Abstract
In the 1860s Lyons was the main European center for the production of silk fabrics and one of the major global silk trade centers. Its fabrique (silk industry) exhibited the characteristics of the Marshallian industrial district or those of a cluster. This chapter deals with the actions of the chambres syndicales (trade associations) founded by silk merchants and merchants-manufacturers in the 1860s onward. It will first map the institutional landscape that enabled the working of the fabrique before the end of the 1860s. Next, it will examine the emergence of formal trade associations and the challenges, arising from shortage of high-quality raw silk produced in Europe, among other things that these associations had to deal with. Lastly, it will identify the kinds of responses that they attempted to provide for maintaining credibility of the Lyons fabrique in specific fields such as commercial and economic information, product quality, and evolving commercial customs.
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Notes
- 1.
The name of the first merchants-manufacturers’ union, created in 1868, was Association de la fabrique lyonnaise. Alain Cottereau, who revisited the fabrique at the beginning of the 1980s, noted that the concept of the fabrique collective was prevalent in the 18th century and was deployed as an analytical tool in the 1860s by Frederic Le Play, a French social scientist. The fabrique collective was one among the four categories of large industries (that is to say industries that shipped huge quantities of products to distant consumers) distinguished by Le Play. This author defined a fabrique collective as an ensemble of little workshops concentrated within the same area and completing domestic production. These workshops served fabricants (merchants-manufacturers), usually located in a town or port near this industrial area. The fabricants ordered products to be made by the workers, providing them with the requisite materials, and sold the outputs or exported them to distant markets (Cottereau 1986 and 1997; Le Play 1874, p. 150–158).
- 2.
See Chap. 2 of this volume for an extension and elaboration of the original Sonobe-Otsuka model.
- 3.
Archives départementales du Rhône, 8 Mp 77.
- 4.
Both of these unions were local chapters of a common organization.
- 5.
AM Lyon, 1101 WP 100, Folder Syndicat du tissage mécanique des soieries (1884–1913).
- 6.
This union was created to obtain a 3 francs tax on imported thrown silk, especially Italian ones. Its statutes disallowed silk merchants and fabricants from becoming members, because they would subsequently defend free admission of foreign silk into France.
- 7.
Archives of the UMS, AG, January 14, 1879.
- 8.
Archives départementale du Rhône (ADR), 10 Mp F 71, ASL file, Statutes adopted on December 29, 1892.
- 9.
UMS Archives, General Assembly, July 27, 1870.
- 10.
Record of the minutes of the meetings of the chambre syndicale of the UMS, May 24, 1870.
- 11.
This union was founded in Lyon in June 1907.
- 12.
“Dans les affaires comme dans les jeux, c’est à l’abri d’une règle commune que doit s’exercer la compétition; il n’y aurait plus d’affaires ni de jeux s’il était permis de la transgresser.” (Union des marchands de soie 1927, p. 23–24).
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Vernus, P. (2016). Trade Associations and Economic Regulation in the Lyons Fabrique: From the 1860s to the 1920s. In: Hashino, T., Otsuka, K. (eds) Industrial Districts in History and the Developing World. Studies in Economic History. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0182-6_6
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