IV.4. HAVE THE KINGS BECOME SUBVERSIVE?

4.3. HVE KNGS BECME SUBVERSVE?

THE CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES, APOGEE OF THE GRAND AXIS, 

COULD PROPEL A SUBLIME MODERNITY  

But globalized commerce has taken over "the world's most beautiful avenue"and changed its message:

     Automobile centenary / Claude Abron

In brief

• The Champs-Élysées, challenged majesty

• A new society creeps in

• Goddesses loom over the city

• Kings and globalization

*     *     *

Next,

The Champs-Élysées, challenged majesty

THE CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES, CHALLENGED MAJESTY

THE "GREAT WHEEL OF PARIS," NOW DEFUNCT, HERALDED 

A GENERAL EVOLUTION

Installed at place de la Concorde from the 1980's to 2018

in itself it was spectacular...

But the booths at its foot blocked Louis XIV's groundbreaking perspective...

While the theme song on its web site was so triumphantly insignificant — "Les CHAMPS!!! Élysées" — that it insulted the Avenue's grandeur. 

# # #

In 2014 the City refused to renew the lease. A bland composition 

replaced the pop tune. Joyful music from the Sun King's court

would have emphasized the avenue's grandeur. Instead the authorities allowed the insipid.

Were those changes a compromise,

refusing the small stalls

but not confronting the multinationals

whose wares dominate the avenue now?   

*     *     *

Next,

A new society creeps in

A NEW SOCIETY CREEPS IN

MIXING CULTURE WITH COMMERCE WOULD HAVE SEEMED VULGAR A GENERATION AGO. BUT NOW... 

Brands take over the historic center, the medieval rampart under the Louvre vanishes under an installation that leads to a McDonald's, a tablet to rent replaces Marie-Antoinette's cell,

 chain stores or shops without personality replace businesses that had a soul, as here and here and a brand takes over Napoleon's tomb:

In museums and monuments, merch can be impossible to avoid... 

• A barrier at the Conciergerie forces visitors to pass the boutique when they leave:

 

• At the Opéra, visitors must pass through three levels of shops before reaching the exit:

• At the Louvre, to view Raft and Liberty one must pass through this room...

While another boutique covers the wall of the exit: 

PHOTO

 # # #

Triviality, consumerism and erasing the past —  is there a connection ?

*     *     * 

 

Next,

Goddesses loom over the city

GODDESSES LOOM OVER THE CITY

PART OF THOSE CHANGES: GIANT ADS

(FIRST REMARKED IN 2011)

Place des Victoires, toward 2015

Opéra, 2015

Over departent store, 2016

Steet in the wealthy 16th district, 2017

Châtelet crossroad, central Paris, 2022

                                                                                 Avenue de L'Opéra and Opéra facade, 2023

*     *     * 

Next, Kings and globalization

KINGS AND GLOBALIZATION

THE CRACKS AROUND THIS PAINTING WERE FINALLY REPAIRED... 

(IN 2023)

Louis XIII Bows Before a Crucifix, church of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, 4th

But though people stop there to meditate or light candles, I have never seen anyone contemplate the giant painting of homage to the king, in a church built to honor monarchy.

That past has been forgotten.

# # #

Compare that work with images like this one: The gorgeous, colossal, invincible queen does not say what she is selling, still less why it should be bought...

Ad on the summit of the Hôtel Lutétia, 6th

She looms over the public like Big Brother, in hommage not to a product but to a brand, whose purchase is an order.

To fall for such bait a public must be submissive, credulous and have no conflicting frame of reference: The monarchs' majesty

stands in the way of such annihilation.

As well, they have left a legacy 

of artistic and architectural grandeur

that makes consumption-ism insignificant.

One does not reject it — one ignores it.

Pamela Spurdon

Louis XIV in the courtyard of the Louvre.

The kings re-enter history when we notice
 the majesty they transmit.

End of Part IV.

*      *      * 

The other great reason for Paris's beauty,
the fear that insurrections inspired,
is as suppressed as are the kings.

Part IV addresses that gap.

