts in the light of the warning and its injunction to shake off the historiographical consensus about Nazism, viewed as hegemonic, oppressive, and in need of thoroughgoing revision by the far right.62 The alleged prestige of the Hitler Youth training courses, their members’ ‘devotion’ and ‘courage,’ and the ‘martyrdom’ of Norkus, are no longer framed by the perspective of a criminal history of Nazism but presented for individual appreciation. SERP thereby propagates a writing of history bordering on negationism, while steering shy of outright conflict with the historiography of Nazism as criminal and genocidal. And in this precise case, it is not the audio content (songs and speeches) which might stand able to correct the work performed by the record sleeve. They are presented without

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any audio commentary which might contextualize or explain them. They are thus able to resume their original existence as propaganda material, and affect the ‘free men seeking to better understand the history of their times,’ and ultimately turn these men into subjects seeking for and ultimately possessing True History. The object of this History, at long last re-established, was criminal for some but tragic for others who regretted the fate of Nazism and its passage from glory to total defeat. The SERP record thus functioned as political bait, trying to draw its listener into a nostalgic and affective way of listening to history, rather than one based on rational argument. The end goal of this way of articulating different signifying materials and bringing them into resonance was to make listening to the sounds of history an occasion for exaltation or ideological conversion. This political usage of history drew its specificity from exploiting sound’s capacity to mediate affects and representations conveying sensitivities. Furthermore, turning sound into a relay for history, and its obvious usage as a generator of politics raises a more general problem about the ethics of how we transmit history. This concerns both audio transmission and written transmission, for the two may be suspected of being instrumentalized, may give rise to justifying discourse, and require critical discourse explaining why they have been endowed with their particular forms. In order to constitute the audio transmission of history as an object and engage with it on ethical terms, as is already the case for written history, I propose using the word ‘historiophonics’ to designate it together with any attendant reflexive and/or critical discourse. SERP itself worked to produce and disseminate historiophonic discourse adapted to its records, based notably on a lopsided ontology of audio documents. For example, the audio documents used in 1964 to put together a history of the Algerian War were introduced by the sleeve notes as the indisputable loci of a truth that was all the more powerful for being so moving: The record, as an audible document, is admirably well suited to the resurgence of a very recent past, being natural, poignant, and ferocious. . . . The record reconstitutes the event with the spoken word, pinning them down definitively.63 On listening, the historical documents turn out to be framed by audio commentary that shears them of all existence other than as the decisive steps in a political argument advocating French Algeria. The sound of history is thus not a material to examine and analyze with all requisite critical and self-critical distance, but rather the site of an imminent political truth, which, for that matter, is no longer political but primarily a truth, attested to by the emotion it triggers. SERP historiophonics thus used history as a material to oppress thought, hindering its rationality by the affects triggered by sound, and hampering its critical exercise by negating the possibility of multiple interpretations. It thus became the means to produce falsified historical truths based on political assessments and raising the possibility that signs and histories ordinarily refuted and cast out to

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the margins of ideological adhesion could be ushered back into the realm of the acceptable and the plausible. The bias it introduced thus sought to create the conditions in which positive memories of the criminal regimes of twentieth-century European history might re-emerge and be sustained. And its mode of action sought to make commonplace and ordinary a feeling of nostalgia, or else a desire to see these regimes reappear one day – or at the very least to construct a similar presentday political project, such as that of the Front National. SERP historiophonics thus positioned itself as a highly political solution to the obstacle posed by the existing historiographical consensus on far-right movements to their active existence in the present. From 1963 to 1980, it found that the best media was vinyl discs, since they were affordable, rich in audio and visual information, and already part of the daily life of potential or confirmed activists. Its historiophonics complemented the second aspect to SERP’s political approach, music, mainly popular music, rooted in history as much as in the present day.64

Conclusion Throughout the twentieth century and up until the appearance of the internet, records were the only means for political organizations and parties to conduct audio propaganda initiatives as they liked, given that they could not control radio and later television in any lasting or extensive manner. But the simple fact of disseminating this propaganda elsewhere than at political gatherings did not guarantee the increased benefits these operators hoped for with this transition from exceptional to daily listening. Audio propaganda needed to be thought of differently, as a means for progressive mobilization operating over a long timeframe, and one in which the political pill was washed down with music or history. This adaptation may be viewed as marking the failure of attempts to communicate political ideas to the reason and intellect on a daily basis, and seen as the victory of political practices targeting the force of the irrational via the intermediary of affect-bearing sound. The example of SERP encourages such a reading. The everyday political record, when musical or historical, ultimately sought to saturate the listener’s sensibility and to project him or her into a world shaped by a particular aesthetic culture and an interlinked set of political representations, assumptions and associations. Thus, political records, both through what they do and what they fail to do, bring out the conceptions, motivations and methods at work in political and party-political usages of sound – once modern technology had helped instrumentalize sound, the better to instrumentalize its listeners.

Notes 1 See for instance: Carolyn Birdsall, Nazi soundscapes. Sound, technology and urban space in Germany, 1933–1945 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012); Daniel Morat, ‘Cheers, Songs, and Marching Sounds: Acoustic Mobilization and Collective Affects at the Beginning of World War I’, in Daniel Morat (ed.), Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th- Century Europe (New York and Oxford: Berghahn

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Books, 2017), pp. 101–125; Rebecca P. Scales, Radio and the Politics of Sound in Interwar France, 1921–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Jonathan Thomas, ‘Militer en chantant, sous l’œil de la police parisienne des années 1930: une exploration du fonctionnement politique du chant’, Transposition, 7 (15 September 2018). . 2 The term propaganda is used in this chapter either in quotations from historical documents, or to designate more generally, in a transhistorical use of the term, practices to disseminate ideas and political projects. This usage is thus intended to be free from any positive or negative appraisal of ‘propaganda’. For a discussion of the importance of taking its historicity into account and viewing it in the light of ‘political communication’, see: Stéphane Olivesi, ‘De la propagande à la communication: éléments pour une généalogie’, Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique, 86 (2002), online since 1 January 2005. . 3 Jacques Ellul, Propaganda, The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. 20. 4 For discussion of how technology has apprehended sound and the attendant socio-cultural effects and practices, see Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). On the history of records, the recording industry, and its practices, see in particular Sophie Maisonneuve, L’invention du disque, 1877–1949. Genèse de l’usage des médias musicaux contemporains (Paris: Éditions des archives contemporaines, 2009); Ludovic Tournès, Musique! Du phonographe au MP3 (Paris: Éditions Autrement, 2011). 5 Writing in the early 2000s, Cordereix and Provensal used this term to designate some of the records discussed here. Agnès Callu and Hervé Lemoine (eds.), Patrimoine sonore et audiovisuel français Tome 1, L’audiovisuel et les sciences sociales (Paris: Éditions Belin, 2005), p. 110. 6 For example, lack of space precludes discussion of the Piatiletka/La voix du Peuple, France-libère-toi, Unitélédis, and Semis-diffusion labels, which commercialized catalogues of varying size for the Parti Communiste (1932), the Parti Populaire Français (1936), the Parti Socialiste (1974), and certain far-right organizations (2010). 7 Patrick Feaster and Richard Bauman conducted research in the 2000s on the first political recordings in the United States. On the history of these recordings, see: Richard Bauman and Patrick Feaster, ‘Oratorical Footing in a New Medium: Recordings of Presidential Campaign Speeches, 1896–1912’, SALSA XI, Texas Linguistic Forum, 47 (2004), 1–19. On the first representations of the world of politics on the phonograph, see Patrick Feaster, ‘ “The Following Record”: Making Sense of Phonographic Performance, 1877–1908’, unpublished PhD thesis, Indiana University, 2007; Richard Bauman and Patrick Feaster, ‘ “Fellow Townsmen and My Noble Constituents!” Representations of Oratory on Early Commercial Recordings’, Oral Tradition, 20: 1 (2005), 35–57. 8 Pierre Giffard, Le phonographe expliqué à tout le monde. Edison et ses inventions (Paris: Maurice Dreyfous, 1878), pp. 34–35. 9 ‘Le phonographe politique’, L’Intransigeant, 28 October 1888. 10 ‘Petite gazette’, L’Intransigeant, 10 July 1889. 11 ‘Nos échos’, L’Intransigeant, 27 April 1924. 12 ‘Chronique électorale’, Le Radical, 16 April 1902. 13 Archives of the Préfecture de police de Paris, BA 1342, 840700–28. 14 ‘Mœurs électorales d’Amérique’, L’Action Française, 5 November 1908. 15 Richard Bauman, ‘Projecting Presence. Aura and Oratory in Williams Jennings Bryan’s Presidential Races’, in E. Summerson Carr and Michael Lempert (eds.), Scale. Discourse and Dimension of Social Life (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), pp. 25–51. 16 Ibid., pp. 45–46. 17 Henri Chamoux, ‘La Diffusion de l’enregistrement sonore en France à la Belle époque (1893–1914). Artistes, industriels et auditeurs du cylindre et du disque’, unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), 2015.

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1 8 Maisonneuve, L’invention du disque. 19 ‘Les chants royalistes popularisés par le phonographe’, L’Action Française, 26 May 1910. 20 ‘Phonographe républicain’, Le Radical, 2 March 1911. 21 ‘Le Phonographe Socialiste’, l’Humanité, 23 November 1909. 22 ‘Le phonographe conscient’, L’Action Française, 26 November 1909. 23 ‘Le Phonographe Socialiste’, l’Humanité, 23 November 1909. 24 See Paula Cossard, Le meeting politique, de la délibération à la manifestation (1868–1939) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), pp. 11, 141; Jonathan Thomas, ‘Le paradoxe du “haut-parleur”: violence sonore et pratiques politiques dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres’, paper presented at Pouvoirs du son/Sons du pouvoir conference held at Université Picardie-Jules-Verne, Amiens, 15 November 2017, publication forthcoming. 25 Mechanical recording consists in transmitting acoustic vibrations to a stylus which is thus set in motion, and leaving a trace of this movement on a recording medium. Electrical recording system consists in transforming the sound into an electrical signal via a microphone, then in transmitting the signal to an electromagnet linked to an engraving instrument. 26 Maisonneuve, L’invention du disque, p. 188. 27 At the same period, the playwright Jacques Hébertot owned a recording company which published records of royalist songs recommended by the Ligue d’Action Française for its political meetings, together with records of music and performances which could be used for disseminating royalism. However, its catalogue was far from being structured solely for political purposes, and the advertising campaign in the Action Française newspaper was briefer and more low-key than that of the LVDN. 28 ‘Thus far, a little over FIVE THOUSAND DISCS have been sent out across France . . . both to regions won over to our ideas, and to bastions of reaction. That’s quite something, isn’t it comrades?’ ‘Servir le Parti’, Le Populaire, 9 February 1930. 29 ‘Partout faisons retentir la Voix des Nôtres’, Le Populaire, 18 May 1930. 30 ‘Les 7 commandements de LA VOIX DES NOTRES’, Le Populaire, 30 January 1930. 31 Ibid. 32 ‘Hier et demain’, Le Populaire, 3 May 1931. 33 ‘Le disque des jeunes’, Le Populaire, 8 May 1931. 34 ‘Hier et Demain is also a propaganda record, but with an even newer formula introducing a veritable revolution in the very way of thinking of phonographic recordings. Indeed, for the very first time, the idea or historical fact set out by the speaker is closely associated with the poetic or musical expression of this idea or page of history. It is a PROPAGANDA RECORD ILLUSTRATED BY THE WORK OF ART.’ ‘Hier et demain’, Le Populaire, 3 May 1931. 35 ‘La Voix des Nôtres founded in the late 1929 by Compère-Morel is not only the admirable instrument of propaganda you are already familiar with. It is also one of the most remarkable achievements in artistic education and leisure recreation for our assemblies, our festivities, and our families’. ‘Publicité La Voix des Nôtres’, Le Populaire, 13 May 1932. 36 See David Goodman, ‘Distracted Listening: On Not Making Sound Choices in the 1930s’, in Susan Strasser and David Suisman (eds.), Sound in the age of mechanical reproduction (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2010), pp. 15–46; Charles Kœchlin, La musique et le peuple (Paris: Éditions Sociales Internationales, 1936). However, the wireless was not necessarily listened to distractedly, and in the 1930s it was vaunted for facilitating attentive listening. For brief discussion of this controversy, see Michel Lagrée, La bénédiction de Prométhée. Religion et technologie (Paris: Fayard, 1999), p. 330. 37 See Pascal Ory, La belle illusion. Culture et politique sous le signe du Front populaire, 1935– 1938 (Paris: CNRS éditions, 2016). 38 Moussinac was an intellectual and cultural figure in the Parti Communiste, who had already set up the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires in 1932.

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Vincent Casanova, ‘ “Chanter juste”: Léon Moussinac et la musique’, in François Albera and Valérie Vignaux (eds.), Léon Moussinac, un intellectuel communiste (Paris: Association française de recherche sur l’histoire du cinéma, 2014), pp. 239–264. 39 For example Charles Kœchlin, Elsa Barraine, and Henri Sauveplane. 40 Jonathan Thomas, ‘De la musique pour le peuple: une proposition d’analyse des premiers disques folkloriques du Chant du Monde’, Analitica. Rivista online di studi musicali, 10 (2017). . 41 Figures for record sales in France: 28 million in 1960, 62 million in 1970, 157 million in 1978. Maisonneuve L’invention du disque, p. 188. 42 During the interwar period, record sleeves were the exception, not the norm, although they were the hallmark of certain labels. See Lionel Michaux, ‘Label image. Pochettes de disques 78 tours’, Revue de la BNF, 55 (2017), 138–147. In the 1970s, no records did without them. Their information and aesthetic content were highly prized for informed listening. See J. Ury, ‘La pochette de disque en France: un objet d’art’, Diapason, 206 (April 1976). 43 For discussion of Unicité as part of the PCF’s media operations, see Céline Barthonnat, ‘L’audiovisuel au service du Parti communiste français (1968–1976)’, in Françoise Blum (ed.), Des radios de lutte à Internet. Militantismes médiatiques et numériques (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012), pp. 137–151. For details of Unicité’s production and activities, see Paul Boulland, ‘La propagande par le disque. Usages militants du vinyle dans les années 1960 et 1970, des campagnes électorales au soutien aux grèves’, paper presented at the 2nd conference of the Société pour l’histoire des médias, Rêver d’un autre monde. Médias, utopies et expérimentations, Université de Paris 2, 25 May 2018. 44 On this period of its activity, see Vincent Casanova, ‘Jalons pour une histoire du Chant du Monde’, Bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin, 18 (printemps 2004). 45 Michèle Alten, ‘Le Chant du monde: une firme discographique au service du progressisme (1945–1980)’, ILCEA, 16 (2012), Placed online on 4 July 2012. . 46 Jean-Marie Le Pen was head of SERP until the early 1980s. Paul Robert then took over from him, followed by Le Pen’s eldest daughter, Marie-Caroline, in 1992. In 2000 the company went into liquidation. It was the collateral victim of the failed attempt by Bruno Maigret, backed by Marie-Caroline Le Pen, to wrest control of the Front National from Jean-Marie Le Pen. 47 Jean-Marie Le Pen, Les Français d’Abord (Paris: Éditions Carrère-Michel Lafon, 1984), p. 247. 48 For example, this is the presentation given in the sleeve notes of the audio history of the Second World War and twelve volumes published by SERP in 1972. Jean-Marie Le Pen, sleeve notes in ‘Histoire Sonore de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale no. 1 à 12’ (33T, SERP HF32 1 to 12, 1972). 49 The FNAC (Féderation nationale d’achat des cadres) is a retail chain selling audio-visual products and equipment, founded in France in 1954. It has a large number of stores across France which were one of the main outlets for records in the 1980s. 50 Thierry Bouzard, Des chansons contre la pensée unique (Paris: Éditions des Cimes, 2014), p. 307. 51 ‘Papes de notre temps’ (33T, SERP 4, 1963). 52 Bouzard, Des chansons contre la pensée unique, p. 308. The records referred to by Bouzard – an author who, at the very least, does not reject Le Pen’s political ideas – are ‘Le IIIe Reich’ (33T, SERP 10I to IV, 1971). In so doing, he neglects to point out that this series was first released in 1965, and that the first of these records resulted in a court case. I return to the two editions of this record later on. 53 ‘La campagne de Tixier-Vignancour, cette sinistre mascarade’, Droit et liberté, 245, 15 September 1965. 54 ‘Le IIIe Reich, voix et chants de la révolution allemande’ (33T, SERP 10I, 1965). 55 ‘Le IIIe Reich’ (33T, SERP 10I à IV, 1965); ‘Mussolini et le fascisme’ (33T, SERP HF13, 1966); ‘Philippe Pétain, Maréchal de France, 1940–1944’ (33T, SERP HF05, 1963);

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‘L’Action française, Voix et Chants’ (33T, SERP HF16, 1967); ‘Histoire d’Israël, voix et chants’ (33T, SERP HF26, 1970); ‘Lénine et les Commissaires du Peuple’ (33T, SERP HF35, 1973); ‘Charles de Gaulle, discours 1940–1969 (coffret)’ (33T, SERP 33HF33AL, 1972); ‘36, Chansons et Musiques du Front Populaire’ (33T, SERP MC7056, 1976). 56 ‘L’Histoire par le disque’, TV demain, no. 8, August–September 1965; Serge Moati, Le Pen, Vous et Moi, Video, 2003. 57 Versions of the original of 1965 edition were available in September 2020 on and ; versions of the subsequent re-publication discussed in what follows on and . 58 Bibliothèque des Archives de Paris, rulings of the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance, 17th criminal chamber (18 and 19 December 1968), ‘Jugement du procès intenté contre Jean-Marie Le Pen, Hervé Magny, Marguerite Feugère, Marcel Pinon et la société Grafisonor par le Comité d’Action de la Résistance et le Réseau du Souvenir pour apologie de crime de guerre’, hearing of Wednesday 18 December 1968, filed for signature on 11 January 1969, 17th chamber, deposit number 33W 553. 59 Anonymous, sleeve notes in ‘Le IIIe Reich, voix et chants de la révolution allemande’ (33T, SERP 10I, 1965). 60 For example, in November 2020, on . 61 Yann Hervé, sleeve notes in ‘Hitlerjugend; 1926–1945’ (33T, SERP HF58, 1976). 62 Nicolas Lebourg, ‘La fonction productrice de l’histoire dans le renouvellement du fascisme à partir des années 1960’, in Sylvain Crépon and Sebastien Mosbah-Natanson (eds.), Les Sciences sociales au prisme de l’extrême droite. Enjeux et usages d’une récupération idéologique (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 2008), pp. 213–243. 63 ‘La Guerre d’Algérie: Le 13 mai 1958’ (33T, SERP 9I, 1964). 64 I have chosen to explore SERP’s historical production to show the diversity of audio propaganda, but also because its musical production has already been examined in Jonathan Thomas, ‘Jean-Marie Le Pen et la SERP: le disque de musique au service d’une pratique politique’, Volume! 14 (2017), 85–101; Jonathan Thomas, La propagande par le disque. Jean-Marie Le Pen, éditeur phonographique (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 2020).

