Daily Life History

Daily life in Bordeaux during the 18th century

A grounded look at routines in a French Atlantic port shaped by the Garonne, wine commerce, rented rooms, parish life, river traffic, workshops, and the movement of goods between city, vineyard, and ocean.

Bordeaux in the 18th century was one of France's busiest Atlantic ports, set on a bend of the Garonne where river craft, ocean-going ships, market carts, and warehouse labor met. It was also a city transformed within a lifetime. Historical-demographic work estimates about 55,000 inhabitants in 1715, records 66,554 in the intendant Tourny's census of 1747, and 109,499 in 1790; migration, particularly in the second half of the century, was essential to that growth.[1] Place Royale was begun in 1728. After Tourny arrived as intendant in 1743, new streets, gates and a public garden helped connect the old city with expanding suburbs.[2] [9] The century was therefore not one unchanging setting: late-century residents encountered a larger, busier and more extensively built city than their grandparents had known.

The port was known for wine, colonial cargoes, ship services, and merchant houses, but daily life depended on far more ordinary routines. Bakers, coopers, sailors, porters, servants, market sellers, clerks, carters, seamstresses, masons, apprentices, and small shopkeepers made the city function. The evidence for them is uneven. Censuses and parish registers count people without fully describing their work; trade papers privilege merchants and shipowners; household accounts and surviving decorated objects are richest for prosperous homes; and a 1762 list of 87 occupational bodies counts masters or workshop heads while omitting many wage earners and informal workers.[1] [4] [5] [6] The details below consequently describe documented differences and likely routines, not a single “typical” Bordelais life.

Housing and Living Spaces

Housing in 18th-century Bordeaux showed the city's commercial wealth, but also its crowding and dependence on rented space. Wealthy merchants, shipowners, magistrates, professionals, and prosperous wine dealers lived in substantial town houses or larger apartments with reception rooms, offices, cellars, storage areas, servants' quarters, and access to courtyards or service entrances. A merchant household might combine domestic life with business: clerks copied letters, suppliers arrived with samples or barrels, servants carried water and fuel, and family reputation was displayed through furniture, table linen, mirrors, clocks, ceramics, and orderly entertaining. Surviving portraits, decorated furniture and tableware document this affluent material world, not the housing of the majority.[6] The new classical facades and streets likewise changed movement and appearances without making living conditions uniform.[2]

Most residents lived more modestly. Dock laborers, sailors' families, artisans, washerwomen, apprentices, servants, widows, and migrants rented rooms in multi-story buildings, subdivided houses, lodging houses, or small dwellings close to work. A single room could hold beds or mattresses, a chest, a table, stools, cookware, tools, drying linen, stored bread, wine jugs, and materials for sewing or piecework. Courtyards, stairways, thresholds, shared wells, privies, and nearby streets extended the household beyond private walls. Neighbors watched children, exchanged news, borrowed equipment, shared errands, and also argued over noise, smoke, animals, debts, and access to water or light.

Water made urban growth a household problem. Wells and fountains existed, but proposals studied by the city throughout the century, culminating in a 1787 memorandum on establishing a “sufficient number” of fountains, show that supply had not kept pace straightforwardly with the expanding population.[3] Access varied by building and neighborhood; collecting and storing water therefore consumed containers, time and, where someone else carried it, money. Fuel also had to be bought, carried and used carefully, while cellars useful for wine and storage could be humid. Streets near the river carried carts, barrels, porters, animals, market baskets and refuse. Bordeaux's housing expressed social hierarchy, but it also made home, work, storage and street life closely interdependent.

