The coachmen of nineteenth-century Paris

by Nicholas Papayanis

Historical writings and art and literature of the period depict the coachmen of nineteenth-century Paris in a variety of ways - from unflinchingly honest to unspeakably rude to utterly criminal. In this captivating book, Nicholas Papayanis sets about to penetrate the popular image of the coachman and present a realistic picture of this frequently maligned segment of the Paris population. On one level, The Coachmen of Nineteenth-Century Paris offers a definitive history of Paris cabbies, providing a sociological portrait of these workers, their backgrounds, marriage patterns, social networks, neighborhood choices, work experience, organizations, strikes, patterns of social mobility, response to technological change particularly the advent of the automobile and development of political and class consciousness. Most coachmen had migrated to Paris from outlying regions of France, a fact that Papayanis uses to illuminate the broader theme of the social integration of rural inhabitants into