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Social Organization of Work and Labour Conflicts in Proto-Industrial Iron Production in Sweden, Belgium and Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Anders Florén
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There exists no such thing as a single mode for the social organization of proto-industrial iron production, but a number of alternative ways. In the following article the dominance of one or another mode is viewed as dependent on its societal context, and not least on the social relations of the rural world. Each mode of organization had its own peculiarities and generated its own contradictions and conflicts.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 39 , supplement S2: Before the Unions. Wage earners and collective action in Europe, 1300–1850 , August 1994 , pp. 83 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1994

References

1 The comparison between Russia and Sweden is mainly based on discussions within a comparative project with Swedish and Russian historians. This means that many of the references are made to manuscripts which are so far unpublished. A conclusive Volume is, however, under preparation.

2 Berg, M., “Revisions and Revolutions: Technology and Productivity Change in Manufacture in Eighteenth-Century England”, in Mathias, P. and Davis, J. A. (eds), Innovations and Technology in Europe (Oxford, 1991), p. 55Google Scholar. Alain Dewerpe also reflects that the rural and urban parts of production more often were supplementary than exclusive forms of organizing work, Dewerpe, A., L'industrie aux champs. Essaisur la proto-industrialisation en Italie du Nord (1800–1880) (Rome, 1985), p. 31Google Scholar.

3 Here speaking of the so-called indirect method which during the latter part of the Middle Ages in many regions had replaced the direct method. In the indirect method the ore became totally liquid due to the higher temperature in the furnace obtained by the water-driven bellows. Tylecote, R. F., The Early History of Metallurgy in Europe (New York, 1987), p. 330Google Scholar. BjÖrkenstam, N., Västeuropeisk jänframställning under medeltiden (Stockholm, 1990), p. 70Google Scholar. Spain was an exception from this general development. Bloomeries, of a refined sort, were thus still dominant during the eighteenth century. In many other regions, however, the two methods coexisted for several centuries. For Spain, see, de Pinedo, E. F., “From the Bloomery to the Blast-Furnace. Technical Change in Spanish Iron-Making (1650–1822)”, Journal of European Economic History, 17 (1988), p. 23Google Scholar.

4 This fact was clearly shown by the Walloon emigrants that arrived in Sweden during the first decades of the seventeenth century, and of whom some continued to use their traditional methods while others were employed at ironworks using the German method.

5 The efforts to effect a change-over from Walloon to German forging in eighteenth-century France – as a consequence of the problems with the support of charcoal – illuminate an important aspect of the difference. Benoit, S., “La consommation de combustible végétal et I'évolution des systlmes techniques”, in Woronoff, D. (ed.), Forges et Fôrets. Recherches sur la consommation proto-industrielle d1e bois (Paris, 1990), p. 95Google Scholar.

6 P. Mathias, “Resources and Technology”, in Mathias and Davis, Innovations and Technology, p. 20. Even more pronounced in Wrigley, E. A., Continuity, Chance and Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, 1988), ch. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the discussion in Verley, P., “La révolution industrielle Anglaise, une révision (note critique)”, Annales E.S.C., 46 (1991)Google Scholar. To the Russian case of the eighteenth century one could also add Maxine Berg's discussion of the Canadian and Swedish development during the process of industrialization as contradictory to the Mathias-Wrigley thesis. Berg, “Revisions and Revolutions”, p. 56.

7 Portal, R., L'Oural au XVllle siècle (Paris, 1950), p. 136Google Scholar; Minenko, N. A. et al. , “Ural Iron before the Industrial Revolution”, in Rydèn, G. and Ågren, M. (eds), Ironmaking in Sweden and Russia, A Survey of the Social Organisation of Iron Production before 1900 (Uppsala, 1993), p. 68Google Scholar.