Food and Daily Meals

Food in 18th-century Bordeaux drew from the surrounding countryside, the Garonne, the Atlantic, and the city's commercial networks. Bread and wine were central, while pulses, vegetables, eggs, cheese, fruit, meat, river or coastal fish, and preserved foods were available in combinations governed by season, price, religious practice and household means. A market list cannot establish how often a laborer's family ate any one item. The nearby wine country shaped trade and consumption, though ordinary local wines should not be confused with the higher-value vintages selected for export. Imported sugar, coffee, cacao, indigo and cotton were prominent in the port's colonial commerce, whose production depended on enslaved labor, but commercial volume did not mean equal household access.[6] [7]

Meals depended on cash, credit, fuel, water, storage and cooking space. Poorer households could stretch bread, vegetables, legumes and small portions of meat or fish into soups and stews; better-off households could afford finer bread, more meat and poultry, pastries, coffee, chocolate, sugar, imported condiments and formal table service. Philippe Meyzie's study of Bordeaux dining deliberately examines nobles and merchants between the 1720s and 1770s, so its evidence for varied dishes and sociable dining cannot be turned into a citywide menu.[4] Catholic fast and feast days affected many menus, especially the timing of fish and special foods, but Bordeaux also contained Protestant and Jewish households with different religious calendars. As in 18th-century Marseille, port life made seafood and imported goods more visible, while local eating remained tied to the agricultural hinterland and purchasing power.

Provisioning was daily work. Women, servants, apprentices, and children bought bread, inspected fish, carried water, watched pots, washed greens, negotiated with vendors, guarded stores against spoilage, and reused leftovers in broths or porridges. Many households bought in small amounts because wages were irregular and storage was limited. Bakers began early, market sellers followed the arrival of produce and fish, and port laborers needed filling food that could fit uncertain hiring and ship schedules. Food prices mattered intensely. A rise in grain costs, delayed wages, illness, a bad catch, or a missed market day could change a family's diet quickly. Bordeaux offered variety, but ordinary eating remained governed by fuel, rent, work rhythms, and household management.

Work and Labor

Work in 18th-century Bordeaux centered on the river port, wine trade, and Atlantic commerce, but it included many linked occupations. Ships required sailors, pilots, caulkers, carpenters, sailmakers, rope workers, chandlers, coopers, blacksmiths, porters, warehouse hands, brokers, customs employees, clerks, notaries, guards, carters, and boatmen. Wine moved from vineyards and river routes into cellars, warehouses, barrels, carts, and ships, where it had to be tasted, measured, recorded, taxed, stored, and protected from spoilage. Colonial goods such as sugar, coffee, indigo, cotton, and tobacco moved through similar chains of handling, weighing, repacking, accounting, and sale. The port's wealth depended heavily on plantation commodities produced by enslaved people and, especially late in the century, on voyages trafficking captive Africans.[6] [7] The daily work within Bordeaux was nevertheless often repetitive, physical, and local.

Coopering was especially important because barrels were essential for wine and many other goods. Coopers, carters, porters, and warehouse laborers kept the material flow of commerce moving. Beyond the quays, the city employed bakers, butchers, fish sellers, masons, carpenters, laundresses, seamstresses, tailors, shoemakers, printers, bookbinders, innkeepers, tavern keepers, domestic servants, teachers, apothecaries, and small retailers. Women worked in market selling, laundry, sewing, lodging, shopkeeping, domestic service, food preparation, and household credit, even where formal trade structures favored men. Children carried water, ran errands, helped at stalls, watched younger siblings, learned sewing or shop tasks, or entered apprenticeship early.

The 1762 occupational return makes both specialization and its documentary limits unusually visible. It records, among others, 41 arrimeurs (stowers), 60 sack carriers, 17 sailmakers and hundreds of coopers across the city, Chartrons and Saint-Seurin; it also identifies widows heading some businesses.[5] These are masters or heads attached to regulated, sworn or “free” trades, not a total workforce: porters, domestic servants, merchants, clerks, unpaid family labor and many casual workers fall outside the table. The record therefore supports a dense occupational landscape but not the impression that guild membership covered all work or that women appeared only as widows.

Labor followed daylight, bells, tides, weather, market openings, ship arrivals, and paperwork. The Garonne's tides affected loading and unloading, while muddy banks, crowded quays, and bad weather complicated transport. Credit and reputation mattered at every level. A merchant needed trusted correspondents; a captain needed crew and papers; a cooper needed wood, hoops, and customers; a porter needed reliable hiring; a servant needed a place; and an artisan needed tools, skill, and repeat work. Like 18th-century Lyon, Bordeaux depended on specialized labor and household economies, but its rhythm was more directly shaped by river traffic, wine storage, Atlantic cargo, and the constant movement of barrels, letters, sailors, and news.

