The Pariahs of Yesterday: Breton Migrants in Paris

The Pariahs of Yesterday MA> I:KB:ALH? R>LM>K=:R X ;k^mhgFb`kZgmlbgIZkbl e^lebîZ`^fh\a ]nd^ngbo^klbmrik^ll =nkaZfEhg]hg ∫ 2012 Duke University Press All rights reserved. Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of Michigan State University, which provided funds toward the publication of this book. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $ Designed by Jennifer Hill. Typeset in C&C Galliard by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. for Sarah contents Illustrations and Tables ix Acknowledgments xi introducing the pariahs of yesterday 1 1 [ contexts 15 2 [ a breton crowd in paris The Beginnings 31 3 [ the turn of the century A Belle Époque? 69 4 [ between the wars 120 5 [ a long resolution in postwar paris 160 conclusion 179 appendix Marriage Records 185 Notes 193 Bibliography 231 Index 251 illustrations and tables maps 1. The Arrondissements and Suburbs of Paris 11 2. Brittany 13 3. Women in La Maternité, 1890–1900 63 figures 1. Bécassine’s Debut 74 2. L’Assiette au Beurre, October 1903 91 3. Poster for the Breton Mission, 1950s 165 4. Bécassine in Revolt 175 5. Bécassine Commemorative Stamp 176 tables 1. Breton Marriages in Saint-Denis, 1890–1925 190 2. Breton Marriages in the Fourteenth Arrondissement, 1890–1925 191 3. Witnesses to Breton Weddings in Saint-Denis and the Fourteenth Arrondissement, 1910 192 acknowledgments I am delighted to have the chance to express my gratitude for [ the material and personal support I have received in prepar- ing this book. Patient friends and colleagues have provided occasions for me to discuss Bretons in Paris and internal migration at meetings of the Social Science History Association, the Society for French Historical Studies, and the European Social Science History Conference. In addi- tion, the International Institute of Social History, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demo- graphic Institute, the Institut National des Études Démographiques, and Universities in Leiden, Texas, Arizona, and Michigan have invited me to speak about aspects of this work. The Pariahs of Yesterday began as a quite di√erent enterprise, with support for summer research from the University of Michigan, Flint, and the study expanded during a semester’s research leave from Michigan State University granted by Dean John Eadie. Generous support from the College of Arts and Letters subsequently enabled stints of summer research, and then the Department of History, chaired by Walter Haw- thorne, underwrote publication costs. The Center for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies and Norman Graham kindly paid the bill for the illustrations in this volume. I am especially grateful to Peter Berg, director of the Special Collections unit of the Michigan State University Libraries, and to Randall Scott, its Comic Art Collection curator, who underwrote and encouraged my interest in Bécassine. Nathan Scherbarth and John Hennessey spent hours confirming marriage records, corroborating research, and checking details of the manuscript. In France, Nancy Green and the Centre de Recherches Historiques at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales hosted a most happy xii [ Acknowledgments research stay, and Jack Thomas at the Université de Toulouse–Le Mirail gave me another occasion for on-site work. This study also has an impor- tant Dutch component, because the primary occasion for uninterrupted writing came from a fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study under the leadership of Rector Wim Blockmans. Colleagues at nias like Jacqueline Bel provided a rich intellectual atmosphere and friendly support; the entire sta√—especially the librarian Dindy van Maanen—created a wonderful workplace. Beyond nias, my Dutch colleagues Leo Lucassen, Marlou Schrover, and Jan Lucassen created a wel- coming scholarly home. The hospitality of Parisian friends made research in France a pleasure and certainly eased the pangs of being away from home. I will always be grateful to Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard, Yves and Véronique Charbit, Alain Faure, Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, Annie Couëdel, Nancy Green, and Lucas Tchetgnia for their conversation and kind hospitality. I am grateful to Pierre Guillard, who was so generous with his time and knowl- edge of the Breton community in Paris. Conversations with Suzanne Ascoët, Guy Barbichon, Catherine Bertho-Lavenir, Françoise Cribier, and Michelle Perrot furnished me with crucial information and inspira- tion at key points. Françoise Douzenel generously donated photos from the collection of Pierre Douzenel for this book. In Brittany, Marie-Noëlle Ja√rézic and Yves Le Barre o√ered warm hospitality and information—then sent me o√ to