Abstract
The history of the commercial dynasties of Bordeaux is part of the larger economic and social history of overseas trade in the Atlantic World. This book examines one merchant house in Bordeaux, the Faure Brothers, from its foundation at the end of the eighteenth century, through its evolution to more modern forms of commerce during the nineteenth century, to its collapse in the twentieth largely due to the rum crash, which coincided with the onset of the Great Depression of the 1930s. As a case study in French business history, it also provides an example of one provincial family’s social ascension into the grand bourgeoisie of a major seaport. The Faure Brothers engaged in family capitalism, and Hubert Bonin’s analysis of the house’s operations suggests that this traditional form of enterprise remained central to the development of overseas commerce during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The first part of the book examines the construction of the Faure Brothers’ economic power before 1870. Bonin argues that the house’s development was representative of the profound transition in Bordeaux’s economy during this period. The business focused initially on trade with France’s West Indian colonies, whose sugar production depended on slave labor, but moved into more modern forms of commerce based on various commodities and manufactured goods. The Faures were Protestants from southwest France who migrated to Bordeaux in the eighteenth century. Gabriel and Jacques founded the house in 1795 and the Faure Brothers became merchant commissioners: they received orders from other firms in Bordeaux and elsewhere in France and Europe, found suppliers overseas, assembled stock, and shipped commodities and merchandise. The family business built a network of relationships with other houses in the Gironde and the Charente, but also with German merchants. While maintaining trade with the West Indies, the Faure’s relative originality in the early nineteenth century lay in developing commercial ties with the French colonies of Réunion and the Île Maurice in the Indian Ocean, and with the sub-continent of India itself. In the 1860s, the house acquired a sugar refinery and a small plantation in Martinique, but the Faure Brothers chose subsequently to invest their capital in commercial effort rather than in industry. The activities and strategies of this merchant house were diverse, however, and included outfitting ships at Bordeaux from 1802 to 1870, as well as involvement in maritime insurance. The growth in profits and the accumulation of capital propelled the Faures’ social ascension into the ‘bonne bourgeoisie’ of Bordeaux. Bonin examines various markers of the family’s access to social power and status, including the locations of their residences, the diversification of their inheritance to include some landed property, and their careful construction of networks of matrimonial sociability. Other markers of its social rise were institutional, the most important being the election of two family members to Bordeaux’s powerful Chamber of Commerce. Bonin suggests that the family’s social strategies, like its business practices, reflected its members’ Protestant beliefs.
The book’s second part addresses the Faure Brothers’ maturation as a powerful commercial house from 1870 to the 1920s. Despite their diverse importing and exporting activities, Bonin emphasizes the Faures’ growing specialization in the rum trade with Réunion. He also analyses the generational renewal of management as the third generation led by Gabriel Faure II, under whom the house reached its apogee early in the twentieth century, ceded direction of the firm to a fourth generation of Faures. The new guard overcame the challenges of the First World War and relaunched the house’s Indian Ocean business in the 1920s, seeking to strengthen commercial links with Madagascar. The growth and stability of the business was accompanied by confirmation of the family’s place among Bordeaux’s bourgeois elite. Gabriel Faure II served as president of the Chamber of Commerce from 1899 to 1902, and the dynasty achieved other marks of respectability after his retirement. Yet by the 1920s, the family had declined in influence and the commercial house had become vulnerable.
Bonin analyses the Faure Brothers’ fall in the book’s third part. Bordeaux merchants typically cooperated with those of Le Havre in the importation and sale of rum, but in 1929 the Faures led several Bordeaux houses in creating a formal consortium to challenge Le Havre’s domination of the trade. This effort to corner the market constituted a major speculative risk. In 1931, nervous French banks called in their loans, forcing the rum consortium’s liquidation. The Faure Brothers could not survive the shock and dissolved the house. Bonin suggests that rising debt, due largely to failed efforts to establish business ties with Morocco, aggravated the short-term crisis. The collapse of the business was also a family crisis, forcing the Faures to sell residences and liquidate assets. Yet due to the solidarity of the Bordeaux business community, the family established a new firm to engage in modest sugar trade with Réunion and Martinique. The Faures continued this traditional commerce until financial pressures and economic changes associated with decolonization marked the house’s definitive end in 1961.
Bonin seeks to understand why this established and successful commercial house collapsed. He suggests that managerial decisions and misjudgment of risk were key, but sources such as correspondence or journals which could shed light on the directors’ perceptions and mentalities, or on debates within the firm, have been lost. The descendants of the Faure dynasty gave Bonin access to all records in their possession: documents, family portraits, and photographs illustrate each of the book’s three parts; yet these would not allow Bonin to fully evaluate the firm’s management. Similarly, the book provides little sense of the family’s wider outlook: there is only one reference to its members’ political inclinations or sympathies. Despite these limitations, Bonin’s research contributes to the comparative history of family capitalism and commercial houses in Bordeaux, and potentially also in the wider Atlantic World.