Un industriel textile dans la crise des années 1880 : marché, métier et fortune entre stratégies conjoncturelles et mutations structurelles

The Scrive notebooks yield an insight, from the inside, into the crisis of the linen industry in the 1880s, as it was experienced by a cloth manufacturer in Lille, a member of the Nord's « Grandes Familles », perfectly inserted in the regional finance network (Crédit du Nord, Mines de Lens) :A privileged view on the manifestations of an overproduction crisis and on the conjunctural strategies developed by the flax weavers of Lille and of the Lys Valley. One enters thus directly the heart of the market as it is experienced : distinction, when not outright opposition, between flax weaving territories featuring different customs or practices ; ambivalent competition-cooperation relations between often related or allied colleagues ; permanence or recomposition of partnerhips ; unequal access to credit and information, the two basic resources. All in all, the author assumes the appearance of a manufacturer out of step with his time : overwhelmed by the crisis, he dreams of himself as a learned person of independent means ; bent on his trade, he refuses to acknowledge its mutations.