Abstract
Hiroyasu Kimizuka’s book follows the big theses of maritime history of the 1960s, because it encompasses both the Aquitaine and Breton wine trades, so highlighting the complete chain of interregional exchanges from sender to consumer. The point of this work is to show how wines passed from the producer at Bordeaux up to the Breton drinkers. It covers the roles of the multiple actors in this trade; agents, traders, navigators, retailers, and the practicalities of sale of the wine, and of coastal navigation, river navigation, and carting. In that sense, this approach seems original and very relevant, because it follows a product and a sector, wine, which represented 37 per cent of alcoholic drinks consumed in Brittany. To accomplish it, the author had utilized an immense range of archives, national, departmental and municipal. The combination of the administrative, fiscal, notarized and commercial sources lends interest and depth to the analysis.
The book articulates around three areas of analysis, firstly the trade in wine, then the modalities of transport, and finally commercial networks. So, Kimizuka breaks with classical port history and takes an interest in maritime activity as a whole, in a global approach taking into account the importance of food-processing maritime exchanges in the eighteenth century. Indeed, the history of wine consumption is closely linked to maritime history. The cargo of intra-European coastal navigation ships consisted mainly of such regional products as wine, cereal or salt, even if, after the development of the transoceanic trade, it was exotic products and long-distance traffic that accelerated the economic boom of the French Atlantic ports. Nevertheless, wine maintained an important place among products exported by France. Indeed, throughout the eighteenth century, it was one of the main goods consigned to overseas markets. The development of French maritime trade accompanied the extension of the French wine market, linked mainly with the development of long-distance trade, in particular the French American colonies and the trading posts of Asia, and the presence of the navy. Yet if the fact that Breton ports imported wine from Bordeaux is well known, the distribution networks for the wine have not hitherto been researched. Hiroyasu Kimizuka here intends to join the trail of the connected history.
Among wines of Aquitaine which arrived in Brittany, cheap wines of Blayais or of Entre deux Mers were intended for Breton consumers, in particular in the cities where the popular demand grew continually. The wine reached the region by coastal ship, and was then consigned to its destination by road or inland waterway. The best wines (Graves, Médoc) were destined for Breton noble, religious or bourgeois elites, who tended to stockpile the wine and often to correspond on the subject, providing a rich source of information on the subject. Naturally, these famous wines commanded higher prices, not only because of their better quality but also because of factors such as the season, the mode of transport and taxation of alcoholic drinks. According to the author, all of these costs represented a third of the price of the wine sold in the Breton cabarets. This analysis is taken up again in the study of the harbour networks mobilized for the transport of food-processing products. It reveals the existence of a hierarchy of ports: the ports of redistribution worldwide, such as Nantes and Lorient; the regional interfaces which specialize in storage and the redistribution within Brittany, such as Quimper, Vannes and Redon; and the naval base of Brest. We should not forget that the dynamics of these exchanges were linked to the farming of the Breton countryside, in particular cereal production, which represented an important back-cargo for vessels returning towards Bordeaux. They were linked also to local fishing, such as the sardine fishery, and to industrial production, in particular of textiles. The study of networks of trade and transport shows the additional costs engendered by road distribution, and thus explains the small distribution of wine in interior Brittany. Moreover, the trade circuits highlight the variety of actors involved in the trade; traders, wholesalers and retailers; and also the versatility of their activities. Breton agents, qualified to receive wines for the traders of ports of Aquitaine, took then care to redistribute them with wine shopkeepers, both wholesale and retail. They centralized the payment of invoices by the retailers and settled them to their correspondents of Aquitaine by means of bills of exchange. This study thus allows us to examine the involvement of a wide variety of actors in the trade, in particular the small investors of coastal navigation.
Finally, this work looks more broadly at Atlantic trade, through the prism of trade in food and food-processing products. It rests on a study of archives numerous and varied, supported by several useful maps, although some are not as legible as they might be. Some lack sufficient references to allow the reader to determine the sources upon which they are based, such as that on the shipping of wine of Bordeaux, Libourne and Charente Saintonge in Brittany in 1787, and in particular the information concerning Charente Saintonge (p. 47). There are also some errors of editing and spelling, although on the whole the manuscript remains clear and well presented. One notable omission is that conclusions are not provided for individual chapters and sections, which would have given more depth to the argument. Also, in some places the book would have benefited from more international and historiographical context. So, the question of the consumption of wines, and the quality and hierarchy of the prices deserves to be re-examined, because the idea according to which ‘the quality determines the hierarchy of the prices’ (p. 98) must be studied in conjunction with the history of consumption, which does not appear in the bibliography.