Pont-Aven, where Fer- nande LeNaour provided another generation’s insights—all thanks to Anne-Katell Ja√rézic, who provided the link between Michigan and Brit- tany. Claude Fagnen and archival personnel in the Finistère and Côtes- d’Armor provided gracious and knowledgeable aid. Once the Bretons reached the Duke University Press, Valerie Mill- holland and Gisela Fosado treated them with care. The manuscript bene- fited enormously from the anonymous readers for the press, who prof- fered insightful suggestions that enabled me to improve this work; my editor, Fred Kameny, shook the most irritating quirks from my prose. Closer to home, Rachel Fuchs and Nora Faires each had the patience to read the manuscript in its entirety and to o√er invaluable suggestions. Even closer, Lewis Siegelbaum provided alternative sources of inspira- tion. The errors and omissions that remain here are entirely my own. This book is dedicated to my daughter Sarah, who was present at the beginning of this work but has since moved on to manage her own life and work with grace, humor, and acuity. Introducing the Pariahs of Yesterday Every age has its pariahs, and in 1898 the Breton was declared ‘‘the pariah of Paris.’’ This disparaging sobriquet, most closely [ ∞ associated with the Paris historian Louis Chevalier, spread as far as the Bretons’ home, the western peninsula of Brittany. Often newcomers suf- fer under pariah status, assigned not by their family or their own com- patriots but by members of their host culture, as do some of today’s Latin Americans in the United States, North and West Africans in France, and Moroccans in the Netherlands. The status can be temporary—outcast newcomers can gain a foothold, blend with the native-born, and form vital communities of their own. It is the historians’ task to investigate and understand the evolution of life at the newcomer’s destination.≤ Indeed, history carries the burden of explanation because historical change is at the heart of both migration and perceptions of outsiders. This book analyzes the history of Bretons in Paris during the Third Republic (1871– 1940). It will be a vehicle for investigating internal migration, the integration of national minorities, and the state’s inclusionary and exclusionary policies, setting migrations to the national capital in a long-term and global context. I seek to connect internal migration with its implications for national integration and identity in France. After reading Eugen Weber’s pioneering Peasants into Frenchmen, the noted French migration scholar Gérard Noiriel observed nearly twenty years ago that ‘‘very few historians have been interested in the history of national assimilation’’; behind this lack of interest, he observed, lies the idea that the nation is considered not a historical construct but a given, populated by ‘‘our ancestors, the Gauls.’’≥ Since this path-breaking observation, many scholars have addressed the exclusive nature of the citizenship philosophy forged in the Revolution 2 [ Introducing the Pariahs of Yesterday and after. They have established that colonial status, race, and gender set many people apart despite longstanding claims that French citizenship, and therefore identity, are universal and nonexclusive. The legacy of Re- publican citizenship from the revolutionary era is an inclusive yet gen- dered and racialized principle that constituted the French identity as a unitary one.∂ Nonetheless, internal migration has not yet received the kind of renewed examination that it deserves as part of this larger story of French nation building; I will address this deficiency with a focus on the Breton experience in Paris. Attention to French identity and citizenship has increased along with the study of immigrants in France, in response to a lack of immigration histories and the realities of renewed immigration after the Second World War. Scholars produced incisive and vigorous studies, beginning in the 1980s with general ones such as Yves Lequin’s La mosaïque France and pioneering, more specialized studies like Janine Ponty’s Polonais mécon- nus. Case studies such as Pierre Milza’s Voyage en Ritalie about Italians in France and edited collections like Toute la France: Histoire de l’immigration en France au xxe siecle followed in the 1990s. This century began with the publication of Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard’s Italiens dans l’est parisien, Nancy Green’s Repenser les migrations, and Philippe Rygiel’s Destins immi- grés, each of which investigated the immigrant experience from another angle. Books in languages other than French have included the more recent Mareike Konig’s Deutsche Handwerker, Arbeiter une Dienstmädchen in Paris and Mary Dewhurst Lewis’s Boundaries of the Republic. In com- bination

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