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9 This sort of peasant-based iron production also survived in several regions in the German lands up until the industrial revolution. Kellenbenz, H., “Europäisches Eisen. Produktion – Verarbeitung – Handel (Vom Ende des Mittelalters bis ins 18. Jahrhundert)”, in Kellenbenz, (ed.), Schwerpunkte der Eisengemnnung and Eisenverarbeitung in Europa 1500–1650 (Cologne, 1974), p. 409Google Scholar; Mitterauer, M., “Produktionsweise, Siedlungsstruktur and Sozialformen im österreichischen Montanwesen des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit”, in Mitterauer, (ed.), Österreichisches Montanwesen. Produktion, Verteilung, Sozialformen (Vienna, 1974), p. 313Google Scholar.

10 Hildebrand, Swedish Iron, pp. 86ff.

11 Florén et al., “Swedish Iron Before 1900”, p. 34; Karlsson, P.-A., Jänbruken och Ståndssamhaället. Institutional och attitydmässig konflikt under Sveriges tidiga industrialisering 1700–1770 (Stockholm, 1990), pp. 46–48Google Scholar.

12 The long winter of the Nordic countries extended the period of underemployment for the cultivators and made it possible to spread the different occupations over the year. This meant that the household's structure could be kept intact and that work for the iron industry could be done alongside ordinary work. For the size of the households see Gaunt, D., “Familj, hushåll och arbetsintensitet. En tolkning av demografiska variationer i 1600- och 1700-talens Sverige”, Scandia, 44 (1976), p. 53Google Scholar. For the working conditions, Hildebrand, Swedish Iron, p. 92.

13 Sjölberg, M., Järn och Jord. Bergsmän pd 1700-talet (Stockholm, 1993), ch. 5Google Scholar.

14 Rydén, G., “Iron Production and the Household as a Production Unit in Nineteenth-Century Sweden”, unpublished paper at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (05 1993), p. 29Google Scholar.

15 Florén, A. and Rydén, G., Arbete husháll och region. Tanker om industrialiseringspro-cesser och den wenska Jürnhanringen (Uppsala, 1992), p. 102Google Scholar. The same development has been discussed for the French iron industry. Bernard, P., “Une architecture pout les forges?” in Woronoff, D. (ed.). La Métsllurgie du fer dans les Ardennes (XVle-XIXe) (Paris, 1988), p, 85Google Scholar: see also. Woronoff, D., L'Industrie sidérurgique en France pendant La Revolution et L'Empire (Paris, 1984), p. 182Google Scholar.

16 Florén and Rydén, Arbete husháll och region, p. 46.

17 Rydén, G., “Skill and Technical Change in the Swedish Iron Industry, 1750–1850”, unpublished paper at the conference on Technological Change, University of Oxford, 8–1109 1993Google Scholar.

18 Florén et al., “Swedish Iron Before 1900”, p. 19.

19 Florén, A., “Klasskamp utan fackförening, om förindustriella arbetskonflikter”, Arkiv för studier i Arbetarrörelsens historia, 45 (1990), p. 14Google Scholar.

20 LeJeune, J., La formation du capitalisme moderne dans la principauté de Liége au XVIe siècle (Liège, 1939), p. 230Google Scholar; G. Hansotte, “La métallurgie Wallone au XVIe et dans la premier moitié du XVIIe siécle, in Kellenbenz, Schwerpunkte der Eisengewinnung, p. 138; Discry, F., “L'anden bassin sidérurgique du Hoyoux du XVe au XVIIIe siécles”, Anciens Pays et Assemblées d'Etats, vol. L (Brussels, 1970), p. 59Google Scholar. A similar development is also visible in the Spanish iron industry during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See E. F. de Pinedo y Fernández, “Centros de la industria siderurgica en el pais vasco”, in Kellenbenz, Schwerpunkte der Eisengewinnung, p. 87.

21 Hansotte, “La métallurgie Wallonne”, p. 130; Hansotte, G., “L'implantation géographique de Industrie métallurgique des Pays-bas et du Pays de Liége et son évolution aux temps modernes”, in Dorban, M. et al. (eds), Implantations Industrielles. Mutations des Sociétés et du Paysage (Brussels, 1986), p. 44Google Scholar; Dorban, M., “Les débuts de la révolution idustrielle”, in Hasquin, H. (ed.), La Belgique Autrichienne, 1713–1794 (Brussels, 1987), P. 128Google Scholar.