14 IMAGE, VOICE AND VOIVODES Communist diafilm in Romania (1950–1989) Alexandra Ilina

The use of still filmstrips was a fairly common practice even in the West from the 1950s until the 1980s, when filmstrips were replaced by the newly affordable technology of the VCR. Used mainly as teaching aids, filmstrips generally reflected educational curricula as exhibited, for example, in the catalogues published by the United States Information Agency. In a 1958 catalogue there are 972 filmstrip titles followed by short summaries. The topics covered by these filmstrips are heterogeneous, demonstrating the encyclopaedic mission of these objects. On page 338 of the United States Educational, Scientific and Cultural Motion Pictures and Filmstrips Catalogue, 1958, for example, we find a filmstrip ‘Woodworking Tools and Machines Series’ followed by another, ‘Your Educational Philosophy.’ In the foreword to this catalogue, the reader is informed about its purpose and destination: The purpose of this catalogue, of which this present issue is a part, is to provide to those individuals and institutions abroad who are responsible for developing visual information programs in their own countries a continuing source of information about the wide variety of motion pictures and filmstrips available from within the United States for education and instruction in specific fields of activity.1 This encyclopaedic vocation was shared by the filmstrips produced in Eastern Europe, heavily influenced by the Soviet diafilm production. I  use this term to emphasize the particularities of these filmstrips and because it was adopted in several languages, including Hungarian and Romanian. The word diafilm is a Soviet invention. More precisely, it was the name of a Soviet film studio founded in Moscow in 1930.2 It became a common noun used in several Eastern European communist states to designate both the projector and the 35mm reversal films that were manually operated. Significantly cheaper than animated films and easier to

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procure in a state-controlled economy, these diafilms were popular thanks to their availability, relatively low prices and the absence of any real competition on the market, as with most communist products. They were produced and sold by stateowned studios until the fall of Communism. While, according to Levente Borsos, ‘in industrialized Western countries, the publishing and use of filmstrips had all but ended by the 1980s,’ behind the Iron Curtain the diafilm had no real competition and so remained popular thanks to the slow development or unavailability of competing technologies.3 In communist Romania, despite the relative popularity of black and white television in the post-1968 era, the prohibitive prices of colour television sets made them a luxury good, and most people still relied on diafilms for home entertainment.4 The diafilms became objects of scholarly interest in Romania only very recently, during a conservation and digitization project.5 While it is difficult to know precisely what sparked this interest in diafilms in former communist states, nostalgia would be the most obvious explanation, a hypothesis which is supported by the fact that digitization has lately been made available to the general public with some success. A significant number of online databases containing digitized diafilms have been created in Poland, Hungary, Russia or the Czech Republic. My own research started on a personal note. Having watched and listened to family members read these diafilms to me and other members of the extended family, I associate them with a private experience that was fairly common in Romanian families. During my childhood, I was very impressed by the dramatic reading my grandmother liked to do while reading the diafilms. Sometimes, we would ask her to repeat some scenes we particularly liked. Or we would interrupt the reading to give answers to some of the questions from the text, or to ask questions. Having compared my experience with many other Romanians, I  was mainly interested in the performative dimension of these screenings and in the particularities of the text-image-voice relationship. Despite this recent revival, the history, iconography and cultural significance of diafilms have yet to be explored. This chapter will focus in particular on the image of the Middle Ages created by communist diafilms in Romania from 1950, when the first propaganda studio was created, and until 21 December  1989, when the ideological machine was abruptly stopped by the events known as the Revolution. My hypothesis is that diafilms were immensely popular not just because of their low prices, but also because they were intimate objects, proxemic objects, destined for private performances. A diafilm was specifically designed to be read out loud and interpreted, thus becoming an interpretandum, an object whose meaning was explicitly meant to be recreated every time, with the participation of the active viewer. As Christopher Fletcher argues in the introduction, use can potentially transform the meaning of a product. This is also the case of diafilms, because the meaning of a certain film could vary significantly depending on the way it was read aloud and on other circumstantial factors: a serious narrative, for example, could be easily mocked if the person who read it did so in a mocking voice.

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The Ion Creangă studio and Soviet encyclopaedism In Eastern European communist countries in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the new communist governments were widely perceived as illegitimate foreign forces controlled by Soviet power. In Romania, the rigged elections of 1946 led to the establishment of the first communist government. The victory was followed by protests and numerous acts of resistance. As a result, propaganda was a major preoccupation of the newly installed regimes in need of legitimacy, closely following Soviet patterns and strategies, especially in the early years. Propaganda studios were consequently created shortly after the Soviet-sustained governments seized power in many states. Romania was no exception; with the first cinema studio appearing shortly after the communist regime was installed. The first films produced were not fictional, but documentary, with a clearly defined utilitas, focusing on the accomplishments of the regime and on political ideology. The new regime was in need of legitimation, in a time when most of the high-ranking members of the Communist Party were foreigners enforcing a brutal policy of collectivisation and confiscation of land and property, combined with mass arrests, assassinations and deportations. Popular support was minimal, especially in the early years. The political nature of these stripfilms was obvious at this early stage, since they served as propaganda, just like the film documentaries produced by the contemporary Alexandru Sahia Studios. Romanian diafilms were produced by two studios, Ion Creangă and Animafilm. The projectors were also produced in Romania, by the Romanian Optics Company (founded in 1936 when Romania was still a monarchy) although imported projectors from other communist states were also available. The first studio was dedicated to the production of diafilms alone and had a relatively short lifespan, from 1950 to 1959, when it was absorbed by the larger Alexandru Sahia Studios. The second diafilm studio, Animafilm, primarily produced animated films, as its name suggests but also diafilms. Unfortunately, some parts of the archives, especially the ones from the 1980s, are inaccessible, as the Animafilm studio is currently in a juridical limbo and it is not clear who the owner is. On the other hand, the archives of the Ion Creangă studio were recently rediscovered and are now accessible in the deposit rooms of the former Alexandru Sahia Studios. Due to the recentness of the discovery, the archives have not been catalogued, and I have had to give them temporary catalogue codes myself. In this chapter, I use their dates as an identifier when referring to their content. The Ion Creangă studio was founded by a Decision of the Minister’s Council (the name of the government at that time) on 7 July 1950 (no 771/1950). Its sole purpose was the creation of diafilms and it was subordinated to the National Cinematographic Centre and to the Ministry of Culture. It was absorbed by the Alexandru Sahia Studios on 30 April 1959 mainly because, as we read in an explanatory note from 1958, ‘animated films are more convincing and suggestive than diafilms.’ In a rather confusing turn, that same note also mentions how important diafilms are for propaganda and that the demand increased because they became very popular, but,

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apparently, not popular enough to justify the existence of a dedicated studio. The projectors were produced on a large scale: in 1986, for example, the Romanian Optics Company produced 60,000 such devices, a number I found marked on the box of a projector I own. Most of the diafilms produced by the first studio were black and white, easier to produce, but there were also some colour diafilms, especially after 1955, probably due to reducing production costs. A note written on the 10 December 1955 states that only 10,000 copies out of 170,000 were coloured. In comparison, all of the Animafilm diafilms I know of were coloured. The production rate of Ion Creangă was quite impressive. According to the archives, it published approximately 400,000 diafilms per year. The number of employees constantly grew, reaching 51 in 1952, according to a request from the 3 July 1952, which asked for approval for the hiring of new employees, especially reporters and technicians. The request also stated that, in order to be able to produce 200 new diafilms by 1955, the studio needed more employees. It reached 87 employees in 1955. According to a plan written on 20 October 1955 by the ‘Planning bureau,’ the diafilms were divided into five categories, each with its own technical particularity: I II III IV V

Diafilms made using reportage photography, reproductions from books etc. – 91 copies; Diafilms made using reportage photography, books etc. (60–70%) and artistic drawings (30–40%) – 24 copies; Diafilms made using technical drawings – 9 copies; Diafilms using reportage photography, books etc. (50%) and artistic drawings (50%) – 18 copies; Diafilms for children (fairy tales) made using paintings – 13 copies.

The correlation is obvious between ‘real’ subjects and photography, on the one hand, and ‘fiction’ and painting on the other. So is the pre-eminence of reportages, typical for the 1950s. The depiction of historical subjects runs against these associations, however, as most of the historically-themed diafilms were painted, even if photographs of castles, documents and so on were available. Was this technical choice also an indirect admission of the fictionalising of history? I tend to think so, because the association between photography and ‘reality,’ on one side, and painting and ‘fiction,’ on the other, is a durable one in diafilm iconography, as I could observe while reading the scenarios and the technical notes and commentaries used by the producers. The importance of photography in these first diafilms mirrors not only a thematic preference but also a general aesthetical ideology, socialist realism, imported from the USSR. The use of photography, especially in the diafilms destined for the popularisation of science and technology, is an aesthetic statement also found in fiction.6 The quest for the effet de réel is reflected by the genres imposed by the regime, such as the reportages or the interviews with workers and peasants, supposedly telling the story of their improved lives under the new order. Only after

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the fall of Communism did some of the writers admit to faking the interviews in order to achieve consistent and ideologically acceptable answers. Despite the numerous interventions and retouches that transformed the raw material into propaganda material, both in texts and in images, the goal of authenticity was insisted upon by the Party, and diafilm creators were obliged to take long journeys across the country in order to obtain photographic material documenting the success of the new industries and collective agriculture. The transportation costs were significant, and reporters would travel for months in search of relevant material. In two internal notes from 9 September and 22 October 1955 signed by Savin Sotir, the editor-in-chief of the Ion Creangă studio at the time, we find the proposed budget for 1956. In these notes, there are 11 entries for various expenses. Five of these entries are related to these journeys and they include salaries for the reporters, photographers and image (or photo?) editors, consultants or ‘field studies.’ All financial plans included sections related to documentary trips and related expenses. Interestingly, in most of the notes summarizing the costs for the creation of a diafilm, there are allusions, both in the scenarios and on the filmstrips, to persons responsible for ‘special effects’ who worked on every filmstrip. In a note addressed to the Ministry of Culture in 1955, for example, the Technical Department asked permission to hire seven new specialists in ‘special effects’ in order to cover growing demand. Not only were the creators travelling, but the propagandists were too. A note dated 12 September 1955 explicitly states that ‘One of the propagandists will be permanently travelling in all regions to make propaganda for diafilms.’ There is no doubt about the political nature of their mission, in a narrow sense, as their travels were explicitly related to propaganda, and they served as messengers of state power. It is unclear how the propagandists were supposed to accomplish their mission, but, judging by similar practices carried out by Party activists, they probably travelled to rural areas, often isolated, rounded up the members of the community and projected a diafilm, which they also read and explained for them. The only information I have so far, aside from the travel notes, comes from witnesses of such events, who recalled being gathered in the ‘cultural house,’ typical buildings that now existed in every village of town across the country and are still used for various community activities. At that time, during the first decade of the communist regime, a significant part of the population, especially the peasants, were illiterate, so the need for a commentator was real. Typically, the filmstrips would have between 40 and 50 frames, but some could reach 70 frames. It took the production team between 32 and 56 days to create a complete diafilm, according to a 1955 note entitled ‘The time norm for the creation of a diafilm.’ This undated note clearly defined the 18 steps that the creators needed to follow: the first step was the ‘Studying of the script by the creators,’ for which only one day was needed, and the last step was production of multiple copies. The field documentation was the most time-consuming step (ranging from six days to two weeks), followed by the editing of the photographic material.

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For the historically-themed diafilms, the archives mention collaborations with historians and academics whose names appeared in the scenarios. The Ion Creangă studio also organized classes for their own employees, mainly for the ones involved in the creative process, like the writers and visual artists. All the financial plans I have been able to see mention various academics being paid to teach these classes. They also hired translators, proofreaders and various technicians that would benefit from the classes. Some of the illustrators that appear on the employee lists were well-established artists before the installation of the regime. The propagandists had a special status, from what I have been able to see in the internal notes and financial registries from the 1950s, and they were all members of the Party, a mandatory condition. In most cases, propagandists were also informants for or members of the secret police, but in such cases the affiliation was always kept secret. In the archives I  have been able to see, containing the lists of salaries, the propagandists’ names were not even mentioned. Typically, these courses lasted for about five months, as noted in a plan from 1955, stating that the classes were supposed to start in January and last until 30 June 1956. Aside from the technical courses, some of the theoretical courses taught were: Romanian and Soviet literature, literary theory, image composition, the role and composition of diafilms, light in photographic art, art history and so on and so forth.

Authorship and subject matter The Workers’ Party (the name of the Communist Party at that time) through the General Direction for Cinematography, went to great lengths to produce these filmstrips in large numbers because the public they were addressing at that time was numerous. Workers and peasants, the young and the old were all supposed to view the diafilms, learn from them and listen to the commentaries, and eventually even take part in discussions. Almost half of the diafilms published by the Ion Creangă studio were produced to order. Many state institutions organized public screenings, many of them with the aim of educating their employees. The themes selected reflected contemporary agricultural practices and problems, technological innovation, social problems like alcoholism (reissued monthly!), and, of course, political discourse. Diafilms were often inspired by books. Any kind of book could have been turned into such an object, and the diversity of the themes of these diafilms is reflected in the inventory of the studio’s library from 1959. Science, history, art history, literature, technical books and grammar books appear in this Borgesian inventory, where advice on getting rid of San José lice are to be found next to a volume on ‘poetic genius’. These first diafilms were supposed to create a simplified encyclopaedia for the edification of the masses. This edifying role was directly linked to their public performance. Some diafilms simply used images reproduced directly from art albums, without any concern regarding authorship. The diafilms themselves had no specific author either: unlike films, there was no director-like figure, just some credits

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at the beginning and some names mentioned in the first few frames. The case of the Dănilă Prepeleac diafilm (1955) is typical: the first frame mentions the name of the studio, the second mentions the title and, in smaller font, the name of the author who wrote the original story. The third mentions the name of the artist who made the drawings, the author of the ‘comments’ (the text underneath the image is explicitly named a comentariu, not a subtitle, as in the motion pictures of that time), the editor and the person responsible for the montage. Since the text, destined to be read aloud, defined itself as a ‘comment,’ the text-image relationship seems to have been defined by orality. In terms of continuity, the narration appears to be a rather discontinuous one, because each frame was meant to be discussed and presented as a support for interpretation. It should be mentioned that the term ‘comments’ is not always used in the credits section. For example, in a series of fairy tales, translated from Russian, Elena Cocea, responsible for the montage of the Dănilă Prepeleac diafilm, is credited as the artist, and no other name appears. The credits section was quite an unstable one, the painter or artist and the editor being the most recurrent roles, without a precise order. The ‘comments’ to the Dănilă Prepeleac diafilm transform the nineteenth-century satirical story, about a clever peasant trickster who manages to trick a not-so-clever diablotin, into a story about class oppression: the first frame of the story shows the main character’s brother, a cliché of a fat, greedy and rich peasant, enemy of the people, replicating the iconography of the kulaks, with his sharp-tongued and equally greedy wife, pictured with one hand raised and some bags of corn she stubbornly grasps. The comment reads: ‘Once upon a time, in a village, lived two brothers, both married. The older one was wealthy and had a greedy and very miserly wife’ (Figure 14.1). This treatment of a classic Romanian tale is typical for the 1950s, the years of collectivisation. The same artist who created the painting for this diafilm, Roni Noël, also illustrated the book of the same name, Dănilă Prepeleac, published in 1956 and reissued subsequently. In 1955, he won the silver medal for illustration at the Leipzig Book Fair. Interestingly, the book illustrations do not emphasize the social dimension of the story but rather its comical and fantastical elements. Alongside the obvious propaganda purposes of this diafilm, a more subtle strategy was also at play. The new regime, dominated by foreigners and despised by the local population, made a statement by associating itself with the figure of a beloved nineteenth-century Romanian author Ion Creangă, who authored Dănilă Prepeleac and whose name was chosen for the studio. His name appears twice in the first two frames of this diafilm, with two different values subordinated to the same purpose, propaganda. This accessus ad auctores using a popular figure to deliver a new message opened the way for a strategy that relied on familiarity and that would slowly shift towards the private space where it was more effective. On the other hand, the term ‘author’ appears in one of the first historical diafilms, ‘Feudal castles in our homeland’ (1958). On the first page of the script the figures involved in the creation of the filmstrip appear: the author, the editor, the director of photography and the person responsible for the drawings and the montage. In this case, it was probably

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FIGURE 14.1 Dănilă

Prepeleac. Adaptation of the story written by Ion Creanga (1955), 41 frames, 35 mm, positive filmstrip, black and white. Credited authors: Drawings: Roni Noël, Comments: Savin Sotir, Editor: Octav Ionita, Montage: Elena Cocea. Frame: first frame.

the author’s notoriety that led to his naming, because Radu Florescu was already an established historian at the time. During the first decade of the studio’s existence, history in general and medieval history in particular were marginal themes for diafilms. The medium was dominated by scientific and technical topics. Maybe not even 10% of the production was dedicated to history, and revolutionary themes dominated: the history of Communism and Russian history were preferred over national history. Romanian history started to be a theme of relative importance after 1955: diafilms like ‘Stefan cel Mare’ (1955, today lost), ‘Mihai Viteazul’ (1958) or ‘Feudal castles in our homeland’ (1958) paved the way for the communist medievalism that flourished in the Ceausescu era.

