Becoming Bourgeois

Christopher H. Johnson is Professor of History Emeritus at Wayne State University. He is the author of Utopian Communism in France, The Life and Death of Industrial Languedoc, 1700–1920, and Maurice Sugar and coeditor most recently of Blood and Kinship.

• IntroductionCorrespondence and Its LimitsKinship, Class, Sociability, and the Interior History of the BourgeoisieLove, Interest, and the Sibling ArchipelagoGenderPART I. THE ASCENT (1670–1800)CHAPTER 1. The Way of PrintTalent and MarriageCultural CapitalPrinters, IntellectualsCHAPTER 2. Bourgeois de Vannes, Bourgeois de ParisKinsmen (and Women) to the Rescue: The Saga of Jean-Nicolas GallesKin and Connection in the Book TradeLove and Agony in ParisCHAPTER 3. The Revolutions of the GallesEconomic Establishment: Veuve Galles and the Articulation of PowerExpanding HorizonsCultural Leadership and Bourgeois AscentPolitical Establishment: Three Families MergeSurviving the French Revolution (If Not Childbed Fever)PART II. BOURGEOIS CULTURE (1800–1880)CHAPTER 4. The Sibling ArchipelagoTalented Royalists Accommodate BonaparteA New Generation and a Renewed PolityA Sibling CourtshipCousin Marriage and the Political Integration of Vannes's BourgeoisieCHAPTER 5. "Mon Adèle"Fulfillment and the FirstbornEstablishment: A Joint VenturePublic ServiceCHAPTER 6. Notre AdèleSettling InThe Great CrisisAffairs Military and DomesticLiving ClassCHAPTER 7. GuadeloupeCHAPTER 8. The Chosen: Educating RenéPont SalExile and Redemption: A Mother's WillFamily MattersCHAPTER 9. Into the WorldLa vie d'un polytechnicien bretonAunt Marie: Power and BetrayalThe Kinship EliteCareer and GuidanceWeathering Revolution, Again: Adèle, femme politiqueFulfillment: René WedCHAPTER 10. The Legacy: Bourgeois Nation Building and Civic LeadershipNation Building by KinshipCivic LeadershipThe National Stage: Combating le BretonismeBibliographical NotesIndex

Johnson's latest book, in my opinion, represents his supreme intellectual achievement. Since the turn of the century, his method of studying economic history—culling data, facts, and testimony from archives; synthesizing and interpreting them by means of theories of development and crisis—has been overtaken by studies of the writings on political economy.- Stephen Miller (H-France Review) The book chips away at our assumptions about a period and a class thatseem to epitomize 'separate spheres.' It convincingly demonstrates the importance of studying the inner life of a family—its taken-for-granteds, its habitus, and within the grid of kinship that provides the bedrock of class solidarity. It is also a delight to read.- Denise Z. Davidson (Journal of Interdisciplinary History) Following an interconnected set of families in the western French city of Vannes from the end of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries, Christopher H. Johnson argues that kinship—especially marital strategies and the cultivation of intense familial affection—made the modern bourgeoisie.... Becoming Bourgeois is a model for combining social and cultural history. Johnson knows the traditional materials of social history—tax rolls, property transactions, and voter lists—inside and out. He is also fully in command of the état-civil and the details of the marriages, births, and deaths on the Jollivet-Galles family trees. His sympathetic and meticulous readings of the family correspondence make the archive of social and demographic history come to life.- Carol E. Harrison, University of South Carolina (Journal of Modern History) Becoming Bourgeois joins the vibrant scholarship on the history of emotions, particularly on love and family in the modern era. It is as engaging as it is significant for the history of modern France and of the European bourgeoisie by a preeminent scholar of the history of social class formation.(American Historical Review)