Paris, Capital of Modernity [Hardcover]

David Harvey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2003

Collecting David Harvey's finest work on Paris during the second empire, Paris, Capital of Modernity offers brilliant insights ranging from the birth of consumerist spectacle on the Parisian boulevards, the creative visions of Balzac, Baudelaire and Zola, and the reactionary cultural politics of the bombastic Sacre Couer. The book is heavily illustrated and includes a number drawings, portraits and cartoons by Daumier, one of the greatest political caricaturists of the nineteenth century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing on essays written over the last 30 years, Harvey brings one of the most fascinating and confounding periods of French-or for that matter, European-history into sharp relief. He asserts that two conceptions of modernity were nurtured in Paris in the years after the First Empire-one bourgeois, and the other founded on the idea of the "social republic" geared toward benefiting all classes of citizens. Harvey traces these conflicting movements over the decades leading up to the Revolution of 1848 and charts their reverberations through the final days of the Paris Commune. The book is richly illustrated with over a hundred period photographs and cartoons by Daumier and others, which serve to reinforce the notion of Paris as a city of contrasts in a period of profound change. And Harvey is as comfortable and adept at quoting pertinent passages from the romantic novelists as he is offering detailed economic analyses of real estate and labor market dynamics. By making use of primary sources from diverse disciplines, he offers a thorough examination of the period: he explores, for instance, the role of women and class strictures and the consequences of urban planning and public transportation. The worst that can be said of this exhaustive investigation into the complicated and turbulent era of the Second Empire is that Harvey presupposes an intermediate knowledge of many of the important actors and events. As he weaves the humanities, philosophy, economics and sociology into a detailed tapestry, the author leaves remedial explanations of Parisian and French social movements to the authors listed in a well-annotated bibliography. This is not a problem in and of itself, but readers expecting a breezy history of the "City of Lights" may find themselves overwhelmed by the complexity and depth of this book.
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Review

"'Harvey's work is notable for the sheer diversity of sources he draws on... A stunning book that will engage anyone with an interest in 19th century politics and urbanism... a definitive work on the historical geography of Paris which shows tremendous insight, forceful arguments, and above all, an obvious passion.' - Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 'Harvey brings one of the most fascinating and confounding periods of French - or for that, European - history into sharp relief.' Publishers Weekly 'Much more than a simple narrative... [a] complex and sophisticated work.' - Library Journal 'David Harvey is perhaps the most important urban scholar writing in the English language, and here he is at his best.' - Thomas Bender, author of The Unfinished City: New York and the Metropolitan idea" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 041594421X
• ISBN-13: 978-0415944212
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,694,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Harvey teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is the author of many books including Social Justice and the City, The Condition of Postmodernity, The Limits to Capital, A Brief History of Neoliberalism and Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paris as archetype, December 5, 2003

By 

Bo K. (California!!!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paris, Capital of Modernity (Hardcover)

Implicitly taking his start from Benjamin's sketches of Paris as the "capitol" of the 19th century, Harvey analyses the elements that transformed Paris from medieval labrynth to modern bourgeois metropolis and the corresponding effect that this had on all levels of the class structure, men and women, and the spatial geography of the city itself. He starts with Balzac and Baudelaire, as all such studies must; but quickly moves out of literature and into history, looking at the changes in the city geography begun by Hausmann. Harvey uses his familiar metaphor of changes in geography as a symbol of the changes wrought by modernity. Excellent, pointed read for those interested in Paris and French history, urban development, and the effects of capital on capitols. Great bibliography too!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cultural and geographical history of Second Empire Paris, August 26, 2008

By 

M. A. Krul (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Paris, Capital of Modernity (Paperback)

David Harvey, the famous social geographer, is not particularly known for his work on cultural matters, having spent most of his career working on issues of political economy, spatial organization and (some) philosophy of the same. Nonetheless, "Paris, Capital of Modernity" is a partially cultural, partially political-geographical history of the modernization of Paris undertaken under the famous leadership of Georges Haussmann (1809-1891), who created the monument, park and boulevard systems for which Paris is now justly renowned. As context, Harvey analyzes the works and attitudes of famous writers of that period in Paris, such as Flaubert and De Balzac, in addition to providing many nice photographs and maps charting the changes and developments in France's capital.

As one can expect with Harvey, most of the work is spent on tracing the geographical and spatial aspects of the modernization and industrialization of Paris and its political background in the persons of Napoleon III, Emperor of France between 1852 and 1870, and Georges Haussmann. He shows the constellation of class forces that allowed Napoleon III to play various classes against each other, shifting support from financial capital to landlord powers and back, and the position Haussmann's developments had in this political ensemble. Although the initial material is a little dry, things get better as Harvey digs into the meat of the matter, where Haussmann does not appear as much as the hated enemy of the workers and wrecker of ancient Paris as he is often depicted, but rather as an embodiment of the 'creative destruction' that capitalism is when it fully comes into its own, as it did in France around this time. The tensions and furies caused by the combination of capitalist industrialization on the one hand, and the spatial and economic restructuring of Paris as such by Haussmann and speculators both would finally erupt into the Paris Commune of 1871, which inaugurated the permanent end of the power of both reaction and a bloody repression of socialism in France.

The book is written with the usual subtlety, political understanding, and nuance of Harvey's best work. Whether the literary additions to the work are an improvement or a distraction perhaps depends on taste, all the more since the first chapter, entirely on De Balzac's oeuvre, is rather at variance with the topic of the rest of the work. But although the topic of Paris' furious ascent into modernity is not quite a new topic (addressed famously by Walter Benjamin, for example), Harvey's book is a worthy addition to Marx' own studies on the history of France: "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte" (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) and "The Civil War in France" (The Civil War in France: The Paris Commune).