22 Hansotte, G., “Un compte des Foumeaux d'Ansembourg et des Forges de Septfontaines, 1761–1764”, Bulletin Trimestriel de L'institut Archélogique du Luxembourg (1977), pp. 38–40Google Scholar.

23 Moureaux, P. and Ruwet, J., “Rester districts. Les Pays-Bas de 1421 á 1794”, in Genicot, L. (ed.), Histoire de la Wallonie (Toulouse, 1973)Google Scholar; Lis, C. and Soly, H., Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe (Hassocks, 1979), p. 15Google Scholar. It is also plausible that the iron industry had a positive effect on the increase of this group by a raise in weddings and a lowering of the age of marriage. Dorban, M., “La sidérurgie Luxembourgeoise au XVlIIe siécle”, in La sidérurgie aux XVIHe et XIXe siécles: aspects techniques, économiques et sociaux (Louviere, 1985), pp. 26–27Google Scholar.

24 Dorban, M., “Les communaute's rurales dans la vallée de la Haute Semoise (1500–1800)” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1983), pp. 428–447Google Scholar; Piret, M. F., “Fortunes et Groupes Sociaux: Habay-la-Neuve 1766–1796” (unpublished dissertation, University Catholique de Louvain, 1982), p. 186Google Scholar; Florén, A., “Gruvornas, Hyttornas och Hamrarnas folk i Lorraine Beige vid 1700-talets mitt” (manuscript 1993)Google Scholar. Often they owned the equipment necessary for fulfilling their tasks. However, there existed exceptions to this general picture. At the monastery at St Hubert in the Ardennes, the legendary Abbot Nicolas Spirlet, who in the second half of the eighteenth century made an impressive effort to establish an integrated metallurgical plant near the monastery, tried to solve the problem of transport by letting horses and donkeys othe rural poor in the surrounding area. Evrard, R., Dom Nicolas Spirlet, Maître de forges à Poix, au Ch&telet et au Fourneau Saint-Michel (Liege, 1952), p. 21Google Scholar.

25 Compare the discussion in Woronoff, L'industrie sidérurgique, p. 140 on the situation in late eighteenth-century France.

26 Pirotte, F., La terre de Durby aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Louvain, 1974), p. 186Google Scholar. In France, however, Denis Woronoff has indicated a development away from such a situation during the end of the eighteenth century, towards a system that permitted the ironmasters to have a firmer control over production. Woronoff, L'industrie sidérurgique, p. 138.

27 M. Caulier-Mathy, “Les maîtres de forges wallons contre la loi impe'riale sur les mines, première phase”, in La siddrurgie, p. 38. The pits were holes with a diameter of some 3 or 4 feet, which during bad weather were covered. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a French mining engineer remarked that the sight of the mining areas most of all reminded him of a military camp filled with tents. Damin, A.-M., “La métallurgie dans le Namurois 1764–1814. Etude économique et sodale” (unpublished dissertation, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1967), p. 263Google Scholar.

28 Hansotte, G., La métallurgie et le commerce international du fer dans les Pays-Bos autrichiens et la Principauté de Liège pendant la seconde moitié du XVllle siècle (Brussels, 1980), ch. IIIGoogle Scholar.

29 C. de Moreau de Gerbehaye, “Les forges du bassin de la Rulles au XVIIIe siecle”, in La sidirurgie, p. 11. See also Woronoff, L'industrie sidirurgique, p. 140.