Censorship at work In communist Romania, it was common for each cultural discourse to be carefully controlled by the state. The censors were omnipresent in the production of films, books and so on, and their interventions, sometimes brutal, sometimes very subtle, allowed them to play an important role in the creation of mass culture. In the case of diafilm, the script for ‘Feudal castles in our homeland’ (1958), for example, was carefully read by the censor who approved its publication on the 24 July 1958. This

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filmstrip is 63 frames long and focuses on the anti-Ottoman resistance led by medieval voivodes, revisiting some typical nineteenth-century Romantic topoi: the just ruler, the fight for national independence and freedom, the medieval Romanian states as the protectors of the Western world, whose development was made possible by their sacrifice. The nationalist turn of the historical discourse in Romania became even more obvious after 1968, when the Party, under the authoritarian rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, shifted from multicultural Soviet-inspired history to nationalist topics. But there are some preliminary steps announcing this turn. Some of them are visible in the diafilms that become more interested in national history, especially the 1848 Revolution and the Middle Ages. The censor’s interventions on the scenario of Florescu’s ‘Feudal castles in our homeland’ are very eloquent. He simply eliminated, with his red crayon, the parts that put the medieval Romanians in a not-so-glorious light. We know the name of this censor, M. Roşca, but his identity is unclear.7 His handwritten name and signature appear at the beginning of the censored script, right under the note ‘permission to print’ (in Romanian: bun de tipar). He used the same red crayon for the rest of the script. He was not an employee of the studio, but probably a bureaucrat working for the government. Usually, censors were employed by various ministries to watch over every single creation that was going to be published. They were notoriously feared and mocked at the same time and became subjects of urban folklore. On the second frame of the ‘Feudal castles in our homeland’ diafilm scenario, we read about a province, Wallachia, that was ‘subjugated by Turks,’ and about Moldova, which ‘submitted a few years later’ (Figure 14.2). The two sequences were simply eliminated, without any explanation. The example is interesting because it shows a very early sign of nationalist Communism, normally attributed to the post-1968 years. The frame no 22 also shows the censor’s handwritten interventions. This time, the text talks about the defenceless serfs. The unaltered text says: ‘The difficult times lasted in the Principalities until the end of the feudal age and if the serfs had to endure them, the boyars took care of their own defence and fortified their mansions as if they were citadels.’ The censored version says: ‘The difficult times lasted in the Principalities until the end of the feudal age and if the serfs lacked the possibility of self-defence, the boyars

sequences in the script of the diafilm ‘Feudal castles in our homeland’ (1958). Author: Radu Florescu, Editor: Savin Sotir, Image: Zoltan Szalkay, Drawings and montage: Valentin Ionescu.

FIGURE 14.2  Censored

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took care of the defence of their mansions, of their fortification in a citadel-like manner.’ The changes seem almost pointless, but the new turn of phrase emphasizes the serfs suffering: they ‘lacked the possibility of self-defence.’ The fatalistic ‘had to endure’ is eliminated and replaced by a more ideologically explicit sequence. Also, the second intervention, regarding the boyars’ mansions, emphasizes the idea of private property, replacing the sequence ‘the boyars took care of their own defence’ with the more Marxist expression ‘the boyars took care of the defence of their mansions.’ They were not afraid, they were greedy, the censor suggests. A third intervention, on frame no 25, seems to show that, despite the slow steps towards an autonomous identity, communist Romania remained in the shadow of a Big Brother from the East. The text was longer as it constituted an autonomous frame that was supposed to work as an introduction for the region of Dobrogea. The text says: ‘Dobrogea has always been dependent on political organisations from the south of the Danube: Thracians, Romans, Byzantines, Bulgarians, and, at last, the Turks: they all passed it from one to another. They all fortified the borders against the Northern neighbours and the cities on the sea shore.’ The first cut is motivated by national pride: ‘they all passed it from one to another’ is eliminated. The second one by strategic thinking: the ‘against the Northern neighbours’ could suggest, depending on the period, the Slavic peoples, Romania’s friends at the time. Another intervention, in the ‘Mihai Viteazul’ script, shows that there were at least two censors: one used a red crayon (the same person who had censored the previous diafilm) and the other one used blue ink. The whole frame (no 33) was eliminated. The fragment belonged to a famous nineteenth-century writer, Nicolae Bălcescu, the first historian who made Mihai Viteazul into the first unifier of the three medieval Romanian states.8 According to the text, the battle won by Mihai Viteazul was ‘the brightest day from Romanian annals.’ Why would this be problematic? Because, in the axiological temporality imposed at the time, the most important moment – the brightest day – was that when, according to official history, the popular masses established the new regime. The choice of two figures as protagonists opened two parallel directions for national mythology: Stefan cel Mare was closely related associated with the popular anti-Ottoman narrative, as a symbol of resistance and, while at the same time confirming the marginality complex represented by the ‘defenders of the West’ image with which some medieval rulers were associated. The Mihai Viteazul myth revolved around the same problem of identity, but seen from another angle. His popularity, derived ultimately from nineteenth-century medievalism, managed to grow because, especially after Nicolae Ceausescu seized power, he embodied both the idea of a single Romanian identity in all medieval states he ruled, passing over minorities or regional differences, and the image of an authoritarian and brave ruler who fought the foreign invaders. I have not been able to find evidence of the verification of the finished filmstrips, but there is no reason to think that the authors would have ignored the proposed changes. If they did so, they risked not only that the diafilms would be immediately banned and removed from stores but also their own freedom. Images

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themselves were most certainly verified, although I have not been able to find the original drawings in order to see if that was the case.

The ‘Mirror for Princes’ In his work on national mythology, Lucian Boia identifies the main themes developed by official historiography and cinematography during the 1970s and 1980s, the years when the nationalist-communist regime was consolidated by Nicolae Ceausescu.9 Boia observes the recurrence of the obsession with marginality, the importance of autonomy, especially after the invasion of Prague in 1968 and Ceausescu’s condemnation of the Russian intervention, and a combination of ‘the need for authority’ and ‘an anti-aristocratic current, favourable towards reforms.’10 He points out that nationalist Communism was not an invention of the 1970s, but was rather a combination of late nineteenth-century nationalism with some early twentieth-century ‘protochronistic’ ideology that reflected Ceausescu’s need to legitimize his own nascent personality cult.11 While the role of cinema and television in official propaganda have been analyzed, the part played by the diafilms has not.12 In 1975, a series of 36 diafilms called ‘The history of our homeland’ was published. Ten out of the 36 diafilms were dedicated to medieval figures. Another ten were dedicated to communist history: the creation of the Party, the fight against the Germans in the Second World War; the achievements of the Party; the ‘struggle of the popular masses for justice and liberty under the guidance of the Communist Party,’ and so on. The others dealt with particular episodes from Antiquity or modern history that led to the rise of the Golden Age. The importance of the Middle Ages becomes very clear in this particular series. During the same period, medievalism was just as visible in cinematography. Consider the following brief comparison between film titles and the diafilms from this series:

Films

Diafilms

Mihai Viteazul, two parts (1970–1971), dir. S. Nicolaescu Stefan cel Mare, two parts (1974–1975), dir. M. Dragan Dimitrie Cantemir (1975), dir. G. Vitanidis Vlad Tepes (1979), dir. D. Năstase Mircea cel Mare (1989) – unpublished, had two endings for Ceausescu to choose from, dir. S. Nicolaescu

The forming of the Romanian people One people, three countries Wallachia during the reign of Mircea cel Bătrân Moldova during the reign of Alexandru cel Bun The Bobâlna revolt The fight for independence during the reign of Iancu de Hunedoara Moldova during the reign of Stefan cel Mare The peasant war in Transylvania led by Gheorghe Doja The Romanian fight for liberty during the reign of Mihai Viteazul Constantin Brâncoveanu and Dimitrie Cantemir

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The use of the same figures shows a clear ideological direction. These are not the only medievalist diafilms. Another 15 titles complete the list:  1 Iancu de Hunedoara and Vlad Tepes (1967)  2 The mother of Stefan cel Mare (reissued in 1975) [adaptation of a nineteenthcentury text]  3 Negru Vodă (reedited in 1975) [about the legendary founder of Wallachia]  4 The legend of the Curtea de Arges monastery (reissued in 1975)  5 Vodă’s justice (reedited in 1975) [about Ioan Vodă the Terrible]  6 Mircea cel Bătrân and the emissaries (reissued in 1975) [adaptation of a nineteenth-century text]  7 Petru Rares (reissued in 1975)  8 Mihai Voievod Viteazul (reedited in 1975) [adaptation of a nineteenth-century text]  9 Preda Buzescu (reissued in 1975) [about one of Mihai Viteazul’s captains] 10 Stefan cel Mare I – childhood and rise to power (?) 11 Stefan cel Mare II (?) 12 Stefan cel Mare III – the legend of Vrâncioaia (?) 13 Dan, captain of the lands (1985) [adaptation of a nineteenth-century text] 14 Sobieski and the Romanians (1986) [adaptation of a nineteenth century-text] 15 Gelu (?) [very obscure character from the tenth century] All of these diafilms, most of them inspired directly by nineteenth-century authors, revolve around two themes: the anti-Ottoman struggle or the fight for independence and the founding of the medieval Romanian states. In some cases, like Vodă’s justice, the figure of a rather obscure ruler, depicted as a sadistic character by several contemporary chronicles, is recuperated as a Vlad Tepes-like figure incarnating the anti-aristocratic current identified by Lucian Boia. The frame no 7 illustrates the enemies of the people feasting, their cups in the air, in flagrante delicto: ‘Before the reign of Ioan Vodă, Moldova’s treasure was looked after by the great lords who used the money for themselves.’ The short and bloody reign of Ioan Vodă is seen as a just revenge of the people’s ruler against the oppressors. In an unintended humorous note, in Mihai Voievod Viteazul the Romanian ruler is seen as a liberator of the people, of its flag and of his own horse. One night, he decides to take back the flag from the Hungarian enemies. It is unclear what flag the story is talking about, the illustrator clearly had no idea either and had no vexillologist consultant to solve the mystery, because the flag remains rolled in all of the frames where it is represented. Medieval Romanian heraldry is a very murky topic, so both the nineteenth-century writer and the communist illustrator prefer to avoid it and just harvest the symbolic echoes of the story. After jumping over a river on his white stallion, in a blaze of glory, Mihai decides his trusted horse must roam free and declares it free (Figure  14.3). The irony? Mihai Viteazul was one of the richest landowners in Wallachia and, after some difficult years, he decided to limit the liberty of the peasants working on his

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FIGURE 14.3 Mihai

Voievod Viteazul (1975).

lands, turning them into serfs and turning himself into one of the most unpopular rulers before the nineteenth century. The last example is perhaps one of the most relevant for understanding how propaganda worked. Historians know almost nothing about Gelu, aside from his name and the region where he had some kind of domain in Transylvania, but that was enough for the creators of the diafilm. On the first frame, we see a wooden landscape and the description: ‘A long time ago, the Romanians from Transylvania’s fields and mountains were ruled by a voivode named Gelu.’ He also owned a white horse which could understand human speech. Defending the land and distributing justice were his main activities. The enemies have no identity; they are just ‘enemies.’ After kidnapping his beautiful daughter, they gratuitously blind her and send her back. This, however, does not stop her from fiercely attacking the enemy during the final battle. Instead, she falls in battle and is celebrated for her sacrifice. Aside from the feminine turn, probably an echo of Elena Ceausescu’s growing influence, the story synthesizes the main obsessions of communist medievalism: the ethnic purity of Romanians (the only nation mentioned in Transylvania), the foreign plot against Romanians, the importance of justice and authority figures and the noble sacrifice for the greater good. Often naïve and predictable, heavily inspired by nineteenth-century medievalism, the Middle Ages imagined by diafilms played a part in the construction of the

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genealogy imagined by Ceausescu. This often had ridiculous results, for example in Dan Hatmanu’s painting, Anniversary, depicting the dictator and his wife sharing a glass of wine with Stefan cel Mare, who casually comes out of a painting, or Constantin Piliuta’s homage, National Heroes, where three medieval rulers are pictured behind the dictator, alongside three other historical figures. Repetitive, schematic and highly unoriginal, this kind of medievalism was extremely efficient not only because of the message it carried, but, in my opinion, because of the persuasive medium that carried this message: a familiar voice.

Animafilm and communist home cinema The public use of diafilms started to decline after a prolific first decade, and its themes changed radically as well. The popularization of science was abandoned and history started to take over. Diafilms were no longer projected in front of big audiences, like the (probably loud) crowds of workers or peasants. Could this be because public screenings were less effective than the more private ones? Or because the effectiveness of a diafilm lay in the privacy created by the story-reader’s voice, in a dark room? Or, of course, because the projectors and the films themselves became more affordable as production costs dropped? The newly established collaboration with the Ministry of Education marks the entry of diafilms into schools and homes. The audience was limited to the students of a classroom, typically 30, or the members of a family. This change of décor determined an important change of theme, with history becoming the star. Starting from 1964, the new Animafilm studio produced the diafilms no longer destined for large public performances like the original ones, in front of big crowds. The new audiences were smaller groups, like classrooms and families. The same phenomenon was documented in Hungary. The story of Hungarian diafilms, explored by Levente Borsos, is strikingly similar to the Romanian one: While in the 1950s they were frequently used in state propaganda, professional training and education, the use of filmstrips in these settings gradually decreased. Simultaneously, filmstrips containing classic and original children’s stories became exceptionally popular in homes, making home entertainment the primary setting for the use of filmstrips. This phenomenon is illustrated by Bíró’s data, which showed that by 1960 more than 200,000 home projectors were used in Hungarian households, exceeding in number those owned by institutions.13 The same scenario was probably repeated in other Eastern countries. Unfortunately, the numbers remain unknown for the Romanian case, because the Animafilm archive is partially missing. These diafilms could be bought in bookstores, but the number of projectors sold is unknown. Still, the fact that almost every family possessed such an object, even in rural areas, indicates their popularity and affordability. The passage from public

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to private use is also documented by commercials. An ad from the 1980s specifically reads: Bring nature into your own home with the diafilm and diapositifs.14 A thematically rich and instructive universe: the cities of our homeland, tourist attractions, works of art from the national and universal heritage, Romanian folk art and other subjects of wide interest. This advertisement, published in the official newspaper, Scînteia, in 1981, combines a photo of the medieval Bran castle, situated on the border between Transylvania and Wallachia, and a painted generic mountain landscape. Despite the mixed media technique promised here, the new diafilms actually brought an almost total abandonment of photography, used mainly as a means to reproduce portraits or documents. Painting became the new technique. Watercolour or pastel paintings almost completely replaced photography. These filmstrips were painted by professional artists, members of the Romanian Artists’ Union, and some of them combined photography and painting, depending on their purpose.15 All of the artists that worked for the Ion Creangă studio later worked for Animafilm. Most of them were also accomplished illustrators and had already published children’s books, like Roni Noël, the artist who worked on Dănilă Prepeleac. The new filmstrips abandoned encyclopaedism and focused mainly on fiction and history. In the Animafilm era, there were only three ‘matters’: •

• •

the ‘universal’ matter (mostly children’s literature, like Alice in Wonderland or fairy tales, with an omnipresent conclusion that pointed out the moral of the story, sometimes with political allusions); the ‘folklore’ matter (folk-tales from Romania and other communist countries); the ‘historical’ matter.