 V.
Cradle of upheaval

V. CRADLE OF UPHEAVAL

 5. MENU: Cradle of upheaval

PARIS IS CALLED "THE CITY OF LOVE," BUT ITS UPRISINGS TELL ANOTHER STORY 

     Ad on the Louvre

Barricade, Chaussée Ménilmontant, March 18,1871, when La Commune broke out / Zoom, musée Carnavalet

Not exhibited 

Mainstream accounts avoid them.

These pages address that gap.

In brief

• "Objective history sticks to the facts:" Which facts? 

• 1830: the people fooled

• 1848: fooled again

• The first mass working-class insurrection brings modern Europe's first mass massacre

• The historical museum and the insurrections

• Fear, unlikely promoter of urban grandeur

• Remaking the city

• Gifts of the repression

*      *      * 

Next,
5.1.

"Objective history sticks to the facts:" Which facts?

5.1. HISTORY AND THE UNDERLYING ECONOMY

 MENU: 5.1. HISTORY & ECONOMY

VIEWING THE PAST IN THE CONTEXT OF DEEP-SEATED ECONOMIC CHANGE HELPS CORRECTLY IDENTIFY STRUGGLES AND ADVERSARIES NOW

Is that why it is left out? Flashback

When in the 1960's I studied modern European history in the U.S., Marx's materialist view of the past was not mentioned even once.

"Communist propaganda!" I thought on encountering that approach at the Sorbonne. Eventually I understood that what I had been taught emanated from the Cold War and that of French students from the Occupation (explained here). 

The economic interpretation has gradually faded in France and since the rise of globalized capitalism in the 1980's, almost disappeared. 

How the past is seen is deeply political, though the right-wing view is so engrained that it is usually taken for granted.

 

*    *    *

History as we are told it

and an alternative

• An account that makes no sense

• "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" lets capitalism take wing   

• The Revolution of 1830: capitalism's neglected triumph 

Next:

5.1.1.

An account that makes no sense 

V.1.2. "LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY" LETS CAPITALISM TAKE WING

IN PRACTICE...

• Liberty means free enterprise. 

• Equality ends the nobles' privileges that limit business growth. 

• Fraternity calls up the masses to blow those privileges away.

The French Revolution is usually explained as due to archaic systems of land ownership, taxation and government finance, plus exceptionally poor harvests, the cost of aid to American revolutionaries, the extravagance and short-sightedness of the royal court and new ideas. 

One of the web's explanations 

Causes: Inequality / The poor have no power / Absolutism / Hunger

Not said: that economic growth made conflict between hereditary landowners and nascent capitalists inevitable, and that the latter had to call up the street to win.  

Painting gone from the web.

Middle-class leader, popular striking force: But only the man with the blue head scarf at the bottom right appears to work with his hands.

# # #

When the explorations and discoveries of the end of the 15th century bring major new revenues, an unprecedented expansion of chains of production lets new entrepreneurs challenge the ruling class of hereditary landowners, the nobles. 

In France that brings:

• Stronger monarchy, which contains the new interests.

• Arts that buttress the nobles by associating them with the gods of mythology.

• "Wars of Religion," that pit popular masses against entrepreneurs who challenge traditional protections.  

Nobles' legal privileges and control of the State hamper those interests, but do not stop their growth. By the 1780's establishments employing hundreds of workers have sprung up around Paris:

   Pillage de a Folie-Titon [Réveillon] au Fbg. Saint-Antoine, April 28 1789, anonymous, end 18th century / zoom

A riot at Réveillon, with 200 employees, takes place two months before the taking of the Bastille. By opposing a rumored reduction of salaries rather than the cost of bread, it announces the struggle between capital and labor. 

Similar establishments: A company with 300 employees in what is now the 13th; plants north of the Saint-Denis gate, one of which has 800 workers; manufactories in Orleans and Rouen... .

-- In the 13th:

Éléments pour une history de la Commune dans le 13e arrondissement by Gérard Conte, 1981

-- In the north:

The Crowd in the French Revolution by George Rudé, 1959

-- In Orleans and Rouen:

Les derniers feux [fires]de la monarchie by Charles-Eloi Vial, ch. 1, 2016

Entrepreneurs resent the nobles' privileges that block their expansion, and want political power that fits their economic clout. Nobles, whose revenues come largely from peasant dues that inflation reduces and whose values and upbringing make them ill-equipped for business resist (please click and scroll down).