30 Evrard, R., Forges Anciennes (Liège, 1956)Google Scholar. For the coal mine communities see Watelet, H., Une industrialisation sans development. Le bassin de Mons et le charbonnage de Grand-Hornu du milieu de XVllle siècle au milieu du XIXe siècle (Louvain, 1980), p. 332Google Scholar; Leboutte, R., “La condition ouvriere en Wallonie aux XVIIIe-XIX siècles”, Cahiers de Clio (1987), pp. 28, 34Google Scholar. Despite these characteristic features of the Walloon industry, it has been argued that the truck system was also practised at the ironworks in the province of Luxemburg during the eighteenth century. Moureaux, P., “Truck-system et revendications sociales dans la sidérurgie luxembourgeoise du XVIIIe siècle”, in Mélanges offerts è G. Jacquemyns (Brussels, 1968), pp. 527–530Google Scholar. Nevertheless this does not in itself indicate the all-embracing power over the workers and their families that the concept of paternalism normally implies. Pollard, S., “Factory Discipline in the Industrial Revolution”, Economic History Review, 16 (1963–1964), p. 267Google Scholar; Flore'n, “Klasskamp utan fackfSrening”, p. 18.

31 J. LeJeune, La formation du capitalisme moderne, p. 148; Pirotte, F., “L'industrie mètallurgique de la terre de Durby de 1480 à 1625, ses rapports avec la métalurgie Iiégeoise”, Bulletin de Vinstitut archéologique Liégois (1967), p. 156Google Scholar.

32 Evrard, R. and Descy, A., Histoire de I'usine des Vennes (Liège, 1948), p. 64Google Scholar; Yernaux, J., La métallurgie liégoise et son expansion au XVIIe siècle (Liège, 1939), pp. 67, 267, 297, 301Google Scholar; Leboutte, R., La Grosse Forge Wallonne (du XVe au XVIIIe slide) (Liège, 1984), P 49Google Scholar.

33 Damin, La métallurgie, p. 130.

34 Masoin, M., “Les privilèges des férons de Namur sous l'Ancien Régime”, Annales de la société arehéoligique de Namur (1927)Google Scholar; Pirotte, “L'industrie métallurgique”, p. 150. The same thing is perceivable in late medieval France. See Braunstein, P., “Le travail minier dans le Royaume de France à la fin du Moyen Age”, in Ludwig, K.-H. (ed.), Bergbau und Arbeitsrecht (no place given, 1989), p. 167Google Scholar. The Belgian historian Marcel Bourguignon has noted that the history of the proto-industrial iron industry shows clear corporate tendencies. Bourguignon, , “La sidérurgie, industrie commune des pays d'entre Meuse et Rhin”, Anciens Pays et Assemblées d'Etats, vol. XXVIII (Brussels, 1963), p. 93Google Scholar.

35 Masoin, “Les privilèges”, pp. 49, 56. This caused problems of demarcation with the ordinary jurisdiction. In 1614 it was complained that the workers committed crimes and excesses but refused to submit to ordinary justice, proclaiming their medieval corporate Privileges. See Lahaye, P., Inventaire analythique de pièces et documents contenus dans la correspondence du conseil provincial (Namur, 1892), p. 221Google Scholar.

36 Such a central administration was first organized during the French rule over the Belgian territory in the beginning of the nineteenth century and it must be underlined that the creation of the Bureau des Artes et Manufactures also was a novelty for the French iron industry. Woronoff, L'industrie sidérurgique, p. 40. On the industrial policy and iron production in France during the earlier period, see P. Léon, “Réflexions sur la sidérurgie Française à I'époque ante-colbertienne (1500–1650)”, in Kellenbenz, Schwerpunkte der Eisengewinnung. For the policy in Walloonia see Hasquin, H., “Les intendants et la centralisation administrative dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles”, Anciens Pays et Assemblées d'Etats, vol. XVII (Brussels, 1968)Google Scholar; Moureaux, P., Les Préoccupations Statistiques du Gouvernement des Pays-Bas Autrichiens (Brussels, 1971), pp. 41ff.Google Scholar; Soly, H., “Social Aspects of Structural Changes in the Urban Industries of Eighteenth-Century Brabant and Flanders”, in van der Wee, H. (ed.), The Rise and Decline of Urban Industries in Italy and in the Low Countries (Louvain, 1989), p. 243Google Scholar.

37 Gutmann, M. P., War and Rural Life in the Early Modem Low Countries (Assen, 1980), p. 109Google Scholar; Haesenne-Peremans, N., La pauvreté dans la région liégeoise à l'aube de la révolution industrielle (Paris, 1981), pp. 59–60Google Scholar.