The latter explored themes like the heroic deeds of children who fought against the Germans during the Second World War, the Dacian resistance during the Roman conquest, peasant revolts against feudal oppression, the exploits of the hajduks against various greedy noblemen, and so on. They all have in common the emphasis on a David and Goliath narrative where justice prevails against all odds. The new and younger public was given young characters to identify with. With regard to their political nature, the diafilms produced by Animafilm were less explicit, with the exception of the ones that presented the history of Communism from the series ‘The history of our homeland,’ although these were in the minority. In his chapter earlier on audio propaganda, Jonathan Thomas argues that once audio propaganda invades the private space and the family circle and is no longer reserved for political meetings, the political message is no longer explicit, but rather implicit. The phenomena described also illustrates the strategy of ‘avoiding politics,’ discussed by Christopher Fletcher in the introduction to this volume: the denial of political action as a common political tactic. Both phenomena are illustrated by diafilms

252  Alexandra Ilina

destined for private audiences. The role played by the reader’s voice was also crucial in this strategy, because a familiar voice, often maternal, is one of the most persuasive sounds, especially for a young public. The private use of diafilms was related to an intimate ritualized scenario, perfectly described by Levente Borsos: Typically, images would be projected onto the wall of a dimmed living room, while a parent or an older child would read aloud the accompanying text. The rudimentary projectors, which emitted a distinctive scent due to overheating, needed to be operated manually by the viewers themselves.16 Binge watching was impossible and none of the original projectors I know of could be used for watching more than two films in a row. The uniqueness of these projections resided in the way they were performed: the immobile frames were animated by the reader’s voice and by his or her interpretation of them. This frame (Figure  14.4) from ‘The peasant revolt’ (1986) is representative. The drawing, originally made by a famous Romanian artist, Nicolae Vermont (1866–1932), is introduced in the diafilm for its emotional value. Many other artists from the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century are present in this diafilm. All of the images used are paintings or drawings created by famous artists and some of them had nothing to do with the peasant revolt. The 1907 peasant revolt was a theme used by communist historiography to illustrate

FIGURE 14.4  Frame

from ‘The peasant revolt of 1907.’ Frame 18/22, 41 frames, 35 mm, positive filmstrip, colour film, no credited authors. Originally published in 1975, reissued in 1986.

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the oppressive character of the nobility. In the image, a mother mourns her dead husband surrounded by her children, and the text directly addresses the viewer, after quoting the mother: ‘Ioane, Ioane, you asked for some land . . . drawing by N. Vermont. How do we interpret this drawing’s text?’ The diafilm is explicitly an interpretandum and the viewer’s reaction is a part of the show. Of course, the viewer of this particular scene was supposed to be terrified and to offer a politically correct answer, but the key to this strategy was the appropriation of ideology: the viewer was creating his own message, filtered by his own affectivity. The familiar surroundings and the familiar voice delivering the ideologically charged message were, probably, more efficient and persuasive than public screenings that did not allow immediate individual reactions. The small crowd that the newer diafilms addressed was more ‘idiorrhythmic,’ in Roland Barthes’ phrase. In his 1977 seminar at the Collège de France, Barthes used the term ‘idiorrhythmy’ to describe an ideal situation of living together ‘where each subject lives according to his own rhythm.’17 He extends the meaning of this ideal situation to all sorts of social interactions. I think it can be used for this particular situation too. It may explain the success of this simple and poorly functioning technology, whose lamps heated up so much that after 20 or 30 minutes projection had to be interrupted for them to cool down. On the one hand, this everyday object created, via ritualized gestures, a breach in everyday temporality, a spectacular moment confined in a protected familiar space immersed in a protective darkness. On the other, the filmstrip did not impose its rhythm on the viewers, but it offered them the liberty to configure the dynamic of the performance and to take part in the creation of its meaning. No wonder the diafilm became a subject of nostalgia. Finally, the message and the private milieu created a strong feeling of belonging, manipulating the viewer to relate emotionally to national heroes, feeling as if he or she was almost participated in their actions. In his phenomenological analysis of individual and collective experiences of cinema, Julien Hanich observes that strong emotions work as stimuli that remind the viewer of those around him, of his own part in a collective experience: I have argued that emotions and affects as well as concomitant expressive reactions can influence collective viewing by changing the viewer’s degree of awareness of other audience members, drawing them from the periphery to the centre of his or her field of consciousness and back again. How is this possible in light of one of the movie theatre’s most significant features, its hiding effect? The extreme darkness, the unidirectional viewing position, the sloped stadium seating, the loudness of the surround sound system, the relatively large amount of space around each seat, and the screen as the sole light source, hide the viewer, at least partially, from the attention of others and hide others from his or her attention.18 In the diafilm experience, designed to be a collective one, the ‘degree of mutual awareness’ was elevated by the familiar voice reading, by the proximity of the others, usually very close to one another on couches, beds or on the floor, especially

254  Alexandra Ilina

in the small, often crowded houses or apartments built under Communism. The darkness was never extreme, not even at night, as the screening always took place in an improvised decorum. The shared experience made the message more persuasive and consensus more likely to achieve. Hanich shows that shared, displayed emotional reactions of viewers, like fear or laughter, are likely to make the experience more intense because it is lived through a particular kind of intersubjectivity.19 Unlike the spectators of an animated film, the viewers of a diafilm were active participants: from the preparation of the setting to the actual watching, the spectator played his or her own part. Despite the static images, the modulations of the voice made the experience a dynamic one and even suspense was a common strategy: the final result of a battle scene was delayed; the death of a beloved character was announced in a longer sequence of frames, and so on. Of course, the reader became a storyteller and he or she also controlled the duration of the performance. The reader was also able to subvert or distort the message, adapting it to his or her own version of the story. Because of all these interventions, the duration of these performances was unpredictable. The apparent freedom of interpretation and performance offered by diafilms was the key to their public success, but that freedom only made the message more persuasive. In one of the most popular children’s stories, written by the same Ion Creangă, the Big Bad Wolf imitates the voice of the Mother Goat to sing a song and trick her three children into opening the door. He then eats them and displays their severed heads in the window. With a similar trick, the Party’s voice managed to make itself heard behind closed doors and to deliver its message efficiently through the most trustworthy voices.

Notes 1 United States Educational, Scientific and Cultural Motion Pictures and Filmstrips Catalogue (Washington, DC: United States Information Agency, 1958), p. iii. 2 Anonymous, ‘Diafilm Nostalgia. Soviet Filmstrips Go Digital’, Russian Life, 59 (May/ June 2016), 3, p. 8. 3 Levente Borsos, ‘Translation of Digitized Filmstrips: Sociocultural Aspects and Pedagogical Potential’, Perspectives. Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, 27 (2018), 1–16, p. 4. 4 Alexandru Matei, O tribună captivantă. Televiziune, ideologie, societate în România socialistă (1965–1983) (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2013), p. 37. The first colour TV sets appeared in Romania in 1983. 5 Octavian-Mihai Machidon and Mihai Ivanovici, ‘Digital Color Restoration for the Preservation of Reversal Film Heritage’, Journal of Cultural Heritage, 33 (2018), 181–190. 6 See Leah Dickerman, ‘Camera Obscura: Socialist Realism in the Shadow of Photography’, October, 93 (2000), 138–153. 7 A certain Marcel Roşca (his birth name was Rosen, but he changed it in order to avoid anti-Jewish persecution, very common at the time) is mentioned in a decision published in the ‘Official Journal’ (‘Monitorul Oficial’), no 188, 15 August 1946, p. 8856. According to the decision, he was appointed the role of ‘cultural secretary’ working for the Ministry of Information. It is unclear if this is the same M. Roşca from the script, but it is highly probable. 8 Nicolae Bălescu, Românii supt Mihai-Voievod Viteazul. The text was first published as a feuilleton in Revista română (1861–1863).

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9 Lucian Boia, Istorie si mit în constiinta natională (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1997). 10 Ibid., pp. 321, 342. 11 Katherine Verdery defines the term in National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauşescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p.  167: ‘During the 1970s and 1980s, increasing numbers of Romanian writers and literary critics were drawn into an argument over an idea called “protochronism”. This idea encouraged critics and literary historians to look for developments in Romanian culture that had anticipated events in the better-publicized cultures of Western Europe (thus, “proto-chronos”: first in time). . . . Protochronism was an intensified resuscitation of interwar indigenist arguments about the national essence; yet its context distinguished them from it.’ 12 For cinema see Cristian Tudor Popescu, Filmul surd în România mută: politică si propagandă în filmul românesc de fictiune (1912–1989) (Bucharest: Polirom, 2011). For television see Matei, O tribună captivantă. 13 Borsos, ‘Translation’, p. 5. 14 Diapositifs were single frames that could be projected as well. Most of them were photographs of famous tourist attractions. Very expensive family photos could also be transformed into diapositifs, but this was a practice mostly reserved for the members of the regime and of the Securitate. 15 Alina Popescu, ‘Des Unions professionnelles et pour la création dans la Roumanie communiste: une comparaison institutionnelle entre l’Association des Cinéastes et l’Union des Artistes’, in Caterina Preda (ed.), The State Artist in Romania and Eastern Europe. The Role of the Creative Unions (Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press, 2017), pp. 37–64. 16 Borsos, ‘Translation’, p. 6. 17 Roland Barthes, How to Live Together. Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces. Notes for a Lecture Course and Seminar at the Collège de France (1976–1977), trans. Kate Briggs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 6. 18 Julien Hanich, ‘Collective Viewing. The Cinema and Affective Audience Interrelations’, Passions in Context. The Journal for the History and Theory of Emotions, 1 (2010), 1–18, p. 8. 19 Julien Hanich, ‘Laughter and Collective Awareness: The Cinema Auditorium as Public Space’, NESCUS European Journal of Media Studies, 3 (2014), 43–62, p. 44.

15 THE TRAJECTORY OF A SPEAR The materiality of an everyday political object1 Laurence Douny

This chapter investigates the role that a particular object, a Fulbe spear, has played in aspects of the socio-political construction of a customary chiefdom in rural north western Burkina Faso, especially with regards to slavery, between the seventeenth century and the present day. This emblematic power object gives material form to certain aspects of the history of the formation of the chiefdom in the village of Douroula. Key features of the history of the Marka-Dafing chiefdom are embedded in the materiality of the spear known as gawali.2 These historical features help to uncover aspects of this spear’s trajectory, in a figurative sense, as they are exposed in the oral tradition of the chiefdom and performed in a commemorative ceremony. An object with an initial use value and a subsequent role in ritual, this object has been endowed with a continually changing historical and political meaning. In this chapter, I examine how this weapon was first used as an everyday, functional object by Fulbe slave captors – the zanfan ke baw3 – who engaged in slave trading and banditry in the hinterland, before becoming a political object over time in the context of local governance and heritage-making. Used by raiders on horseback, the spear was a piece of personal equipment of a primarily defensive nature, as well as a form of body adornment defining a Fulbe raider’s identity, that subsequently became part of a wider system of historical objects accumulated by the chiefdom of Marka-Dafing people across time.4 This material heritage object has, over time, served to forge a variety of crosscutting collective representations concerning Fulbe slave raiders, who used the spear to enslave rural populations through physical violence and intimidation during plundering raids or razzia.5 Focusing on what Donald Norman calls the ‘affordances’ of an object, I explore the material properties or qualities of the spear that are found in its design. In Norman’s usage, the concept of affordances refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be

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used. . . . Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. . . . When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking: no picture, label, or instruction needed.6 I shall examine the ways the spear’s design has guided its function, its use and the kinds of actions or interactions it made possible, and which the Marka-Dafing chiefdom perceived in this spear. Based on Marka-Dafing perceived affordances of its design, I intend to show how the spear became a political object in the context of changes of ownership and shifts in its function in specific historical occurrences over the longue durée, and was even remade after the apparent loss of the original in the twentieth century. I situate these functional shifts in an operational sequence, a chaîne opératoire, which traces the spear’s different usages, concentrating on aspects of its consumption during specific periods.7 The historical cues to these periods are: first, the Fulbe razzias of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, described in oral tradition as a slave hunt; second, the foundation of the village of Douroula, marked by the enthronement of a Marka chief; the Islamization of local communities in the region of Douroula and finally during French colonial rule. The spear now gives material form to the power of the Marka-Dafing’s chiefs, who are ‘nobles’ and whose ancestors enslaved people and owned domestic slaves. In the present day, their abiding power is legitimized through ritual display in local commemorations that recount the history of slavery. This spear also plays a role in maintaining the social cohesion of the village through rituals involving it, which mainly serve to facilitate political control over the village. It is important to emphasize that while the spear clearly serves the chiefdom to validate its politics, Marka-Dafing’s discourse on its biography also re-emphasizes how the focus on the establishment of the chiefdom’s power is their version of a complex history which they are seeking to make flawless. The chiefdom highlights the deeds of their ancestors and praises their bravery but never acknowledges their failures and defeats: so many times, in short, when the spear failed symbolically to protect the people.8 This object thus materializes, in counterpoint, various interpretations of village history which are told in different ways by the descendants of the multiple groups now living in Douroula as a means to glorify the memory of their own ancestors. It should, though, be underlined that these alternative histories, crafted by rival powers, remain either unknown, partially known or cannot be talked about by the descendants of slaves in Douroula, partly due to their status, but also out of fear of reactivating deeply rooted resentment and discord between the concerned groups living in Douroula. The village of Douroula is inhabited by the Marka-Dafing, some of whom have Samogo and Dogon origins; the Bwa and the Bobo (native populations of the Mouhoun region); the Mossi (established there in the 1980s); the Fulbe, who settled there over four generations in the seventeenth century; the Marka nobles; and descendants of slaves who bear either Marka-Dafing or Fulbe names.9 Among these groups, the Marka nobles are considered to be the native population of Douroula. This paper concentrates on elements of the trajectory of the spear as they were

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emphasized by the Marka-Dafing chiefdom and the council of the descendants of the Fulbe community in ten out of a number of interviews conducted in 2015 and 2017 on the history of slavery in Douroula.10 It focuses on interviewees’ discourse and their presentation of the spear to trace a fragmented ‘biography’ of this object, its changing functions and meanings, by means of salient historical cues identified by the interviewees.11 Nor has this trajectory yet reached its end: the spear remains a political object embedded in aspects of the political history of the Marka-Dafing chiefdom of Douroula today. Inspired by Langdon Winner’s conception of ‘political object,’ I use this term to invoke the ‘authoritative qualities’ of the spear that assist the Marka-Dafing in their governing activities.12 The spear acts as a powerful reminder of the legitimacy both of current power in the village and of the villagers’ social status as, respectively: descendants of slave raiders; descendants of slaves; descendants of nobles; or descendants of freedmen, that is to say, people whose ancestors were freed but who still bear the mark of past slavery. I will seek to show how this highly symbolic artefact, taken as a war trophy from a slain Fulbe horseman, has provided and still provides political reinforcement for local traditional chiefdom and its governmental power.13 On the other hand, the spear also reminds us of the historical ties that bind the Marka-Dafing and the Fulbe together in a very sensitive history embedded in the materiality of this contentious object. It serves to recall the social identities of the descendants of slave owners, raiders and slaves in a way that has consequences for the political leadership of the village. I will also suggest that the embodied practice of sacrificing animals with the spearhead with the aim of empowering the object also serves to reinforce the power of the Marka chiefdom through the spear’s ‘material agency.’14 The symbolic power of the spear reminds the community who they are socially and politically.

The materiality of the spear: material and political relations in an everyday object The copy of the original spear (Figure 15.1) is made of three parts: a flat pointed head fashioned in an unidentified metal attached to a long wooden stick that has been deliberately corrugated as a means to avoid unidirectional trajectory when the object was thrown at a person running away. The end of the spear shows a long and flat metal head that was used as a hoe to dig into the soil to catch small animals in their burrow. This type of spear, used as a tool for hunting animals and people arrived in the region with the Fulbe raiders. It had previously been unknown to people of the rural areas of the Boobola, whose inhabitants defended themselves against these invaders with locally manufactured bows and arrows. It is not known when the spear was produced, by whom, how and where. The spear as we know it today is a copy of the original, which disappeared after the colonial period. The latter existed before the foundation of Douroula in the first half of the seventeenth century, at a time when the Marka community still lived in a hamlet called Pigni. The lightweight spear, carried on a horse, served both as a staff and a projectile

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FIGURE 15.1 The

copy of the original spear is made of a double head: a flat pointed head fashioned in an unidentified metal and a long and flat metal head used as a hoe to hunt animals in their burrows.