Social Structure

Bordeaux was socially layered. At the top stood wealthy merchants, shipowners, wine exporters, financiers, major property holders, high clergy, magistrates, and municipal officials whose households controlled capital, credit, warehouses, land, offices, and commercial connections. Beneath them were captains, brokers, notaries, clerks, successful artisans, shopkeepers, innkeepers, and professionals who might maintain respectable homes while still depending on trade conditions. A larger population of sailors, porters, coopers' workers, washerwomen, servants, apprentices, widows, casual laborers, migrants, and the poor lived with fewer reserves. Social position was visible in housing, clothing, diet, church seating, literacy, household servants, access to credit, and the ability to endure illness or delayed pay without pawning belongings.

The household was a major unit of support and authority. Masters supervised apprentices, employers directed servants, spouses managed provisions and credit, and kin helped newcomers find work, lodging, or marriage partners. Catholic parish life organized baptisms, marriages, burials, confession, processions and charity, while confraternities, hospitals, religious houses and other communities supported some of the sick, elderly, orphaned or poor. Provision was selective rather than universal. Bordeaux also contained people of African or Caribbean origin connected to Atlantic trade. Parish registers, censuses and declarations of entry make thousands of people of African descent visible across the century, but those records were created to classify and control them rather than to preserve full life histories.[6] Some were free and some were held in slavery; enslaved residents appear in domestic service and training for skilled work intended for the colonies.[10] Status, age, sex, household ties and access to wages made their experiences markedly different.

Gender and age shaped expectations without removing economic responsibility. Men held most formal offices in commerce, guild structures, and civic administration, but women were central to provisioning, washing, sewing, lodging, retail work, food sales, domestic service, and the survival of households when men were at sea or looking for work. Widows could sometimes continue shops, lodging businesses, or small trade, especially when they had property, skill, and family support. Children learned status and labor through church, errands, apprenticeship, and household chores. Bordeaux's society was unequal, but it was also interdependent. Merchant households needed servants, clerks, porters, coopers, laundresses, and carters; working households needed employers, neighbors, parish aid, credit, and access to markets.

Tools and Technology

Everyday technology in 18th-century Bordeaux combined maritime equipment, wine-handling tools, craft implements, household objects, and written administration. Port workers used ropes, hooks, handcarts, barrows, tackles, pulleys, scales, sacks, baskets, ledgers, seals, measuring rods, and storage marks. Sailors and boatmen used oars, sails, anchors, pumps, compasses, charts, knives, tar, caulking irons, adzes, saws, and ropework. Wine commerce required barrels, hoops, staves, funnels, taps, tasting cups, cellars, carts, weights, account books, bills of lading, and careful records of origin, quantity, price, and ownership. Coopers' tools were central to the city: axes, drawknives, planes, hammers, adzes, augers, crozes, hoops, and benches turned wood into containers that made trade possible.

Households used ceramic jars, copper or iron pots, knives, ladles, baskets, chests, locks, keys, lamps, candles, braziers, sewing tools, chamber pots, tubs, brooms, and linen presses according to means. Bakers used ovens and kneading troughs; washerwomen used tubs, beaters, lines, soap, and access to water; clerks and notaries used paper, quills, ink, sand, seals, and bound registers. Public infrastructure mattered as much as private tools. Quays, warehouses, fountains, wells, drains, markets, churches, paved streets, ferries, and river landings allowed private routines to function. There was no bridge across the Garonne: until the Pont de pierre opened in 1822, boats carried people and goods between the port and La Bastide.[8] Time was marked by bells, daylight, tide, market custom, and ship movement more often than by private watches for ordinary residents.