38 Hansotte, G., La clouterie Liégeoise et la question ouvrière au XVIIIe siècle (Brussels, 1972), p. 10Google Scholar.

39 There existed, however, exceptions to this general impression, as the merchant Laurent Butbach who at the end of the sixteenth century with his furnaces, forges, slitting mills and nailers built up a socially, but not geographically, uniform company. Evrard, R., ”Laurent Butbach, un précurseur de l'intégration verticale”, Revue économique wallon (1963)Google Scholar.

40 Hansotte, La métallurgie, p. 179; Hasquin, H., Une mutation: le pays de Charleroi aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Brussels, 1971), p. 74Google Scholar.

41 Yernaux, La métallurgie liégeoise, p. 311.

42 The Swedish traveller Daniel Tilas gave a colourful description of the immense works at Systerbeck in Russian Ingermanland with its seventeen workshops among which the establishment for the production of sword-blades alone took up eighteen hearths in a line. According to Tilas the plant daily employed 500 workers; however, he also remarked that the works were only activated when the Tsar wanted to show the establishment to foreign visitors in order to “prove to foreigners that Russia also owned such establishments”. D. Tilas, “Kort beskrivning om en inom ryska gränsen gjord resa 4/2–6/4 1738”, unpublished manuscript in the archives of the Board of Mines, at the Royal Archives in Stockholm.

43 Contrary to the Swedish administration the Russian one was mainly restricted to supervision over the state-owned part of the industry. Peterson, C., Peter the Great's Administrative and Judicial Reforms (Stockholm, 1979), pp. 368–370Google Scholar; Portal, L'Oural, p. 41.

44 O. Crisp, “Labour and Industrialization in Russia”, in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. VII–2, p. 311; Minenko et al., “Ural Iron”, pp. 71–79. The latter group were paid for their additional work, but their wages were fixed by the owners of the ironworks and not set by the market. In his study of the Bohemian iron industry Milan Myska uses the notion of forced wage labour to distinguish such a social relationship. Myska, M., “Pre-industrial Iron Making in the Czech Lands: the Labour Force and Production Relations circa 1500–1840”, Past and Present, 82 (1979), pp. 63–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 The Demodiv family was the biggest private owner of ironworks in the Urals, and presided, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, over a labour force of 21,000 peasants. Portal, R., The Slavs (London, 1975), p. 158Google Scholar. See also Hudson, H. D., The Rise of the Demidov Family and the Russian Iron Industry in the Eighteenth Century (Newtonville, 1986)Google Scholar. At the works of Nizhny Tagil 2,500 persons were employed in iron production in the middle of the nineteenth century, not counting the bulk o f auxiliary workers. Esper, T., “The Incomes of Russian Serf Ironworkers in the Nineteenth Century”, Past and Present, 93 (1981), p. 146CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Poberezhnikov, I. V., “The Charcoal Production in Ural”, unpublished manuscript at the third meeting on iron making in Russia and Sweden before the twentieth century, Yekaterinenburg, 1993, p. 5Google Scholar.

47 Minenko et al., “Ural Iron”, p. 80. Poberezhnikov, I. V., “The Basic Organization for Raw Materials in the Ural Iron Industry”, paper at the third meeting on iron making in Sweden and Russia before the twentieth century, Yekaterinenburg, 1993, p. 6Google Scholar.

48 Esper, “The Incomes”, p. 150.

49 Portal, L'Oural, pp. 185–186, 238, 242.

50 Ibid., p. 236; Crisp, “Labour and Industrialization”, p. 313.

51 Ustiantiev, S., “The Work in the Ural Forge”, unpublished paper at the third meeting on iron making in Russia and Sweden before the twentieth century, Yekaterinburg, 1993Google Scholar.

52 Scott, J. C., Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasants' Resistance (New Haven, 1985), pp. 28–29Google Scholar.