Photo: Douroula, 2016, © Salif Sawadogo.

weapon of war used as a javelin to be thrown from a distance. It also served as a symbol of honour.15 Focusing on the materiality of the spear helps to understand aspects of the cultural process by which the spear became a political object. Initially an everyday object, it came to shape and acquire meaning within the historical entanglements of bodies, power and things.16 I use ‘materiality’ here to denote a set of material and socio-political relations embedded not just in an object itself but also in a broader system of objects which includes it. In the case of the spear, this system consists of

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an arsenal or weapons store that today forms the ko pin or local cultural heritage of Douroula. This was kept until recently in the ‘house of the braves’ (tié so) in the compound of the Marka-Dafing chiefdom, but it is now scattered. In the present analysis, the materiality of the spear takes in two material characteristics: its perceived ‘affordances’ and its ‘agency,’ which taken together help us to understand the trajectory of the ‘biography’ of the spear. From this perspective, I define the materiality of the spear as an ensemble of qualities of the object and of relations between this weapon’s various agents and patients that changed over time according to the usages assigned to it. In my analysis, the spear possesses a political quality that is embedded in the design of this piece of mundane technology, as an object initially used for hunting and as a tool for capturing animals and people.17 If we push this standpoint far enough, it might be argued that all artefacts are political by definition, since they can become political anywhere and at any time, according to the intention of their users.18 In what follows, however, I would prefer to emphasize the material elements of the spear that help to perpetuate the authoritative quality of this political artefact across the centuries. The spear possesses material predispositions to become a political artefact and the materiality of the spear embodies, in turn, the power relations that enforce and, to some extent, structure these predispositions through ritual practice. The examination of the social usages of technology through history helps to characterize the inherent and hidden political dimensions of objects that serve people to achieve political goals over a period of time, within a specific environment, under certain circumstances, and in the context of different interactions. From this point of view, the Fulbe spear not only possesses perceived ‘affordances’ in its design that Donald Norman defines as visual cues that guide the object’s function, use, and thus the kind of actions or interactions with the object that become possible because of its form or the materials it is made of.19 It also possesses the political quality of an authoritative pointed, sharp and metallic artefact that materializes multiple forms of power because its meaning was fixed and is recalled through performance and display. These forms were and are perceived by various subjects in specific socio-historical contexts in which this object has cultural significance and relevance. This makes it possible to situate Norman’s concept of perceived affordances within the political framework of the history of slavery and leadership in north-western Burkina Faso, in terms of the ‘political’ affordances that arise in interactions between the Marka-Dafing and Fulbe communities over time and in the context of embodied practice. The kinds of use of the spear in embodied practices are defined by the qualities of the spear as perceived by its owner. As we shall see, the spear moved from the status of a tool and a weapon to that of a ritual object, as a receptacle of spiritual forces and therefore, in Marka-Dafing belief, endowed with material agency. This artefact enabled the Marka-Dafing chiefdom to connect to the invisible world in the context of sacrificial practice and to obtain the benevolence of God in bringing harmony to the village. Later, in postcolonial times, the spear became an object of parade and of display, acting as a repository of collective memory and as a mnemotechnic device by which the past

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was and is narrated by the chiefdom. It thus seems apt to stress the role that materiality plays in the formation of the village’s traditional governance, for example in legitimating the powers of Marka-Dafing nobles but also in the making of cultural heritage by the chiefdom through tradition. The spear is thus a highly symbolic object that materializes multiple pasts, brought together in the trajectory of the object.20 This in turn helps to identify the political interplay between Marka-Dafing and Fulbe members of the community. For analytical purposes, I  have framed this diachronic trajectory within a chaîne opératoire or operational sequence  – a concept I  borrow from the anthropology of techniques21 – of the usages of the spear as reconstructed from the accounts of both Marka-Dafing and Fulbe members of the village. Although the concept of operational sequence has mainly been used to study production from the point of view of techniques as ‘efficacious action upon matter,’22 I see consumption as standing in continuity with production.23 The operational sequence can include the ‘efficacious actions upon subjects’ of the object and its matter after production and as a process of subjectification.24 This adds the question of the material agency of the spear to what people do with the object on the basis of its affordances – the perceived, possible uses suggested by its design. Hence, the trajectory of the spear enables us to uncover aspects of its cultural biography embedded in the history of the community of Douroula.25 The sequence emphasizes what the object became in the past and has become up to the present day: that is, the transformative processes by which it was turned into a political object, and even how it continued to be one after it was replaced by a copy after the colonial era, presumably on the basis of the deteriorated original artefact. By considering as material practice those parts of the operational sequence of this spear, which include both defending and capturing slaves and then sacrificing animals with it, we can focus on a process of objectification by which the object establishes itself through time, through actions or activity performed through it, and also via subjectification, as part of a process by which members of the Marka-Dafing chiefdom re-establish social relations in the village but above all maintain their power. This process bears comparison with Luc Bourgeois’ diachronic analysis earlier in this volume of the practical and symbolic uses of horns in the Middle Ages. Bourgeois emphasizes the authoritative quality of an instrument of ‘social distinction’ used by the elites to display their status and power, although here the process runs in the opposite direction, as the horn, as a prestige-conferring object progressively lost its political valence with time.

The raider’s spear: from everyday object to war trophy In the early seventeenth century, during the reign of Naba Zanna of Ouagadougou (1605–1633 CE), the spear or galawi, the most symbolic artefact of power owned by the Marka-Dafing chiefdom, was used by a Fulbe slave raider as a weapon to ward off, wound, kill or enslave people in the bush or by assailing their hamlets.26 The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were times of deep insecurity in the Boobola, as a result of the raids that fed the inter-African, trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic

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slave trades. These were reduced by the end of the international trade but continued until slavery was finally suppressed under French colonial rule in the later nineteenth century. In rapid incursions from the Seno plain located in contemporary Mali into their hunting ground in the Boobola, the Fulbe took goods, cattle, horses and people that they came across. Captives were sold as slaves by the raiders for colossal prices, initially for domestic labour in the markets of Djenne, Timbuktu, Dia and Segou, then also to Dioula traders called sofabé who engaged in long-distance commerce in Guinea, Senegal and Nigeria.27 The Fulbe horsemen known under the patronyms of Sofabe and Diallo assembled in groups of opportunist pillagers who had a dark skin colour bearing scarification. They were animists and were particularly violent.28 These pillagers were viewed as fierce predators by rural populations of the Boobola, or land of the Bobo, a fertile and strategic corridor.29 They were described in an interview as foula bougou toutou ani bougou waaka, expressing the idea that Fulbes were untrustworthy, volatile and elusive folk who ‘set up their camp and then pack up to leave.’ They were considered as inferior by the Fulbe of the Macina, or Maasinankoobe, who had lighter skin colour and were Muslims.30 There were also Fulbe animist cattle breeders among the rural populations of the Boobola, who had settled down in the Sourou and Mouhoun regions from the sixteenth century after fleeing the repression conducted by Muslim Fulbe of the Macina.31 These Fulbe herdsmen, who co-existed with native Bwa, Bobo and Marka communities, were also victims of the Fulbe horsemen’s exactions.32 Anyone in the Boobola – regardless of their identity or status and including children, men and women, warriors, or even the slave-owning chief of a village – could thus be taken away to become a slave, or matioube.33 This co-existed with the practice among local chiefs and warlords of enslaving their defeated enemies and prisoners of war, as well as their wives and children, whom they could sell at a high price to Dioula traders, who made considerable profits from slavery.34 Fulbe horsemen had extensive knowledge of the region and its geography, enabling them to avoid being ambushed by local warriors or other groups of bandits roaming in the bush.35 They also knew to bypass the territories of the Mossi of the Yatenga, who were powerful warriors and competitors in the slave trades. Fulbe raider factions strategically scattered to harass the local population or to reconnoitre a targeted hunting zone. They seized the travellers they encountered on their way but also observed people’s movements from a distance, identifying unprotected hamlets and finding the best time to strike. Looted hamlets were reduced to ashes by raiders. Their inhabitants were then used for their labour, to capture further slaves by luring people to the Fulbe, by spying in their community, or as guides to new hunting areas.36 Together with the horse, the spear was an indispensable accessory of the raiders, an object of their everyday life. While the horse allowed them to hunt quickly over long distances, the spear, which was used by the raider only while he was on his horse, functioned as a powerful yet heavy weapon that could be thrown at people and immobilize them. The imposing and menacing presence of the horsemen on his mount caused people to panic and disperse and made the capture of individuals

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easier by chasing and exhausting them. In West Africa, the culture of the horse as an instrument of conquest and of trade started to develop in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.37 Horses as conspicuous goods were intrinsically related to slavery, since capturing slaves enabled raiders to acquire more horses, which, in turn, enabled them to capture more slaves.38 The hamlets later gathered together into villages in which men gradually organized themselves into groups of warriors composed of archers to protect the villagers. In addition, these communities organized for self-defence, settled in areas of the bush that remained inaccessible to the raiders and which provided good observation points from which they could easily control movement in and out of the territory.39 It is in this context that the Fulbe spear, owned today by the Marka-Dafing chiefdom of Douroula, was taken from a Fulbe pillager who was shot dead by one of their ancestors.40 During a raid, the Fulbe horseman, whose name remains unsaid, perished from a poisoned arrow shot by a Marka archer called toa tigi (‘ghost shooter’), who was hiding in a shea tree. The archer’s name and burial site are known to Marka-Dafing elders but are kept secret to avoid triggering political tensions between Fulbe and Marka-Dafing communities. The arrow was made of a wooden shaft and a poisoned metal head.41 It had the advantage of being lighter and thus faster than the spear, which required considerable strength to throw, and a bow and arrow could also be used from any location to neutralize a target at a long distance. The captured spear, made of materials unknown locally, symbolized the power of the Fulbe raiders. It not only provided evidence of the Marka capacity to counteract the enemy but also materialized their ability to protect their community and to control the area. The spear that, according to their descendants, was acquired as a war trophy through the bravery of the Marka warriors has to be understood in relation to the Marka’s bow and arrows, which serve as another important symbol of the power by which the spear was seized.42

The spear as a ritual and political object The spear as a symbol of bravery and power became a ritual object soon after it was seized by the toa tigi archer of the Marka community of Pigni (near Tougan) before the foundation of Douroula in 1624.43 Blood sacrifices were made once a year on the blade of the spear to symbolically reinforce its power at the same time as similar sacrifices were made on other weapons in the arsenal that were used to combat enemies. The spear became the receptacle of live forces flowing in the blood of the sacrificed animal, which empowered it and attracted invisible entities, thus guaranteeing the symbolic protection of the village community of Pigni, as well as its continuity and cohesion. At some point, however, an internal dispute broke out within the chiefdom of Pigni, causing some of the clan members to leave. One of them, Pakou (Parka) Soaré, left Pigni to found the village of Douroula, the name of which could stem either from the Malinke term dogo yôrô toua, used by the Marka to refer to a safe place in the bush where people could hide from the enemy, or from the Fufulde word douroungo, meaning a vast area of pasture.44

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According to some members of the Fulbe community of Douroula, however, this place was known to the nomadic Fulbes before the village was founded by the Marka-Dafing around 1624. The Fulbes had for many decades temporarily settled their camps around a water well. However, after the destruction of the village of Kiri where some of the Fulbes lived permanently, they moved to Douroula, only to discover that the Marka-Dafing had settled there in the meantime. Douroula was located in the zone of influence of Fulbe raiders, near to a strategic trade route that connected important markets such as Bobo-Dioulasso to San and Djenne in Mali.45 It is worth noting that inter-African slavery was also practised by the Marka chiefdom in Pigni, as well as in newly founded Douroula, where men taken as prisoners of war, as criminals or found guilty of various forms of misbehaviour, were sold to Dioula traders, whereas women and children in similar circumstances were more often taken in as domestic slaves.46 At times of famine, the heads of family would also be forced to exchange their children and relatives for sufficient food until they could pay their master back.47 The first chief of Douroula, Pakou Soaré, was described as a powerful Muslim warrior who conducted wars against neighbouring villages and welcomed Muslim foreigners to reside in Douroula.48 He was, however, dethroned by his younger brother Kouzon Soaré, an animist who benefited from the military support of a group of Fulbe raiders with whom he had concluded a non-aggression pact. Pakou Soaré was beheaded by a Fulbe, and his head was placed on display on a stick in front of the chiefdom house. In exchange for their intervention and military support of this first group of Fulbe, Kouzon Soaré allowed them to settle permanently in Douroula, to join the village council, and to allow other Sidibé Fulbe clans, such as those from the village of Safané, to set up in Douroula. Under the terms of this agreement, the Fulbe obtained a certain right to interfere in the political affairs of the village as strategists, a position that quickly became strategic for them, too. They were also allowed to conduct their raids freely in the region while maintaining their settlement in Douroula. This meant they did not have to move continuously back and forth between the camps in present-day Mali where they kept their captives. The Marka chiefdom of Douroula, now led by Kouzon Soaré, engaged more intensively in slavery with the help of the Fulbe. The alliance between the Sidibé Fulbe clan and the Marka chiefdom led by Kouzon Soaré thus allowed both groups to become wealthier and to increase their influence in the region through the practice of slavery. The spear thus played a role in the foundation of Douroula. It accompanied the founder when he became the leader of the village and then passed into the hands of his brother, who seized power with the help of the Fulbe, one of whose ancestors had originally owned the spear and been killed by a Marka archer. With time, the spear thus moved from the status of a war trophy, becoming first a ritual object, and then a political object. Under Pamba Soaré, it materialized and legitimated leadership, and with it his political control over the village territory and its community, including the Fulbe. This change of the spear’s function marks a change in the socio-political relations between Marka and Fulbe communities living in Douroula

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once the Marka had gained access to Fulbe slaves, weapons, and military support in exchange for the right to settle and to conduct raids in the region. The Marka, who had been victims of Fulbe raiders, now became their allies. The spear here acts as a material means by which the Fulbe were reminded by the Marka chiefdom that they could still be defeated even though they had helped the Marka to achieve the throne. At the same time, it also reminded everybody else that the ancestor of the current chiefdom had achieved power by allying with the Marka’s historical enemies to kill his own brother. In a similar way, the spear as an historical object enabled the chiefdom to assert power over the community they protected and administered but whose inhabitants were partly owned by them as slaves. As a political object, it materialized power and social relations within the community, which included the descendants of slaves, nobles and slave raiders who had once been enemies, as well as people from a number of different ethnic backgrounds. Socio-political relations between the Marka and the Fulbe quickly became complicated by and entangled in inter-ethnic mixing. The Fulbe raiders who had mixed with Malinkes also had mothers and grandmothers who were captive natives from the Boobola, which made them partially autochthonous.49 In this context, the function and therefore the meaning of the spear was defined on the basis of Marka usages in achieving particular political statements through ritual. The spear enabled the Marka to reinstate symbolically the cohesion of the society as well as to reinforce the agreements made between the Marka and the Fulbe. This principle of cohesion was intrinsically linked to the agency of the object and the affordances of its design, with which it was endowed by the Marka chiefdom, and that persisted and continue to persist through time.

The copy of the spear in the commemoration of slavery From 1904, under French colonial rule, Douroula was part of the colony of the Haut-Senegal and of Niger, before becoming part of the colony of the HauteVolta from 1919 until 1958.50 The French colonial administration, which put an end to inter-African slavery, seized local arsenals with the official aim of destroying them. Guns, chains, spears, swords, bows and arrows that had accumulated in the villages in the aftermath of successive battles were banned from people’s homes alongside those that had been acquired through trade or been manufactured locally. This was not only because they were historically and politically charged but also because they were used by the villagers in revolts against colonial rule. The spear thus became a symbol of resistance to French occupation as well as a reminder to the Fulbe of their history and of their relation to the MarkaDafing traditional chiefdom; because the Fulbe were made the councillors of the canton chiefdom (chefferie de canton) created by the French and led by non-native Marka-Dafing. This new form of colonial administration made use of the advice of the Fulbe, whose military and political strategic sense was respected by both the Marka-Dafing and the French colonial administration. The chefferie de canton had full power over the village, but the ritual power was still in the hands of the

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land chiefdom (chefferie de terre), which conducted all ceremonies, including those that used the spear. As has been said, the spear that survived colonial times subsequently vanished from the Marka-Dafing arsenal at an unknown date. The spear used today is described as a copy of the original, which had been damaged and probably discarded, because the wooden shaft had been eaten away by the termites and because the fragile point was heavily corroded. What happened to the remains of the original object is either unknown or, more likely, undisclosed owing to its sensitive political nature. Aside from what has been said, the object remains highly contentious because the leaders of the present-day Fulbe community believe that it should have been returned to their ancestors, since it belongs to their heritage. Several hypotheses have been proposed about the disappearance of the original spear or its remains. Such a powerful prestige object could still exist and be kept out of public view, or the damaged original head of the spear might have been partly or entirely melted down to make a new one. It may also have been simply buried in a sacred ritual place, stolen, claimed by another group, or sold by some villagers to antiques dealers or European tourists. In any event, the present spear still shows how the complexity of political relations and shifting powers established over several centuries can be materialized in the copy of a significant object. The copy is held as a cultural heritage item that helps local leaders to stabilize socio-political relations and status among the community and to legitimize the leaders’ indefinite power. Consequently, using a copy of the original Fulbe spear meant and means today putting to rest the past relations between the Fulbe and the Marka-Dafing. It also continues to enable the chiefdom to perform rituals to commemorate the history of slavery according to traditional rules of ritual while also reminding the community of the political importance of the chiefdom in the history of Douroula. Thus, the spear as seen today has the shape and the outward aspect or ‘expression’ of the original, its physical and functional characteristics, which is really what the spear represents for the community – that is, its history – and that is what is important. The object remade and symbolically reborn as a ritual object stands as the symbol of a victory, of Marka-Dafing chiefs who had defeated the Fulbe slave raiders. Although the object cannot be dated, as a copy it has a chronology and a lifecycle. The spear features in the commemoration called taachi bla où tara as part of sowing celebrations or n’daalou that occur every three years near the beginning of the rainy season. With the increasing Islamization of Douroula, about two hundred years ago, the initial sacrifice by animists of black chickens at the village’s foundational shrine was replaced by the Islamic slaughtering of a black ox outside the village.51 Black is the elected colour of the spirits who roam the territory of Douroula, and their benevolence benefits the Marka-Dafing. This ritual aims to implore God to provide abundant rains to spare the villagers from famine, a time during which, as we have seen, many heads of families were forced to sell their children and relatives as slaves to survive, a kind of societal breakdown. In addition, sacrificing black

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animals allowed the ritual leader to contact the village spirits in order to obtain their help and their magic in combat against the enemy. The overall purpose of the sacrificial act today is the same as it was 200 years ago. Maintaining the cohesion of the society remains in line with tradition and is also apparently tolerated by the Muslims of the village: it does not seem to be in contradiction with local Islamic belief systems. The ox is first taken three times around the village by a Fulbe, while the Marka-Dafing chief holding the spear walks toward the sacrificial site. The chief is acclaimed by women, who throw their headscarves in the air to greet him, because he embodies the power of MarkaDafing chiefdom and pays tribute to the ancestor who fought the slave raiders. The animal is then slaughtered facing the east side of the site, and the spear is planted in the soil and doused with oxblood. This ritual act recalls the earlier blood sacrifice made at the earth shrine, the animist shrine in the village. When the animal is cold, its body is dragged to the west side, and the meat is cut into pieces. The meat is then dressed in piles on fresh tree leaves that symbolize fertility and the regeneration of nature, and intrinsically, thus, of the society, its cohesion and harmony. The piles of flesh are presented to five men selected by their peers from each community of Douroula – the Fulbe, Bobo, Samogo, Mossi and the Marka chiefdom. Next, a ritual theft of the meat occurs. Five men grab pieces of meat and violently take those of the others. Those who abandon the fight can beg for some bits from the winners. This performance is explained by the villagers as an embodied metaphor of slavery, showing the violence by which people and animals were taken as commodities and forcefully appropriated by others.52 The ritual reminds people of the Fulbe raids, during which Marka, Bobo and Bwa villages were ravaged and people were enslaved, becoming the property of a wealthy master in the same way as the cattle was. Thus, forcefully grabbing the meat emphasizes the brutality of people’s capture and makes people recall the past – that is, this commemorative performance is a reactivation of the past. The mise-en-scène of the razzia, involving bodies and objects, shows not only the brutality but also the suffering of the victims – in the hope of enabling peace in the village by including the descendants of the slaves’ captors.53 This celebration of Douroula’s history recalls socio-political relations, status and identities while reemphasizing local socio-political realities and power relations by displaying the victory of Marka-Dafing chiefdom over the former enemy, the Fulbe raiders. Paradoxically, the brutality of the performance brings stability to the village as a form of realization: history can always repeat itself or be repeated. The spear that magnifies the glorious past of the chiefdom also reminds descendants of slaves, and even descendants of freed slaves, who they are.