Clothing and Materials

Clothing in 18th-century Bordeaux had to answer work, weather, public reputation, and rank. Linen undergarments, wool or linen outer layers, aprons, caps or kerchiefs, stockings and leather footwear were available in different qualities, while jackets, waistcoats, skirts and breeches could be adapted and patched for hard use. Sailors, porters, coopers, market women, servants and washerwomen did not share one uniform, and the exact balance of garments depended on sex, occupation, means and decade. The clearest local study uses advertisements in the Journal de Guyenne and probate inventories for women's dress in 1770–98; it cannot represent men's clothing or the whole century, and inventories record valued possessions more readily than worn work clothes.[11]

Better-off residents could buy finer linen, wool, silk, cotton prints, lace, ribbons, gloves, hats, buckled shoes, and tailored garments connected to wider French and Atlantic fashions. The same late-century evidence shows Parisian influence alongside an active secondhand trade through which garments crossed social boundaries.[11] Textiles remained valuable property: clothing could be brushed, aired, altered, relined, dyed, patched, pawned, resold, or passed down before disposal. Household linen, bedding, curtains, sacks, sailcloth, packing cloth, towels, and work aprons also required storage and care. Dress showed hierarchy, but repeated repair shows why appearance cannot be read as a simple measure of income.

Daily life in 18th-century Bordeaux rested on the meeting of household labor, river transport, wine commerce, and Atlantic exchange. The city was prosperous, but ordinary routines were built from repeated tasks: buying bread, carrying water, rolling barrels, sewing linen, loading ships, washing clothes, keeping accounts, finding credit, serving employers, and watching the Garonne for arrivals and departures. Bordeaux's wider world entered through ships and warehouses, but most residents experienced it through work done in rooms, courtyards, markets, cellars, quays, churches, and streets.

Related pages

References

  1. Biraben, Jean-Noël. Review of Jean-Pierre Poussou, Bordeaux au XVIIIe siècle: les structures démographiques et sociales, and Jean-Pierre Poussou and L. Bourrachot, Bordeaux et l'émigration foyenne au XVIIIe siècle. Annales de démographie historique (1969): 378–379. Persée record and text
  2. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Bordeaux, Port of the Moon,” World Heritage List, dossier 1256. Site record and statement of significance
  3. Favreau, Marc. “L'eau dans le Bordeaux des Lumières: étude de quelques projets.” Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde 9–10 (2006): 197–211. Persée record and text. DOI: 10.3406/rhbg.2006.1492.
  4. Meyzie, Philippe. “À la table des élites bordelaises du XVIIIe siècle.” Annales du Midi 115, no. 241 (2003): 69–88. Persée record and text. DOI: 10.3406/anami.2003.2799.
  5. Archives départementales de la Gironde, C 1810. “Métiers à Bordeaux: les corporations et autres métiers au XVIIIème siècle,” table drawn from the 1762 occupational return and published by Cahiers d'archives. Transcription table (PDF)
  6. Musée d'Aquitaine. “Bordeaux au 18e siècle: le commerce atlantique et l'esclavage” and “Être esclave à Bordeaux au 18e siècle.” Museum gallery overview; research overview of African-descended residents
  7. Skog, Albin, and Örjan Sölvell. “The dark side of agglomeration, sustained wealth and transposition of trading institutions—the case of Bordeaux in the 18th and 19th centuries.” Journal of Economic Geography 20, no. 1 (2020): 67–91. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbz007
  8. Ville de Bordeaux. “Pont de pierre,” drawing on the Archives municipales de Bordeaux. Municipal history
  9. Ville de Bordeaux. “Place de la Bourse” and “Jardin Public,” drawing on the Archives municipales de Bordeaux. Place de la Bourse; Jardin Public
  10. Klooster, Wim. “Comparative Perspectives on the Urban Black Atlantic on the Eve of Abolition.” International Review of Social History 65, special issue S28 (2020): 15–37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859020000097
  11. Leleu, Fanny. “La mode féminine à Bordeaux (1770–1798).” Annales du Midi 115, no. 241 (2003): 103–114. Persée record and text. DOI: 10.3406/anami.2003.4005.