53 Woronoff, L'industrie sidtrurgique, p. 192.

54 Analogous problems of interpretation have been discussed by Styles, John and Berg, Maxine. Berg, M., The Age of Manufactures 1700–1820 (London, 1985), p. 309Google Scholar; Styles, J., “Embezzlement, Industry and the Law in England 1500–1800”, in Berg, M. and Sonenscher, M. (eds), Manufacture in Town and Country Before the Factory (Cambridge, 1983), p. 207Google Scholar.

55 Florén, “Klasskamp utan fackförening”, p. 3; M. Soncnscher, ”Journeymen's Migrations and Workshop Organization in Eighteenth Century England”, in Kaplan, S. L. and Koepp, C. (eds), Work in France. Representations, Meaning and Practice (Ithaca, 1986), p. 76Google Scholar.

56 Geary, D., “Protest and Strike. Recent Research on ‘Collective Action’ in England, Germany and France”, in Tenfelde, K. (ed.). Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung im Vergleich (Munich, 1986), pp. 364–369Google Scholar.

57 Isacson, M., “The Decline of Peasants' Dependence on the Iron Industry”, in Metallurgical Works and Peasantry (Yekaterinenburg, 1992), pp. 214–215Google Scholar.

58 Sjöberg, J&m och Jord, p. 123.

59 Isacson, M., Ekonomisk tillväxt och social differentiering 1680–1860, bondeklasen i By socken (Uppsala, 1979), p. 83Google Scholar; Ågren, M., Jord och Gäld, social skiktning och rättslig Koflik i södra Dalama, ca 1650–1850 (Uppsala, 1992), ch. VIGoogle Scholar; Omberg, T., Bergsm&n i hyttelag. Bergsmansn&ringens utveckling i Linde och Ramsberg under en lOO-årsperiod från av 1700-talet (Uppsala, 1992), p. 103Google Scholar.

60 Isacson, M., “Ironworks, Charcoal and Peasants”, unpublished paper presented at the second meeting o n iron making in Russia and Sweden before the twentieth century, Uppsala, 1992, pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

61 Karlsson, Järnbruken, ch. VI.

62 Reddy, W. M., The Rise of Market Culture. The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750–1900 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 213, 251CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Sonenscher, M., Work and Wages. Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth Century French Trades (Cambridge, 1989), p. 72Google Scholar.

63 Rinman, S., “Allmogesmidet i Dalarna. 1764 åre undersökning”, in Sahlin, C. (ed.), Jernkontorets bergshistoriska skriftserie, no. 5 (Stockholm, 1936), p. 26Google Scholar. See also kacson, M. and Magnusson, L., Proto-lndustrialization in Scandinavia. Craft Skills in the industrial Revolution (New York, 1987)Google Scholar.

64 Floren and Rydèn, Arbete hushàll och region, pp. 76–77.

65 Florèn, A., “Patterns of Crime, Protest and Conflict in the Nora and Linde Mining Region 1650–1720”, paper presented at the third meeting on iron making in Russia and Sweden before the twentieth century, Yekaterinenburg, 1993Google Scholar. The picture that John Rule and John Styles have given of the dominance of these type of tensions and conflicts in the eighteenth-century English putting-out industries and proto-factories then holds true also for the Swedish iron industry. Styles, “Embezzlement”; Rule, J., The Experience of Labour in Eighteenth-century Industry (London, 1981), p. 125Google Scholar.

66 Karlsson, Järnbruken, p. 152; Florèn, “Patterns of Crime”, p. 12.

67 Florèn, “Patterns of Crime”, p. 4.

68 Even if the courts thus were not able to act as proto-trade unions, they obviously could fulfil other functions for the corporation of master forgemen. In the courts a system of poor relief for the masters and their widows was built up. The control of the masters' skill and competence was, beside being in the interest of the state and ironmaster as a form of quality control, also in the interest of the masters as a token of their exclusive position in the hierarchy of workers.

69 Quoted from Florèn, “Klasskamp utan fackförening”, p. 109.

70 Florén, A., Disciplinering och konflikt. Den sodala organiseringen av arbetet, Jäders Bruk 1640–1750 (Uppsala, 1987), p. 134Google Scholar.