The street provides the force that leads to them to hide, flee or be guillotined: "What had been pretension became tragedy."

-- Adolphe Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution française,1834

 

      Illustration in La Grande Révolution française by Georges Soria (ed. Bordas), 1988

# # #

Marx's summary of the French Revolution: "The dykes to capitalism had to be broken. They were broken."

But not quite.

*     *     *

Next,

 5.1.3.

The 1830 Revolution:

Capitalists' neglected triumph

V.1.4. THE REVOLUTION OF 1830: CAPITALISM'S FORGOTTEN TRIUMPH

COMPARE WITH THE TEXTBOOK

This painting evokes the Revolution of 1830, which finished what the French Revolution began: shatter nobles' control of the State, which let capitalism take off.

       Liberty Guides the People by Eugène Delacroix, 1831 / zoom

Background:

• The conflict between nascent capitalists and hereditary landowners, brewing since the 16th century, comes to a head with the French Revolution (1789-1794). Nobles lose their legal privileges and those who emigrate, their lands. A business-friendly society replaces that based on hereditary rank. 

• Then Napoleon's wars absorb capital and energies (1800-1815). His defeat leads foreign monarchies to impose a government by which noble survivors, weakened though they are, take power again (in 1815-1830). 

Those events slow growth but do not stop it: 

• The Saint Martin canal, started in 1805 and stopped in 1809, is rebooted with peace in 1815 and finished in 1824. The industrialization of northern Paris, and the fortunes made from it, begin.  

-- Mon Canal Saint-Martin by Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, 1984

Postcard, end of the 19th century / zoom

• The cemetery of the Holy Innocents undergoes a similar evolution. The project to make it a marketplace only, launched just before the Revolution, is completed in the early 1820's.

• Developers build the maze of covered passages at the same time. "Vero-Dodat," is named after the two butchers who finance it:

     Zoom

# # #

Businessmen's pressure on the government grows.

• When king Charles X loses elections he "throws the monarchy from the towers of Notre Dame"* by suppressing voting power and press. That is the essence of the Ordonnances the textbook mentions.

*René de Chateaubriand, royalist writer. This account is based on his memoir, Souvenirs d'outre-tombe, 1848.

• Street fighting breaks out. 

Combat devant l'Hôtel de Ville le 28 juillet 1830 by Jean-Victor Schnetz, official commission, 1830  / zoom  

The assailants are shown as middle-class, though in fact they were largely plebeian: more later.

• Believing that the Virgin Mary has promised her help, the king plays cards in his château across the river. He does not even supply his troops. The famished soldiers do not defend the bridge and thousands of Parisians threaten to attack. He abdicates.

• Bankers make up the only organized force. They offer the throne to Louis-Philippe, head of the Bourbon monarchy's junior branch. 

          Louis-Philippe quitte Palais-Royal pour les Tuileries le 31 juillet 1830  by Horace Vernet / zoom

# # #

The upheaval completes the transformation that the French Revolution began : 

• The deposed king and returned nobles are inseparable from the Church and the past, that is, from economic immobility: Here the authority figure is the clergyman, who is larger than the other personnages and dominates them.

               La Mort [death] de Charles X, print, 1836 / zoom

Héros of the Ancien Régime welcome the king to Paradise.

• The gaze of this newspaper editor and pillar of the new regime exudes the power that economic dynamism brings.

Portrait de Monsieur Bertin by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1832 / zoom

The seat emphasizes domination and the fingers look like claws.

Louis-Philippe is the son of despised Equality Philip, who voted for the death of Louis XVI, his cousin. Without legitimacy by heredity or election, he depends on the financiers who handed him the throne.

Calling the insurgency "The Three Glorious Days" shows capitalists' jubilation at taking power at last. 

# # #

An approach that stresses economic interests

needs only common sense.

Skip the rhetoric of philosophies or slogans.

What are their practical effects? 

End of this section.

*    *    *

The next section, 

5.3.

The people fooled