Between crown and commerce: Architecture and urbanism in eighteenth-century Bordeaux (France)

The eighteenth century was a period of great commercial success for Bordeaux, France as well as a time of intensive city development. This study of urban planning and architectural development in Bordeaux from the 1720s to the French Revolution places the port city in a national and international context to demonstrate how economic, political, and social relationships were imprinted on the urban and rural environments. The dissertation identifies three interrelated influences that shaped the design of the city: the French crown, the growth of international capitalist commerce, and the rise of a non-noble elite. The dissertation contributes to our knowledge of the growth of early modern cities and reveals the complex links between local sites and global dynamics in the eighteenth century.; Bordeaux's development provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between central and provincial France and gauge how the monarch used urbanism to remind an independent provincial city of its political and economic control. Chapters examine architectural construction along Bordeaux's riverside, the creation of leisure spaces, suburban expansion, and vineyard development to show how the monarch used city building to represent itself in Bordeaux and insinuate the state's responsibility for the city's economic success. At the same time, there were economic, social, and natural limitations to the king's political and symbolic authority over urban planning in Bordeaux. With the economy surging beyond state control, the European and transatlantic exchange of commodities, culture, and artistic styles left its own imprint on Bordeaux's urban and rural landscapes.; The study focuses on the rise of Bordeaux's international wholesale merchants, the négociants, and shows how their participation in urban planning both served and constrained the royal building program. The thesis argues that city planning in Bordeaux makes salient the fissures in the upper ranks of eighteenth-century society. Wholesale merchants distinguished themselves from the nobility through their sites of sociability and intellectual exchange, the structure and use of their residences, their articulation of occupational identities, their pride in commerce, and their service to the city. The dissertation thus rethinks both Marxist and revisionist interpretations of middle-class formation in eighteenth-century France.