71 Florèn, “Klasskamp utan fackförening”, pp. 14–16.

72 Disciplinering och konflikt, pp. 205–209.

73 ibid., p. 104.

74 Ibid., pp. 180–183.

75 Pirotte, La terre de Durby, pp. 195–215; Dorban, M., “Trois siécles de consommation forestiére dans le duchè de Luxembourg 1500–1830”, in Woronoff, D. (ed.), Rèvolution et Espace Forestiers (Paris, 1987), pp. 110–112. The same sort of conflicts were evident in the iron districts in France and was further complicated by the competition between the ironworks and the urban centres, notably Paris. Paris was, unlike the urban centres in Holland and the northern part of the Netherlands, unwilling to change its fuel technology from wood to coal. J. Bosstère, “La consommation parisienne de bois et les sidèrurgies pèriphèriques: essai de mise en paralléle (milieu XVe-milieu XIXe siécles)”, in Woronoff, Forges et Fôrets, p. 29. Complaints over the ironmasters' acquisition of wood and charcoal also was a common theme in the cahiers de doèance during the French Revolution. A. Brosselin et al., “Les dolèances contre l'industrie”, in Woronoff, Forges et Fôrets, p. 11Google Scholar.

76 Piret, “Fortunes et Groupes Sodaux”, p. 150.

77 Hansotte, La métallurgie, p. 71.

78 Dorban, M., “Le dénombrement du Luxembourg en 1766. Essai critique historique et statistique: le cas du décanat d'Yvoix-Carignan”, Pays Gaumais (1971–1972), p. 62Google Scholar. That master forgemen were active on the market for land is also apparent in Backlund, Sweden. J., Rusthållarna i Felingsbro 1684–1748, Indelningsverket och den sociala differenderingen av det svenska agrarsamhället (Uppsala, 1993), p. 157Google Scholar.

79 Dorban, “La sidérurgie Luxembourgeoise”, pp. 31–32.

80 The exception being the problem that Abbot Nicolas Spirlet had with the workers at his furnace, forge and foundry in St Hubert. Evrard, Dotn Nicolas Spirlet, p. 29.

81 Woronoff, L'industrie sidérurgique, p. 192.

82 Maybe this problem could have been solved by the workers' constituting family groups inside the factory organization. Sons often followed their fathers' choice of profession, thus, as in Sweden, creating a sort of hereditary aristocracy of skilled workers at the ironworks (Piret, “Fortunes et Groupes Sociaux”, p. 206; Leboutte, La Grosse Forge Wallonne, p. 50). As the Swedish historian Göran Rydén has clearly shown, the household of the master forgeman was the basic element for establishing the work crew in the Swedish forge (Rydén, “Iron Production and the Household”, pp. 18–23). Denis Woronoff has discussed the same type of phenomena in late eighteenth-century France. The influence °f the workers' household over the composition of the crews, he underlines, sharply restricted the ironmasters' possibility to direct the employment of personnel in the work-shops; the family functioned as a “véritable bureau de placements” (Woronoff, L'industrie sidérurgique, p. 161).

83 Damin, La métallurgie dans le Namurois, pp. 151–152.

84 LeBrun, P., L'industrie de la laine a Verviers (Liège, 1948), p. 285Google Scholar. See also Soly, “Social Aspects”, p. 247; C. M. Truant, “Independent and Insolent: Journeymen and Their Rites in the Old Regime Workplace”, in Kaplan and Koepp, Work in France, p. 132.

85 Hansotte, La clouterie liégeoise, p. 16.

86 Lindström, D., Skrå Stad och Stat. Stockholm, Malmö och Bergen ca 1350–1622 (Uppsala, 1991), p. 23Google Scholar.

87 Hansotte, La clouterie liégeoise, p. 57.

88 Ibid., p. 73.

89 The role played by rebellious or revolutionary trends in the surrounding society seems important also in order to comprehend the workers' strikes at the late eighteenth-century French ironworks. That these workers had maintained their contacts with the surrounding rural society and that the patriarchal ironwork society did not take the form of an enclosed monad, was, following Woronoff, crucial for their capability to perceive and take part in these general political occurrences. Woronoff, L'indtutrie sidérurgique, p. 201.

