NCERT Class 10 History Politics in the City

Politics in the City

In the severe winter of 1886, when outdoor work came to a standstill, the London poor exploded in a riot, demanding relief from the terrible conditions of poverty. Alarmed shopkeepers closed down their establishments, fearing the 10,000-strong crowd that was marching from Deptford to London. The marchers had to be dispersed by the police. A similar riot occurred in late 1887; this time, it was brutally suppressed by the police in what came to be known as the Bloody Sunday of November 1887.

Two years later, thousands of London’s dockworkers went on strike and marched through the city. According to one writer, ‘thousands of the strikers had marched through the city without a pocket being picked or a window being broken …’ The 12-day strike was called to gain recognition for the dockworkers’ union. From these examples you can see that large masses of people could be drawn into political causes in the city. A large city population was thus both a threat and an opportunity. State authorities went to great lengths to reduce the possibility of rebellion and enhance urban aesthetics, as the example of Paris shows.

Haussmanisation of Paris

In 1852, Louis Napoleon III (a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) crowned himself emperor. After taking over, he undertook the rebuilding of Paris with vigour. The chief architect of the new Paris was Baron Haussmann, the Prefect of the Seine. His name has come to stand for the forcible reconstruction of cities to enhance their beauty and impose order. The poor were evicted from the centre of Paris to reduce the possibility of political rebellion and to beautify the city. For 17 years after 1852, Haussmann rebuilt Paris. Straight, broad avenues or boulevards and open spaces were designed, and full-grown trees transplanted. By 1870, one-fifth of the streets of Paris were Haussmann’s creation. In addition, policemen were employed, night patrols were begun, and bus shelters and tap water introduced. 

Public works on this scale employed a large number of people: one in five working persons in Paris was in the building trade in the 1860s. Yet this reconstruction displaced up to 350,000 people from the centre of Paris. Even some of the wealthier inhabitants of Paris thought that the city had been monstrously transformed. The Goncourt brothers, writing in the 1860s, for instance, lamented the passing of an earlier way of life, and the development of an upper-class culture. Others believed that Haussmann had ‘killed the street’ and its life, to produce an empty, boring city, full of similar-looking boulevards and facades. In a play called Maison Neuve written in 1866, an old shopkeeper said, ‘Nowadays for the slightest excursion there are miles to go! An eternal sidewalk going on and on forever! A tree, a bench, a kiosk! A tree, a bench, a kiosk! A tree, a bench …’ The outcry against Haussmann’s Paris soon got converted into civic pride as the new capital became the toast of all Europe. Paris became the hub of many new architectural, social and intellectual developments that were very influential right through the twentieth century, even in other parts of the globe.

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