History 2520 Europe in the Nineteenth Century: 1815-1914

Fall 2005 J. Sperber

First Paper

The lectures have emphasized the importance of work, of physical labor in earning a living, for the lives of the common people of Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. We would like you to write an essay, first explaining—using general developments as expressed in the lectures—how people’s families and the associations they formed shaped the work they did and the ways they made a living. Then, we would like you to take the working-class autobiographies from The French Worker and show how the workers’ lives depicted in these autobiographies either exemplified these more general influences of family and associations on work and earning a living, and/or were different from them. Please be sure to include examples from at least four workers’ lives, including both men and women workers. Your examples, however, should not be drawn from the lives of the last two autobiographers (Dumay and Bouvier) since they lived well after the first half of the nineteenth century. Nor should you take your examples from the introduction, since its author, Mark Traugott, is a contemporary American sociologist, who lives in California, and not a French worker of the first half of the nineteenth century.

Remember that a good essay will explore both general forms of the influence of family and voluntary associations on work and making a living and will also give examples of these influences—or the lack of them—on the individual lives of the autobiographers in The French Worker. We would appreciate it, if you would document your references to The French Worker, either with footnotes, or simply by giving the relevant pages in parenthesis in the text. The essay should be 1000-1,500 words long. (With 12-point type and one-inch margins, that is roughly 4-5 double-spaced, typed pages.) The first draft is due, in class, Wednesday September 14.