Joshua Cole

The chaos of particular facts: Statistics, medicine and the social body in early 19th-century France

’How they unravel the chaos of particular facts!’ From our 20th-century vantage point, it is difficult to imagine the sense of wonder that a scientist such as Broussais must have felt when he confronted the new field of knowledge opened up by statistical applications in the medical and social sciences. A new order had emerged from the assembled figures and tables, which gave structure and form to the infinite variety of human experience. When grouped together in series, the most random events of social life were found to exhibit recognizable and consistent patterns, hinting at an unsuspected universe of exquisite precision. The result was an unbridled enthusiasm among those who found themselves seduced by the science of numbers. Announcing the new era, the political economist and statistician Benoiston de Chateauneuf wrote in 1821: ’Let us

A sudden and terrible revelation: motherhood and infant mortality in France, 1858-1874.

In 1874, legislators in France passed a law regulating the wet-nursing industry. Citing recent medical research into the causes and social costs of high infant mortality, the laws supporters met little opposition, despite the fact that the law challenged the tradition of paternal authority and familial autonomy that had been inscribed in French law since the promulgation of the Civil Code of 1804. Extending state power into the familial realm required a concerted effort by reformers, who concentrated on two issues: maternal responsibility for newborn infants and the social costs of early death. Because working women in urban areas used wet-nurses to preserve their wage-earning capacity, reformers capitalized on widespread opposition to womens labor outside the home. The law met little opposition in part because the issues of paternal authority had already been thoroughly debated several months earlier in the child labor law of 1874.

Constantine before the riots of August 1934: civil status, anti-Semitism, and the politics of assimilation in interwar French Algeria

The anti-Semitic riots of 3–5 August 1934 in Constantine should be understood both as a long-term result of the colonial orders civic exclusions, and against the background of shifts in local politics following the 1919 reforms of the electoral process. After these reforms, Jewish citizens and Muslim colonial subjects found that the terms of their inclusion in the political process drove them into different alliances with the colonial state and its local representatives, exacerbating tensions between Muslims and Jews in the city. The article compares two moments of anti-Semitic agitation in which agitators from the settler population attempted to provoke violence against Jews by Muslims: a brief episode in 1920–21, which failed; and a more concerted effort between 1928 and 1933, which came very close to provoking a violent outburst against the citys Jews in the summer of 1933.

Book Review: Culture, Religion, and Demographic Behavior: Catholics and Lutherans in Alsace, 1750-1870

The chapters here open up new opportunities for thinking about the consequences of partnership breakdown by focusing on the relationship between cohabitation, marriage, and divorce; the experiences of nonresident fathers; and the relationship between divorce and migration. The authors, however, point to the need for more qualitative research to illuminate the family dynamics, relationships, and processes at play during and after divorce. This book is, therefore, a mixed resource for the historian of the family and not only because it is concerned with aspects of contemporary change. There are, for example, notable absences of discussion about the effects of such change on the family life and experiences of the child, per se, while the importance of ongoing shifts in perceptions of manhood and masculinity is paid too little account. More attention might have been given to the social and cultural context of Britain in the 1990s in order to further explore how inequalities of race, ethnicity, disability, or social class might affect and shape experiences of family relationships. This elision of difference is also evident in the insufficient distinction made by some researchers to the divides not only between urban and rural localities but also between England, Scotland, and Wales. As a result, the possible significance of regional divides to changing patterns of behavior is often lost. Undoubtedly, the research projects have provided detailed and thought-provoking portraits of particular aspects of change and continuity among family members, families, and households, but what is less clear is the extent to which this particular collection might be used in the future to throw light on the complex and nuanced interactions that existed between self, family, and society at the end of the twentieth century.