The trajectory of the spear: the politics of a local cultural heritage Today, the spear features in an arsenal that constitutes the local cultural heritage left by the ancestors. According to local definitions, the notion of cultural heritage

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described as tigné (‘spoiled’) includes the dimensions of a community’s usages and customs, which include knowledge systems and also the material means or property of the ancestors as wealth that can easily be lost and ruined if it falls into the wrong hands. As a result, such a heritage must be protected and preserved through everyday and ritual practices that keep it alive. According to this perspective, the notion of heritage as an all-embracing concept brings together aspects of a community’s material and immaterial culture. Although the spear remains the property of the Marka-Dafing chiefdom, its material agency affects the village community, whose members are part of its history and who are therefore symbolically unified by the power of the spear. People’s lives and common history thus become entangled with this object, which is part of their biography too. As we have seen, the spear as heritage has been commemorated since the seventeenth century in multiple ritual forms based on the cultural meaning and function attributed to the spear across time in distinctive historical contexts. In Douroula, the spear was kept until recently in the small house known as tié so, which is said to honour the ancestors who heroically fought many battles in times of war, razzia and slavery.54 This house representing the village community was located in the compound of the traditional chief of Douroula, the guarantor of the village’s heritage, or tigné, and a noble. The house contained a great number of dust-covered objects that existed as evidence of the history of slavery. As such, the spear as a war trophy taken from a Fulbe raider stands as the most significant symbolic artefact that not only magnifies the courage of the ancestors to defeat the enemy but also brings stability and harmony to the village.55 The purpose of the house was primarily to contain the power that these objects had accumulated over time. Before going to war or conducting a razzia, the head of the village took all the weapons out and doused them with animal blood to empower them and guarantee the efficacy of their symbolic protection. The spear, and the other weapons, could negatively affect the community if taken out without a sacrifice to appease the force of the object. The sacrifice defines its material agency or capacity for action on people, conferred by the spirits. For instance, violent conflicts would erupt in the community if these ritual imperatives were not met. The significance of accumulation of blood on the object and on the artefacts kept in the ‘house of the ancestors’ also contributed symbolically to the consolidation of the political power of the chiefdom over time. The ‘house of the ancestors’ contained the sitting Marka chiefdom’s arsenal, including other spear types and swords as well as locally produced bows and arrows, knives, guns and pointed wooden sticks, accumulated over a long period of time. These were kept along with other magical artefacts or objects of power, such as amulets, ankle chains, horse bits and stirrups. These prestigious artefacts dating from various periods of time were inherited from many ancestors of various families. The Marka-Dafing chief was responsible for keeping these objects, thus acting as a guarantor of peace. This arsenal composes a system of objects that bind together the multiple stories of the villagers of Douroula, telling a story about the past of the Marka-Dafing traditional chiefdom in the era of slavery.

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These trophies had been used by the Marka-Dafing both in defence of the village and to capture slaves that could be sold or owned as domestic slaves by the chiefdom. At the same time, its own people could be enslaved locally, by the Fulbe raiders roaming in the bush or by the Dioula traders. By sheltering the object, the house symbolized the cohesion of the village and the mutual trust among the Marka-Dafing community, as well as serving as a sign of acceptance of the Marka-Dafing’s political leadership of the village. Unfortunately, however, after being damaged by bad weather, the house collapsed, revealing its contents to the younger members of the chiefdom’s family, who sold several weapons to antiques dealers in the mid-2000s, as had already occurred in the early 1980s. This incident tainted the reputation of the chiefdom. As the keeper of tradition, it had failed to protect the objects entrusted to its care. Some of the remaining objects have subsequently been kept in the chief ’s house, while others have been given to the descendants of their original owners. The spear, on the other hand, as a copy of the original remains highly contentious, since as a trophy of war, an object whose original owner was Fulbe, is now kept as a trophy of war by the Marka-Dafing as part of their remaining arsenal. This powerful political object was used to protect the villagers once acquired by the Marka-Dafing, but it had earlier been used to kidnap and enslave people whose descendants today cannot marry a noble nor rule the village because of their status. In the course of its trajectory, the spear was first empowered by the Marka-Dafing chiefdom, and then helped to empower ­politically the chiefdom over time. As a stabilization of history, the spear allows us to reconstruct aspects of its trajectory, and serves the Marka-Dafing chiefdom as a mnemotechnic device to recall the past, although this reconstruction is itself subjected to omissions and reinventions characteristic of an oral tradition.

Conclusion This chapter uses aspects of the biography of a Fulbe spear to explore analytically the object’s cultural significance within the political relationship between the Marka-Dafing and Fulbe communities of Douroula. It examines the historical process by which the spear, initially an everyday object for its initial Fulbe owner, became political in different ways over the longue durée, between the first half of the seventeenth century and today. By focusing on the chaîne opératoire or operational sequence of the usages of the object and of its subsequent copy, an approach which brings to the fore certain aspects of its trajectory or ‘biography,’ I  have shown that the politics of governance of the Marka-Dafing chiefdom is embedded in the materiality of the object and that this politics is reinforced through the ritual usages of the spear. I have argued that political qualities borne by the affordances of the design of the artefact enabled it to become a political object as a war trophy that materializes the power of the Marka-Dafing chiefdom which played a role in the foundation of Douroula. It has also helped the chiefdom to reinstate its power over the long term, to contest colonial power and to commemorate the history of slavery as a means to maintain the social cohesion of society. The political quality

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of the object thus resides in its materiality, which I  have defined as a group of relations between the object and the subjects who manipulated it and manipulate its history, conferring meaning on it in accordance with the utility they saw in its design. I have also suggested how this perceived ‘affordance’ changed across time. As a result of its design, this power object acquired a material agency to act on certain people in specific socio-cultural and historical contexts, owing in part to its connection to the invisible world. This agency was and is established through a blood sacrifice that serves to appease the object, and implicitly the spirits, while also empowering the chiefdom. As it follows its own trajectory, the Fulbe spear as a historical artefact is today part of the community’s cultural heritage, helping to consolidate the politics of the Marka-Dafing chiefdom and the village’s memory of slavery.

Notes 1 This research was funded by HERA (Humanities and Education Research Association) as part of the project Currents of Faith (2015–2016). I am grateful to Dr. Ruy Blanes (Bergen), Prof. Ramon Sarró (Oxford), Prof. David Berliner (ULB/LAMC), CNRST Ouagadougou, Marie-Thérèse Somé (Directrice du Forum National de la Recherche Scientifique et des Innovations Technologiques [FRSIT]), CNRST Bamako (Mali), Prof. Mamadou Diawara (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main), Prof. Jo Tanden Diarra (Université Catholique de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, Bobo-Dioulasso); the villagers of Douroula who took part in the research – in particular, Modou Soaré, Zakarya Soaré, Amidou Soaré, Modou Sidibé, Modou Soaré, Wamarou Konaté, Souleyman Soaré and the participants who wish to remain anonymous, and Lossani Cissé, Salif Sawadogo and Lossani Dayo who assisted me in the field with translation and conducting the interviews. I am also grateful to the ‘Posthumanist History of Science’ reading group at The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin: in particular, Mats Fridlund, Lisa Onaga, Jaehwan Hyun, Maikel Kuijpers, Martina Schlünder and Ken Alder for their insightful comments. I would like to thank Christopher Fletcher (CNRS/University of Lille) who organized the colloquium, and the participants of the colloquium for their feedback. Finally, this paper was finalized at Humboldt University’s ‘Matters of Activity. Image Space Material’ funded by the Deutsch Forschungsgemainschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy- EXC 2025. 2 Terminology used among the Bambara, Fulbe and Marka-Dafing. 3 Term expressed in Marka-Dafing language (binkani kelaw in Dioula language) means ‘looters’ or ‘invaders.’ The literal translation signifies ‘the people who came to betray us’. 4 The name Marka refers to non-Islamized natives of Mali who left the Mande regions in the sixteenth century to settle in the Boobola, or land of the Bobo, in contemporary northwestern Burkina Faso. The name Dafing designates Islamized Marka who largely converted to Islam in the nineteenth century. Marka-Dafing thus now refers to the community of Douroula at large. 5 Alain Gallay, De mil, d’or et d’esclaves: Le Sahel précolonial (Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, 2011), p. 40; Anne Haour, Rulers, Warriors, Traders and Clerics: The Central Sahel and the North Sea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Robin Law, Horse in West African History: The Role of the Horse in the Societies of PreColonial West Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); Robert Sydney Smith, Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa (London: Methuen, 1976). 6 Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (New York: Basic Books, 1988), quote from p. 9.

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7 The chaîne opératoire was employed as a method of assembling the history of the spear and consists of a method of data analysis that allows me to reconstruct aspects of its history by placing events in a temporal sequence that emphasizes changes and shifts in the object’s function. In tracing the chaîne opératoire of the spear in a linear fashion, I also acknowledge the twists and turns in the history of the spear recalled by other communities of Douroula and that have been deliberately omitted by the Marka-Dafing chiefdom as these events would tarnish the bravery and glory of their ancestors. 8 Interview, anonymous, Douroula, May 2017. 9 Laurence Douny, field notes, March 2015; I shall use the term Fulbe as described in Youssouf Diallo’s book Les Fulbes de Boobala. Fulbe is designated in English by Fulani and also found in Hausa language (Niger/Nigeria) while the community is named Peul in French and Pël in Wolof (Senegal) and by extension in Francophone West Africa, Fula in Portuguese and Fulaw in Bambara (a Mande language of West Africa), to name but a few terminologies. 10 A total of 72 interviews were conducted during that period on the history of slavery in the Mouhoun region. The interviews I consider here deal more specifically with the spear and the arsenal. 11 Interviewees are members of the Marka-Dafing chiefdom and Fulbe community but also descendants of freed slaves. 12 Langdon Winner, ‘Do Artefacts Have Politics?’ Daedalus, 109 (1980), 121–136. 13 The history of slavery in north-western Burkina Faso and across the Sahel remains a very sensitive topic to research and to write about – especially in the present context of ongoing inter-ethnic conflicts stirred by jihads. 14 Andrew M. Jones and Nicole Boivin, ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects: Material Agency’, in Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 333–351. 15 Smith, War and Diplomacy, pp. 94–96. 16 Jean-François Bayart and Jean-Pierre Warnier, Matière à politique. Le pouvoir, les corps et les choses (Paris: Karthala, Recherches internationales, 2004). 17 Winner, ‘Do Artefacts Have Politics’, p. 134. 18 Thanks to Mats Fridlund for this observation. 19 Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, p. 9. 20 Ludovic Coupaye and Laurence Douny, ‘Dans la trajectoire des choses: Comparaison des approches francophones et anglophones contemporaines en anthropologie des techniques’, Techniques et Culture, 52–53 (2009), 12–39. 21 Pierre Lemonnier, Elements for an Anthropology of Technology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, 1992). 22 See e.g. André Leroi-Gourhan, L’Homme et la matière (Paris: Albin Michel, 1943); Leroi-Gourhan, Milieu et Techniques (Paris: Albin Michel, 1945); André-George Haudricourt, ‘La Technologie Culturelle: Essai de méthodologie’, in Jean Poirier (ed.), Ethnologie Générale (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), pp.  731–788; Robert Cresswell, ‘Techniques et Cultures. Les bases d’un programme de travail’, Techniques et cultures, Bulletin de l’Équipe de Recherche 191, 1 (1976), 7–59; Lemonnier, Elements for an Anthropology of Technology. 23 We do not know when or how the original spear or its current copy were produced. 24 Jean-Pierre Warnier, ‘Technology as Efficacious Action on Objects . . . and Subjects’, Journal of Material Culture, 14 (2009), 459–470; Jean-Pierre Warnier, ‘Pour une praxéologie de la subjectivation politique’, in Jean-François Bayart (ed.), Matière à politique. Le pouvoir, les corps et les choses (Paris: Karthala, ‘Recherches internationales’, 2004), pp. 7–31. 25 Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall propose ‘cultural biography’ as ‘the way human and object histories inform each other,’ arguing that ‘as people and objects gather in time, movement and change, they are constantly transformed, and these transformations of

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person and object are tied up with each other.’ See Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall, ‘The cultural biography of objects’, World Archaeology, 31: 2 (1999), 169. 26 Interview, Souleyman Soaré, Douroula, May 2017. On Naba Zanna, see Yamba Tiendrebeogo, ‘Histoire traditionnelle des Mossi de Ouagadougou’, Journal de la Société des Africanistes, 33: 1 (1963), 7–46. 27 Interview, Modou Sidibé, Douroula, April 2017. 28 Ibid. 29 Youssouf Diallo, Les Fulbe du Boobola: Genèse et évolution de l'état de Barani (Burkina Faso) (Cologne: Köppe, 1997), p. 360. 30 Interview, Modou Sidibé, Douroula, April 2017. 31 Jean Capron, Communautés villageoises bwa, Mali-Haute Volta. Mémoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie 9 (Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie, 1973), p.  59; Bernard de Rasilly, ‘Notes pour servir la chronologie du bassin du Bani-Nord et d’arrière- pays vers est BaraniSourou et des cercles de San et de Tominian’, Bulletin de l’IFAN, 34 (1972), 926–934, p. 924. In the nineteenth century, the Fulbe were unified by Islam and the Diina, the empire of the Macina founded by Sekou Amadou. 32 Maurice Bazémo, Esclaves et esclavage dans les anciens pays du Burkina Faso (Paris: Harmattan, 2007); Diallo, Les Fulbes de Boobala. 33 A term expressed in Fulfulde language that means a person belonging to the caste of the slaves. 34 Louis Tauxier, Le noir du Soudan: Pays Mossi et Gourounsi. Documents et analyses (Paris: Larose, 1912), p. 174 states that the Marka-Dafing distinguished between captifs de case (for domestic labour) and captifs de traire (who were traded). For the Dioula traders, see Claude Meillassoux, ‘Le rôle de l’esclavage dans l’histoire de l’Afrique occidentale,’ Anthropologie et Sociétés, 21 (1978), 117–148, p. 127. 35 Interview, Modou Sidibé, Douroula, April  2017; Ibrahima Thioub, ‘Entretien avec Ibrahima Thioub. Esclavage’, L’Humanité (23 June 2008). 36 Interview, Modou Sidibé, Douroula, April 2017. 37 Law, The Horse in West African History. 38 Haour, Rulers, Warriors, Traders and Clerics, p. 80; Allan George Bernard Fisher and Humphrey J. Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa: The Institution in Saharan and Sudanic Africa and the TRANS-Saharan Trade (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 68–69; Smith, Warfare and Diplomacy, pp. 121–122. 39 Thioub, ‘Entretien avec Ibrahima Thioub. Esclavage’. 40 Interview, Zakarya Soaré, April 2017. 41 Poison for such a use was often made from a mixture of plant and reptile substances. Binger, for example, writing in the late nineteenth century, describes a process by which the ground seeds of the dried pods of kouna (Strophanthus hispidus), a shrub or climbing liana, were macerated in urine for several days. The solution was then boiled with millet or cornflour until it was black and sticky. It was then used for coating arrowheads, spearheads, and bullets. See Louis Gustave Binger, Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi: vol. I (1887–1889) (Paris: Hachette, 1892), pp. 176–177. 42 Interview, Zakarya Soaré, Douroula, April 2017. 43 According to the chiefdom’s archives (Arabic manuscripts). 44 Interview, Modou Soaré, Douroula, May 2017. 45 Bazémo, Esclaves et esclavage; Diallo, Les Fulbe du Boobola. 46 Interview, Amidou Soaré, Douroula, May 2017. 47 Interview, Wamarou Konaté, Douroula, May 2017. 48 The Muslim identity of Pakou Soaré was contested in interviews by members of the Fulbe community who claim that he was an animist, asserting that Islam was brought by Noumouké Soaré, two generations after Pakou Soaré. In fact, the conversion of ­Douroula’s village community really started to become significant in the early nineteenth

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century. Political Islam gained ground throughout West Africa from the eighteenth century into the nineteenth century, notably through jihads (Holy Wars). See Fisher and Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society. This movement continued through the twentieth century and until the present day. 49 Interview, Zakarya Soaré, Douroula, April 2017. 50 The République de Haute Volta, proclaimed in 1958, became Burkina Faso in 1984. 51 Interview, Modou Sidibé, Douroula, April 2017. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid.

