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Notes on Commercial Travelers in Eighteenth-Century France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

George V. Taylor
George V. Taylor
Affiliation:
Professor of History, The University of North Carolina
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Abstract

It has been widely held that the traveling salesman was a product of the railroad era. In the following paper, Professor Taylor shows that, at least in France, the commis voyageur played a role as early as the second half of the eighteenth century. These findings, important as they are for the history of marketing, pose new questions: Was France ahead of other countries in developing this form of sales organization? If France really led, did the other countries follow suit under French influence? Is it perhaps telling, for instance, that in Germany until late in the nineteenth century the Reisende was still called by its French name?

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1964 , pp. 346 - 353
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1964

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References

1 [Society of Commercial Travellers, New York (City)], The System of Commercial Travelling in Europe and the United States: Its History, Customs, and Laws (New York, 1869), p. 8.

2 “I sought what is technically called the ‘travellers’ room. This is a public room set apart at most inns, for the accommodation of a class of wayfarers called travellers or riders — a land of commercial knights-errant, who are incessantly scouring the kingdom in gigs, on horseback, or by coach.

They are the only successors that I know of at the present day to the knights-errant of yore. They lead the same kind of roving, adventurous life, only changing the lance for the driving whip, the buckler for the pattern-card, and the coat of mail for an upper Benjamin. Instead of vindicating the charms of peerless beauty they rove about, spreading the fame and standing of some substantial tradesman or manufacturer, and are ready at any time to bargain in his name, it being the fashion nowadays to trade instead of to fight with one another. As the room of the hostel in the good old times would be hung round with the armor of wayworn warriors — such as coats of mail, falchions, and yawning helmets — so the travellers' room is garnished with the harnessing of their successors, with box-coats, whips of all kinds, spurs, gaiters, and oil-cloth covered hats.” Ibid., p. 9. For a zestful description of the traveling life that would gladden the heart of any onetime drummer, see Crick, Throne[pseud.], Sketches from the Diary of a Commercial Traveller (London, 1847).Google Scholar

3 “Some Business Partnerships at Lyon, 1785–1793,” Journal of Economic History, vol. XXIII (March, 1963), pp. 46–70.

4 Archives du Rhône (Lyon), IQ 780.

5 Archives de la Ville de Lyon, P 23.

6 Archives du Rhône, IL 426 (dossier Louis Revoire).

7 Inventaire (trial balance and audit) of Veuve René Imbert et fils, silk merchants, 1795. Archives du Rhône, 1Q 778. (The account balances were for 1793, when business was suspended, but the audit was completed in 1795.)

8 Raverat, Baron, Lyon sous la Révolution suivi de la liste des condamnés à mort (Lyon, 1883), pp, 215–62Google Scholar. The ages of the voyageurs en chapellerie were fifty-two and sixty, but those of the others ranged from eighteen to forty-five.

9 Wahl, Maurice, “Joseph Chalier,” Revue historique, vol. XXXIV (1887), pp. 1–30.Google Scholar

10 Dupieux, Paul, “Les Brondes: Manufacturiers de cotonnades et de liqueurs (1762–1800),” Mémoires lus aux Congrès des Sociétés Savantes: Toulouse 1933, Paris, 1934Google Scholar [Commission de Recherche et de Publication des Documents relatifs à la Vie économique de la Révolution: Mémoires et documents, tome IV] (Paris, 1935), pp. 91–92, 94–95.

11 “Recherches sur ce qui est relatif aux étoffes de laines;” unsigned memorandum published by the conseiller d'état Boyetet in his Recueil de divers mémoires relatifs au traité de commerce avec l'Angleterre (2 vols., Versailles, 1789), vol. I, p. 24.

12 Bonafous, Bourg & Cie. (Lyon) to Veuve Guérin & fils (St. Chamond), November 27, 1788. Archives du Rhône, 2F (Archives de la Banque Guérin), 408.

13 Instructions of armateurs to captains and supercargoes in Louis Dermigny, Cargaisons Indiennes, Solier et C i e, 1781–1793 [Series Affaires et gens d'affaires] (2 vols., Paris, 1959–1960), vol. II, pp. 16–21, 45–51, 93–94, 282–90, 313–19, 333–40, 345–56, 403–408, 415–24.

14 Young, Arthur, Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, & 1789 (Constantia Maxwell, ed., Cambridge, England, 1950), p. 45.Google Scholar

15 “Some Business Partnerships at Lyon,” pp. 55–56.