90 Portal, L'Oural, pp. 46, 271.

91 Shkerin, V. A., “The Process of Adoption and Social Conflicts at the Mining and Ironworks in the Urals during the Feudal Period”, unpublished paper at the snd meeting on iron making in Russia and Sweden before the twentieth century, Uppsala, 1992, p. 4Google Scholar. V. A. Shkerin, “Rebellious Crowds in Social Conflicts at the Ural Private Works in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century”, in Metallurgical Works, pp. 266–270.

92 Minenko, N. A. and Pobereznikov, I. V., “The Interaction of Industry and Agricultural Environment”, unpublished paper at the third meeting on iron making in Russia and Sweden before the twentieth century, Yekaterinenburg, 1993, p. 3Google Scholar.

93 The document is published in Dmytryshyn, B. (ed.), Imperial Russia: A Source Book, 1700–1917 (Portland, 1974), p. 96Google Scholar. The opposition during the eighteenth century also found its expressions in popular culture. One song, for example, described the prison-like conditions at the Demidov works.

A l'usine Demidov

Le travail est pénible

Ah! oui, le travail est pénible!

Hélas! nos dos nous font mal!

On nous met dans une usine, un bagne

Et on ne nous laisse pas sortir […]

(Quoted from Portal, L'Oural, p. 289)

94 Portal, R., “Manufactures et classes sociales en Russie au XVIIIe siécle”, Revue historique (1949), p. 349Google Scholar

95 Portal, R., “The Industrialisation of Russia”, in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. VI–2 (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 812–814Google Scholar. However, Thomas Esper also points to the positive economic effects that the abolition of serfdom had for the ironworks by nullifying the costs of the patriarchal cares. Esper, “The Incomes of Russian Serf Ironworkers”, p. 156.

96 Portal, L'Oural, pp. 294–295.

97 For a similar development in Bohemia see Myska, “Pre-industrial Iron Making”, p. 53.

98 Woolf, S., “Introduction”, in Woolf, S. (ed.), Domestic Strategies: Work and Family in France and Italy 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Levine, D. and Wrightson, K., The Making of an Industrial Society, Whickham 1560–1765 (Oxford, 1991), p. 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 Kriedte, P., “Proto-industrialization between Industrialization and De-industrialization”, in Kriedte, P., Medick, H. and Schlumbohm, J., Industrialization before Industrialization (Cambridge, 1981), p. 136Google Scholar. Or perhaps rather with D. C. Coleman's quite ironical reformulation of the concept, the deproto-industrialization. Coleman, D. C., “Proto-industrialization: A Concept To o Many”, Journal of Economic History, 36 (1976), p. 443Google Scholar.

101 Medick, H., “The Proto-industrial Family Economy: The Structural Function of House-hold and Family during the Transition from Peasant Society to Industrial Capitalism”, Social History, 1 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Randall, A., Before the Luddites (Cambridge, 1991), ch. 1Google Scholar. The Belgian historian Paul Servais has, in accordance with this discussion, found that the proto-industrialized textile workers in the Verviers-Liége area used their cash income to defend or expand their landed property. When the industry was centralized during the nineteenth century this strategy failed and as a result a large part of the landed property was transferred to the urban bourgeoisie. Servais, P., “Les structures agraires du Limbourg et du pays d'outre Meuse du XVIIe au XIXe siécle”, Annales E.S.C., 37 (1982)Google Scholar.

102 Levine and Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society, pp. 118–120.

103 Randall, Before the Luddites, p. 33. See also LeBrun, L'industrie de la laine, p. 268.

104 Portal, L'Oural, p. 19; Raeff, M., The Well-ordered Police State. Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Cermanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven, 1983), p. 213Google Scholar.

105 David Levine and Keith Wrightson have demonstrated that when the class of copy-holders in Whickham socially and economically became more diversified, the resistance against the coal mine withered away. Levine and Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society, p. 138.