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INDEX

The following combines an index of names and places with a subject index. It includes a number of super-categories, designed to guide the reader to a certain type of people or things (animals, kings, materials, musical instruments.  .  .) dealt with across the book. Subjects and super-categories which are particularly pertinent for those seeking to explore the broad chronological span of this book have been placed in bold. Note that since many of the chapters deal with France, places and individuals in that country are listed individually: there is no entry for ‘France’. abbeys and priories: Croyland Abbey 38 – 39; La Crète 36; Muri 41; SaintDenis 17, 65, 75; Saint-Florent-le-Vieil 41; Saint-Hubert 40; Saint-Martin Priory, Niort 16 – 17; Saint-Vanne of Verdun 40; Véselay 36 actor-network theory 51, 53 – 55, 58 – 59, 215 Addison, Joseph 92, 109 affect see emotions affordances 5, 7, 8, 9, 18, 159 – 160, 256 – 261, 269; see also use agency 5, 6, 9 – 10, 15, 51, 136, 145 – 148, 215, 258, 260 – 261, 270 alcohol 10, 135, 137 – 138, 148, 174, 242; see also wine Alexander, Kimberly 105 Alexandru Sahia Studios 239 Algeria 9, 227, 228, 231 Alsace 175 Althabe, Gérard 192 L’Ami du Peuple 196 Amiens 148 anarchism 212, 214 Angers 40, 41

Angola 194 Animafilm 239, 250 – 254 animals: chickens 266; deer 35 – 36; dogs 35 – 36, 56, 69; donkeys 139; eagles 137, 142, 144, 146; elephants 31 – 33, 38, 177; giraffes 139; hares 36; leopards 46; lions 97, 129; oxen 266 – 267; snakes 139; walruses 31; wild boars 16, 36; wolves 36; see also horses (and their equipment) Antwerp 69 Anzin 151 – 169 Arbuckle, James 90 Ardres 72 aristocracy see nobles and nobility Aristotle 2, 63 Ashton-under-Lyne 112 Association Phonique des Grands Artistes (APGA) 222 Ataturk 197 attention/distraction 11, 223, 224 – 225 Auch 40 Augouard, Prosper 175, 177, 181, 182, 191 Avignon 71 avoiding politics 2, 4, 5, 10 – 11, 251 axes 54, 160

Index  293

Bachelor (Jocelyn Armel) 199 Bacongo 182, 185, 186, 193, 195 bakers 42 Balandier, Georges 186 Balard, Djo 189 Bălcescu, Nicolai 246 Balou, Constant 193, 195, 196 Barbados 176 Barcelona 39 Barthes, Roland 253 basins 15, 37, 174 Baudrillard, Jean 18 Bauman, Richard 221 bedding 10, 48, 49, 53, 56 – 57; see also blankets; furs Belgium 129 – 131, 152, 175, 209, 211, 213, 216 bells 40 – 42 belts 146, 175, 185 Bergson, Henri 195 Berlin 210 Besançon 147 biography (of an object) 5, 6, 9, 15, 18 – 26, 30, 81, 256 – 270; see also conversion of objects Birane, Diagne 193 bishops 38, 46, 64, 139, 147; Guillaume de Beaumont, bishop of Angers 41; Odo, bishop of Bayeux 34; Turpin (fictional character) 37 blankets 175 Bobo 257, 262, 264, 267 bodies 6, 8, 9, 18 – 20, 98, 100 – 101, 104 – 117, 172, 184 – 186, 200, 256, 258, 259; see also entanglement Boma 179 Bonnot, Thierry 15 Boobola 258, 265 Bordeaux 193 Borsos, Levente 250, 252 bottles 10, 135, 137 – 138, 148, 173, 174 Bouët, Edouard 174, 175 bicycles 184 Bobo 257, 262, 264, 267 Boia, Lucian 247 – 248 Boltanski, Luc 22 Bonnot Gang 215 Boobola 261 – 262 Bordeaux 18 Borsos, Levente 238 bowls 55, 174 boxes see containers; snuff; tea and tea pots; tobacco and tobacco boxes Brabant 129 Bradford 39

Brazzaville 170, 175, 181, 182, 185 – 186, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193, 197, 198 Brest 214 Briault, Maurice 203 Britain 6, 8 – 9, 31, 33, 81 – 119, 122, 175, 182, 197, 221; see also England broken objects 23 – 25, 173 – 174 Brown, Laura 83 Browning revolver 209 – 218 Bruges 67, 69 Brunswick 40 Brussels 67, 69, 198, 200 Bryan, William Jennings 221, 222 Buc, Philippe 40 Bull, John 99, 109, 111 Burke, Edmund 109 Burkina Faso 7, 256 – 270 Burney, Esther 82 – 83 Butel 186 buttons 147 Bwa 257, 262, 267 candles 51, 53, 56 – 58 canes 132, 142, 173, 194 cards 139 Carrie, Hippolyte 181 Carter, Nick 214 Cartron, Isabelle 22 Casingana 188, 189 castles 69, 77; Andone 35; Essertines 35 cathedrals: Aosta 36; Carlisle 39; York Minster 39 cauldrons 8, 155, 156, 163 Cavazzi, Giovanni Antonio 173 Ceausescu, Elena 249 – 250 Ceausescu, Nicolae 244, 246, 247, 249 – 250 cel Mare, Stefan 246 – 248, 250 censorship 135 – 148, 244 – 247 chaîne opératoire 261, 269 Chalier, Marie Joseph 125 Chalus, Elaine 96, 101 Champfleury 124 chansons de geste 33 – 35, 38, 39, 40 – 41 charivari 8, 151 – 169 Chasseneuil-sur-Bonnieure 17 Chastelain, Georges 73, 77 Chaumeton, Josette 185, 186, 194 chests 7, 9, 53, 62 – 80, 81 chiefs and chiefdom 13, 256, 260 – 261, 264 – 266, 268 – 270 China 81 – 86, 94, 97, 120, 197 Christine de Pizan 66 churches: Moings 34; Saint-Aignan, Orléans 69; Saint John the Evangelist, Ravenna 34; Saint-Seurin, Bordeaux 40

294 Index

church treasure 30, 31, 34, 39; see also treasure citizenship 105, 122 – 123, 200, 211, 216 Claessens, Jean 173 Clarkson, Thomas 98 – 99 class 94, 104 – 106, 108, 111 – 117, 120 – 124, 145 – 146, 186, 190, 243; see also distinction Clemenceau, Georges 211, 214 closeness/distance 6, 7, 18, 237 clothing 1, 6, 13, 51, 54 – 55, 58 – 59, 65, 109 – 110, 114 – 115, 122, 135, 138 – 139, 140, 156, 170 – 208; boots 8 – 9, 10, 106, 107, 109, 113 – 116, 197; buckles 23, 109, 111, 115; clogs 8, 111 – 114, 117, 154, 158 – 160, 161, 163; cufflinks 135, 139; gilets jaunes 3 – 4; gloves 58, 190; hats 58, 128, 140, 154, 173, 174, 175, 177, 183 – 184, 185, 188, 190, 194, 196, 197, 198; jackets 176, 181, 184, 185, 188; neckties 135, 138, 145, 184, 188, 199, 230; pith helmets 182 – 184, 190, 198; pumps 8, 107; pyjamas 185; scarves 188; shirts 181, 188, 190 – 193; shoes 8, 53, 54, 104 – 117, 173, 188, 191, 196, 199; slippers 109; trousers 115, 174, 190; waistcoats 140, 197; zucchetto 139 – 140; see also buttons; crowns; eyeglasses; fashion; fibulae; handkerchiefs; hairpins; jewels; medals; ribbons; rings; umbrellas; watches Cluny 65 coal 151 – 169 Cocea, Elena 243 cockade 126, 142 coffee and coffee houses 93 – 94, 156 coffers see chests coins 139 – 140, 147; see also money colonialism 6, 9, 81 – 91, 172 – 198, 257, 258, 261, 262, 265 – 266, 269 Columbus, Christopher 90 combs 135 commerce 81, 85 – 89, 101, 135, 136, 174 – 175, 180 – 181, 213, 223 Communist Party: French 9, 197, 216, 225 – 227; Romanian 237 – 254 Commynes, Philippe de 68 Compère-Lorel, Adéodat 223 Compiègne, Victor de 177 Condé-sur-l’Escaut 153 – 154 Congo 170 – 209; see also Kongo, kingdom of Constantinople 34 consumerism and consumption 81, 91, 100 – 101, 104, 135, 175, 223 – 227

containers 53 – 56, 99, 129, 135 – 137, 174; see also chests; storage conversion of objects 39 – 41 Cooper-Richet, Diane 160 copies 14, 23, 258, 261, 266, 269 Corbechon, Jean 42 Corday, Charlotte 132 Cordereix, Pascal 220 Cordez, Philippe 40 Corroène, Aristide 155, 157 – 158 countesses: Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry 131 – 132; Jeanne de Chalon 65; Marguerite de France, countess of Flanders, Artois and Burgundy 66, 74 counts: of Armagnac 75; of Foix 66, 71; Louis I of Bourbon 58; Louis de France, comte d’Évreux 58 Coty, François 196, 197 Coucy 146 courts 37 – 38, 48 – 61, 67, 68, 120 – 121, 131, 170 – 171, 173 Coutard, Ghislain 4 cowboys 197 Cowper, William 100 crowds 95 – 97, 147, 152 – 155, 161, 193, 219, 250, 253 crowns 24, 73, 75, 137, 139, 140 cultural biography see biography (of an object) cultural heritage 256 – 261, 266 – 269 cutlery 55, 146 Czech Republic 238 Dakar (Brazzaville) 186 Dakar, Senegal 197 Daladier decrees 216 – 217 dauphin of France, Louis-Joseph 122 David, Alison Matthews 114 de Brazza, Savorgnan 193 de Certeau, Michel 200 Delamare, François 17 de la Tour, Maurice-Quentin 101 DeMello, Margo 113 demonstrations 4, 8, 208 – 209, 214; see also charivari; crowds de Puytorac, Jean 192 Deschamps, Eustache 42 Devauges, Roland 186 De Witte, Jehan 190, 194 Dia 262 diafilm see filmstrips Diatta, Camille 190 Dijon 41 – 42 Dinant 75

Index  295

Dioula 262, 264 disorder 49 – 51, 261 – 262, 266 – 267 distinction 42, 43, 173, 186, 261; see also class Djenne 262 Dobrogea 246 Dogon 257 domesticity 6, 8, 9, 48 – 49, 56, 59, 69, 70 – 73, 76, 81, 86, 94 – 95, 101, 107, 155 – 158, 163 – 164, 219, 221 – 224, 237, 250 – 253 Douroula 7 – 8, 256 – 270 Draveil 214 drinking vessels 10, 17, 37 – 39, 53 – 54, 135; see also alcohol; coffee and coffee houses; tea and tea pots; wine duchesses: of Burgundy, Margaret of Bavaria 67; of Devonshire, Georgina 96 Duflos, printer 170, 171 dukes 41; of Berry 70, 146, 147, 148; of Bordeaux 146; of Bourbon 75; of Brittany 68; of Burgundy: Charles the Bold 65–70, 74–6; John the Fearless 67–69, 74–75; Philip the Good 41–42, 66–9, 73, 75–76; Robert II 75; of Enghien 146; of Lancaster: John of Gaunt 38; of Reichstadt: Napoleon II 142; of Wellington 115–16; others: Godfrey the Bearded 40; Rauching 22 Durand, Pierre 229 Earle, Rebecca 114 Edison, Thomas 220 – 221 Edison Phonograph Monthly 221 effeminacy 94, 107, 109 Egypt 120, 139 Ellul, Jacques 219 emotions 87, 93 – 94, 97 – 98, 100, 145 – 148, 155, 219, 225, 227, 231 – 232, 252 – 254 emperors: Charlemagne 39, 40 – 41, 75; Constantine 24; Henry II 40; Joseph II 129; Julius Caesar 75; Louis the Pious 24 – 25; see also Napoleon Bonaparte England 23, 35, 38 – 39, 41, 42 entanglement 6, 8, 9, 42 – 43, 51, 53 – 55, 104 – 117, 131 – 132, 172, 200, 210 – 211, 215, 217, 259, 268 Erickson, Amy Louis 93 L’Étoile de l’AEF 188, 193, 196 ‘Évolués’ (‘The Evolved’) 172, 183 – 186, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 198, 199 Ewald, François 162

ewers 174 extreme right 9, 216, 227 – 232 eyeglasses 183 – 185, 188, 190, 199 fans 6, 7, 82 – 87, 92 – 98, 100 – 101, 120 – 134, 136, 138, 139, 142 far right see extreme right fashion 83, 87, 92 – 96, 100 – 101, 105, 112 – 113, 115, 123, 135, 170 – 172, 175, 194 – 195, 197 – 199, 200 Faure, Emile 196 Feller, Laurent 13 Ferré, Léo 226 Ferrer, Francisco 214 fibulae 23, 25 Le Figaro 151, 196 filmstrips 237 – 254 firearms 8, 174, 175, 179, 209 – 218, 265; see also Browning revolver; weapons Florescu, Radu 244, 245 food and drink 10, 37 – 38, 39, 48, 50 – 57, 65, 71, 107, 109, 129, 135, 139, 147, 155 – 156, 162 – 163 forests 38, 39 Fox, Charles James 96 Fox, William 99 Froissart, Jean 67, 71 Front National 228, 232 Fulbe 7 – 8, 256 – 270 function see use furniture 1, 62, 64, 69, 85, 175 furs 49 Gabon 174, 175, 193 Gallo (shop in Brazzaville) 186 Gandoulou, Justin 189 Gaultier, Léon 229 Gay, John 83 – 86, 108 – 109, 111 Gazette des tribunaux 155 Geffrei Gaimar 38 Gell, Alfred 5, 145, 146 Gelu 248 – 249 gems see jewels gender 8 – 9, 18 – 22, 81 – 119, 120 – 122, 131 – 133, 152 – 153, 158 – 163, 184, 194, 230, 249; see also clothing, shoes; effeminacy; fans; masculinity Ghent 67, 76 Giffard, Pierre 220 – 221 Giles of Rome 59 Gillray, James 99, 111 Gisors 147 Gladstone, William 221 gnomes 174

296 Index

Gochet, Alexis-Marie 176 Godelier, Maurice 15 Golconda 90 Gottfried von Strasbourg 38 gramophone see phonograph Grande Encyclopédié 176 Grandpré, Louis Marie Joseph Ohier 176, 177 Greenland 32 Gregory of Tours 7, 15, 26 – 27 Grenard, André Matswa 193 – 196 Grodecki, Louis 17 La Guerre Sociale 8, 209 – 218 Guillaume de Diguleville 42 Guinea 262 Guiraut de Calanson 36 guns see firearms Guthrie, Woody 226 Hague, The 67, 73 hairpins 98 – 99 Haiti 176, 196, 197 Hall, Edward 18 Hammerow, Helena 23, 25 handkerchiefs 137, 147, 175 Hanich, Julien 253 – 254 Hannibal 71 Harvey, Karen 115 Hatmanu, Dan 250 Hervé, Gustave 209 – 211, 213, 214 Hesdin 67, 69, 73 hidden/revealed 10, 18, 86 – 87, 95 – 97, 121 – 122, 129, 131 – 132, 140 – 141, 145, 198 – 199, 200 hierarchy of materials 6 – 7, 13 – 14, 26, 30 – 33 Hitler, Adolf 228 – 229 Hitler Youth 229 – 230 Hogarth, William 81, 87 – 88, 109 hoops 158, 159, 163 horns 6, 30 – 47, 57 – 58, 261; oliphant 31 – 32, 37, 38 – 39, 40 – 41 horses (and their equipment) 6, 7, 8, 35, 38, 53 – 54, 56, 58, 106, 248 – 249, 258 – 259, 262 – 263, 268 ‘houseboys’ 186, 187 – 188, 192 household 48 – 61, 63, 67, 70 – 73, 74, 77, 81, 94, 108, 155, 162 – 163 L’Humanité 222 Hungary 237, 238, 248, 250 Hungerford 38, 39 hunting 6, 10, 35 – 36, 54, 216, 258, 260 hybridity see actor-network theory; entanglement

