Overview
- Explores women's involvement in the nineteenth-century Northern France textile industry
- Analyses why they have left little imprint on collective memory or historical thought
- Strives to evaluate who these businesswomen were, what challenges they faced, and why they have been forgotton
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This volume explores the role of women in business in nineteenth-century Northern French textile centers. Lille and the surrounding towns were then dominated by big and small family businesses, and many were run by women. Those women did not withdraw into the parlour as the century progressed and the ‘separate ideology’ spread. Neither did they become mere figure heads - most were business persons in their own rights. Yet, they have left almost no traces in the collective memory, and historians assume they ceased to exist. This book therefore seeks to answer three interrelated questions: How common were those women, and what kind of business did they run? What factors facilitated or impeded their activities? And finally, why have they been forgotten, and why has their representations in regional and academic history been so at odd with reality? Indirectly, this study also sheds light on the process of industrialization in this region, and on industrialists’ strategies.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Béatrice Craig is Professor of History at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of Women and Business since 1500: Invisible Presences in Europe and North America? (2015) and co-editor with R. Beachy and A. Owens of Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres (2006).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Female Enterprise Behind the Discursive Veil in Nineteenth-Century Northern France
Authors: Béatrice Craig
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57413-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-57412-1Published: 16 November 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-57413-8Published: 09 November 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 303
Topics: History of France, Social History, Gender Studies, Economic History