India 17, 25, 82, 83, 85, 86, 89, 174, 175, 182, 197 intimacy 6, 9, 10, 18, 69, 70 – 73, 76, 237, 253 – 254 Ion Creangă studio 239 – 251 Ipswich 39 Italy 23, 31, 39, 128, 139, 217 Jacobism 97 – 98 Jaluzot, Jules 173 Jesuits 139, 141, 147 jewels 7, 13, 14, 16, 22, 27, 65, 74, 89, 90, 120, 135, 175 Jones, Thomas Tyrwitt 111 Joye, Sylvie 23 jugs 37, 98, 174 keys 73 – 76 kings: of Aragon 49; of Castile: Alphonso VIII 72; of Egypt: Muhammad Ali 139; of England: Edward I 49; George I 104; George II 104; Henry I 39; John 39; William I 39; William II 34; of Gabon: Denis 174; Félix Denis Rapontchombo 173; of Kongo: João I 170–172; Dom Diego 170; of Navarre: Charles of Navarre 66; of France 48, 54–55: Charles the Bald 31; Charles II 110–111; Charles IV 73; Charles V 70; Charles VI 65, 71, 74; Charles X 10, 139, 141, 147; Chilperic 15, 20; Chlothar I 20; Clovis 26–7; Eudes 38; Louis IX 49, 51, 56; Louis XI 68, 69, 71; Louis XIV 109, 122; Louis XV 101; Louis XVI 101, 122, 124, 125, 129; Louis XVII 129; Louis XVIII 10, 142, 143; Louis the Pious 24–5; Philip IV 51; Philip V 49, 51; Theudebert II 75; of Ouagadougou: Naba Zanna 261; other kings (incl. fictional): Alexander 69, 72; Arthur 69, 71; Mark 38; N’Combé 173; Ragnacaire 26–7; Wihtred 41 Kinshasa 190, 192, 193, 197, 198 Kiri 264 Kisangani 182 knives 58, 75, 135, 146 – 147, 175, 212, 268 Kongo, kingdom of 170 – 173, 179 labour see work Lamam 186 Laqueur, Thomas 106 La Rocca, Cristina 23 Latour, Bruno 215 LCDM (Le Chant du Monde) 225, 226

Index  297

Leclercq Charlemagne 154, 155 Leipzig 243 Le Jan, Régine 24 Lemaire, Charles 178 Le Manier, Yves 151 Léopoldville 182, 185 – 186, 196 Le Peletier, Louis-Michel 125 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 9, 227 – 232 lepers 41 Le Tirant, Dominique 163 Letourmy, Georgina 101 Le Trieu de Fresnes 153 – 154 Libreville 186 Liège 67 Lille 69, 73, 74, 151, 153 linguistic turn 4 – 5 Linzolo 175 Loango 174, 176, 183 logistics 48, 51, 54, 56, 58 Lombardy 23, 39 Lorris, Jean 223 Los Angeles 197 Lumumba, Juliana 185 La Lutte Sociale 212 luxury 73, 81, 85, 104, 107, 120 – 122, 197, 238 LVDN, La Voix des Notres 223 Lyon 137 Magne, Germain 221 Magny, Colette 226 Maignan, Michel 121 Maisonneuve, Sophie 223 Mali 189, 262, 264 Marat, Jean-Paul 125, 132 Marcel-Dubois, Claudie 152 Marcellin-Fontanet 198 Marchessou, Marcel Alix Jean 188, 191 – 192, 196 Mariage (Brazzaville) 186 Marie de France 38 Marie-Louise, Empress 142, 146 Marka-Dafing 7 – 8, 256 – 270 Marquise de Créquy 121 marriage 18 – 20, 152, 181 Marseille 175 masculinity 104 – 117, 210, 215 – 216 Massamba-Débat, Alphonse 197 Matadi 177 materiality and material culture 1, 4 – 5, 13 – 14, 15, 30 – 33, 49 – 53, 59, 64, 76, 81, 85, 105, 116 – 117, 139 – 142, 147 – 148, 152, 163 – 164, 212, 216, 256 – 257, 259 – 261, 265, 267 – 270

materials: bone 122 – 123; brass 177; bronze 14, 15, 42, 142; cobalt 17, 25, 27; copper and copper alloy 7, 14 – 15, 16, 28 – 29, 31, 40, 42, 170, 173; earthenware 31, 41, 42, 124, 136; glass 7, 14, 16 – 17, 25, 42, 54; gold 7, 13, 14, 15, 40, 67, 69, 72, 75, 89, 90, 91, 98, 175; iron 16, 65, 69, 72; ivory 31 – 33, 40, 85, 174 – 175; leather 8 – 9, 65, 105 – 107, 108, 109, 111 – 115, 123, 173; mother-of-pearl 91, 120, 123; paper 7, 49, 52, 57, 62 – 63, 66 – 69, 96, 122 – 131, 128, 142, 144; porcelain 81, 83, 93, 145, 175; silver 7, 13, 14, 31, 49, 55, 56, 65, 67, 69, 86, 89, 90, 175; tortoiseshell 85, 91, 99; white metal alloy 16, 24; wood 8, 31, 65, 101, 105 – 106, 110 – 114, 122, 136, 156, 158, 258, 266 Mayassi, Jacques 193, 196 Mayombé 173 – 174 McNeill, Peter 109, 114 medals 179, 180 medievalism 9, 237, 244 – 249 Mehun-sur-Yèvre 70 memorialisation 23 – 25, 30, 257, 260 – 261, 269 memory 23 – 25, 227, 228, 270 Mercier, Louis-Sebastien 129 Metz 139 migration 172, 186, 189 – 190, 195 – 196, 198 – 199 mirrors 93 Moldova 245, 248 Molière 131 Montbéliard 145, 148 money 1, 7, 49, 51, 53 – 55, 57, 58, 62 – 73, 124, 190, 200 Moreau, Jean-Michel 129 Mornand, Félix 176 Moscow 196, 237 Mossi 257, 262, 267 Moussinac, Léon 225 Munich 69 music 8, 9, 30, 35 – 36, 39, 41 – 42, 86, 128, 132, 136, 152, 154 – 158, 163, 222 – 232; see also musical instruments; sound musical instruments: bagpipes 42; bugles 154, 156, 230; flutes 42; pan pipes 42; trombones 154, 156 – 158; trumpets 39 – 40, 41 – 42; see also bells; horns Nantes 148 Napoleon Bonaparte 10, 135, 137, 138, 140, 142 – 148

298 Index

national identity 104 – 117, 245 – 251, 255 National Rifle Association 217 Navickas 97 Nazism 9, 228 – 231 Necker, Jacques 125 – 126 Netherlands, Austrian 129 Nevers 65 newspapers 8, 96, 122 – 123, 128, 151, 154, 188, 193, 194, 196, 210, 222, 223, 251 New York 170 N’Ganga, Pierre 193, 196 Nigeria 179, 262 night 49, 51, 56 – 57, 76, 254 Niort 16, 17, 24 nobles and nobility 6, 7, 11, 13, 30 – 41, 62, 107, 115, 120 – 122, 129, 133, 173, 247 – 248, 257, 265, 268 – 269; see also chiefs and chiefdom Noël, Roni 243, 251 Nogent 36 Norman, Donald 256 – 257, 260 Notre-Dame-au-Bois 153 Noyon 65, 72 nudity 171, 173, 179, 199 Odomez 153 Orwell, George 182 Ottoman Empire 245 – 248 Oudenaarde 67 Ouenée 185 Pakistan 17 Palestine 17 pans 8, 153, 154, 155, 156, 161, 163 Paris 72, 74, 111, 121, 139, 145, 170, 173, 176, 186, 189, 190, 192, 194 – 198, 200, 210, 223, 227 Périn, Michel 23 Péronne 74 Perrot, Michelle 161 Peru 89 – 90 phonograph 184, 196, 220 – 222 Piedmont 139 Pigafetta, Filippo 170, 173 Pigni 258, 263, 264 pilgrimage 42, 198 Piliuta, Constantin 250 Pinon, Roger 152 Piou, Jacques 221 pipes (for smoking) 89, 90, 132, 135, 137 – 138, 145, 188, 212 Pizzaro, Francisco 89 – 90 plates 49, 67, 174 Poland 238

police 8, 135 – 148, 153 – 154, 161, 172, 188, 191 – 197, 210 – 211, 213 – 214 Pope, Alexander 83 – 84, 87 popes 228; Clement VII 71 Populaire 223 popular culture 5 – 7, 10, 41 – 43, 81 – 82, 105, 111 – 114, 121 – 132, 136, 145 – 148, 152 – 164, 221 – 227, 232, 243, 244, 245 Popular Front 225 Portugal 172 – 173 postcards 178, 180 – 181, 187 – 188, 194 Poto-Poto 182, 185, 186, 193, 195 pots see pans Prague 247 Prévost, Abbé 170 princes 48, 62 – 80; Charles Edward Stewart, the Young Pretender 97; Jean III de Chalon-Arlay 72, 77; LouisPhilippe d’Orléans (Philippe-Egalité) 124; of Orange 39 Printemps (department store) 173 private see public/private projectors 239 – 240, 250, 252 – 253 propaganda 9, 121 – 123, 128, 131 – 132, 219, 220, 222 – 227, 228, 231 – 232, 239 – 254 Provensal, Antoine 220 public/private 18, 39, 54, 63, 68 – 71, 77, 83, 89, 90 – 92, 94 – 96, 101, 105, 107, 108, 115 – 116, 135 – 139, 142, 145, 147 – 148, 151 – 152, 194, 200, 216 – 217, 219, 221 – 223, 237 – 238, 242 – 243, 250 – 253 queens 51–53, 55, 57, 59, 82; Aregund 20, 23, 24, 25; Anne de Bretagne 31; Blanche of Bourbon, queen of Castile 65; Marie Leszcynska 101; Marie-Antoinette 101, 122, 129; Jeanne de Boulogne, queen of France 74; Juno (goddess) 73, 77; Queen Galienne (fictional character) 34 radio 219, 224, 232 Raleigh, Walter 89 – 90 Rancière, Jacques 164 Ravenna 34 razors 53, 196 record sleeves 226 – 232 records (vinyl) 220 – 232 Red Brigades 217 Renaut de Beaujeu 36 repairs 23 – 26, 54 re-use 6, 10, 17, 18, 52, 57, 175 – 179, 199

Index  299

revolution 7, 107, 109, 111, 116, 120 – 134, 136, 146, 172, 210 – 212 Revue du Monde Noir 195 – 196, 198 ribbons 107, 146, 153, 176, 178 Ribeiro, Aileen 108 – 109 Riello, Giorgio 109, 114 rings 6, 13 – 29, 89, 139, 142 Riot-Sarcey, Michèle 161 – 162 Ripon 35 ritual 13, 18 – 20, 22, 38 – 39, 40, 94, 152, 156, 253, 256 – 258, 260, 263, 265 – 268, 270; see also charivari Robespierre, Maximilien 129 Roland (fictional character) 33, 36, 37, 40, 42 romances (chivalric) 36, 37 Romania 9, 237 – 235 Rouen 147 Russia 238; see also USSR Safané 264 Saint-Étienne 213, 216 Saint Helena 137, 138, 140 saints 145; Saint Eustache 36; Saint Hubert 36; Saint Julian the Hospitaller 36; Saint Peter 73 Sajous, Émile 196 Samogo 257, 267 Sampson, Ellen 105 San Domingo 176 São Salvador du Congo 179 ‘Sapeurs’ 171 – 172, 186, 189 – 190, 192, 198 – 199, 200 Scandinavia 33 Schoelcher, Victor 173 Scînteia 251 scooters 186 Seeger, Pete 226 Seko, Mobuto Sese 197 – 198 Semmelhack, Elizabeth 107 second hand see re-use Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) 9, 209 – 210, 215, 222 Segou 262 Senegal 176, 193, 262 Senno 262 Sergeac 23 SERP (Société d’Études et de Relations Publiques) 226 – 232 Shannu, Hezekiah Andrew 178 ships 34, 41, 137 Sicily 31 Sierra Leone 33, 197

slavery 83, 89, 90, 98 – 100, 111, 174, 179, 256 – 270 snuff and snuff boxes 6, 82, 83, 87, 89 – 91, 93 – 95, 98, 100 – 101 Soaré, Kouzon 264 Soaré, Pakou 263, 264 Soaré, Pamba 265 socialism 197, 209 – 217, 222 – 224 Socialist Party see Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) Société Amicale des Originaires de l’AEF 190, 193, 195, 196 Société de l’Étoile des Savoyards de Brazza 193 Sohn, Anne-Marie 215 Sotir, Savin 241 sound 8, 9, 30, 33 – 36, 38, 41, 152 – 164, 219 – 232, 237; see also music; musical instruments; phonograph; speeches Soviet Union see USSR Spain 40 – 41, 122, 216, 225 Sparkes Hall, J. 115 spectacles see eyeglasses Spectator, The 87, 92, 93, 94 speeches 9, 219, 220 – 226, 230 spurs 53, 58, 109 Stanley, Henry Morton 173, 177 Steele, Richard 109 strikes 151 – 164 subjectification 49, 53 – 55, 58 – 59, 261 Suger, Abbot 17 Swift, Jonathan 104 Syria 17 tablecloths 52 – 53, 54, 57 tea and tea pots 6, 81 – 83, 87, 93 – 95, 98 – 101, 174 television 238, 247 Le Temps 154, 161, 211 tents 70 – 71 textiles 136, 140 – 141, 170, 173 – 174, 175, 177, 180, 182, 197, 200; cotton 107, 170; silk 66, 107, 114, 115, 120, 123, 140, 190; wool 107 Tham 148 theft 48, 49, 53, 55, 74 – 75, 174, 267 Theophilus Prebyter 17 Thévenot, Laurent 22 ties see clothing, neckties Tilly, Charles 163, 165 Timbuktu 262 Tintin in the Congo 188 Tixier-Vignancourt, Jean-Lous 227 – 228

300 Index

tobacco and tobacco boxes 87, 89, 90, 96, 135, 136, 140 – 141, 145, 147, 148, 174, 212; see also pipes (for smoking); snuff and snuff boxes tongs 154, 155, 156, 163 tools 48, 51, 57, 58, 112, 160 – 161, 167, 260 torches 49, 53, 56 – 57 Tosh, John 116 Toulouse 142 – 143 trade see commerce transport 3 – 4, 48, 51, 67, 147; see also bicycles; clothing, gilets jaunes; horses (and their equipment); scooters; ships Transylvania 249, 251 treasure 57, 62, 69, 74 Tristan (fictional character) 35, 38 Tuba 188, 189 Turkey 197 umbrellas 139, 173, 174, 184, 188, 190, 194 Unicité 226 United States of America 220 – 221, 237 use 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 18 – 19, 41 – 42, 54, 120, 131 – 132, 152 – 153, 155 – 161, 163 – 164, 237, 256 – 257, 260 – 261; see also affordances USSR 197, 198, 226, 237, 239, 240, 245, 247 Utrecht 72 Uzanne, Octave 131 Valenciennes 162 Varhaegen, Pierre 177 – 178 Veblen, Thorstein 188 Vieux Condé 154 Villeneuve-Saint-Georges 214 violence 8, 145, 161, 200, 209 – 215, 217, 239, 256, 261 – 262, 264, 267, 268 visibility see hidden/revealed Viteazul, Mihai 244, 246, 248 – 249 Vivi 177 Vodă, Ioan 248

Wahrman, Dror 114 Wallachia 245, 248 – 249, 251 wallpaper 175 Walpole, Robert 96 war 6, 33 – 35, 42, 67, 68, 75, 77, 93, 120, 247 – 249, 259 – 260, 263, 264, 268, 269 washing 51, 54, 55, 156, 158, 163, 182 watches 175, 184 weapons 53, 65, 93, 131 – 132, 160, 265, 268; bow and arrow 7, 263 – 264; crossbows 54; pikes 211 – 212; rifles 174, 175, 179, 211, 212, 213, 215, 217; spears 7 – 8, 9, 170, 171, 256 – 270; truncheons 214; see also Browning revolver; firearms; knives Weber, Max 3, 63 Wedgewood, Josiah 98 – 99 Winchester 32, 39 wine 38, 39, 51, 55, 56, 58, 89, 96, 148, 212 Winner, Langdon 258 Winstanley 92 Wissembourg 65 women 6 – 9, 14, 20 – 26, 81, 83 – 87, 90 – 98, 100 – 101, 105 – 108, 114, 120, 122, 127, 131 – 132, 147 – 148, 152 – 155, 158 – 164, 179 – 181, 185, 190, 249, 252 – 253, 262, 264, 267; see also gender work 3, 8, 54 – 55, 84, 89, 90, 94 – 95, 99, 113, 151 – 164, 172, 182, 187 – 189, 200, 240 – 241, 262 Wraxall, Nathaniel 115 Yakusa 182 Yale, Elihu 89 Yatenga 262 Youlou, Fulbert 197 Yupanqui, Atahualpa 226 zaffre 17, 25 Zakharova, Larissa 198

Zola, Emile 159, 160