Urban Growth Police Reform. Céline Regnard

Urban History, 43, 2 (2016)
C Cambridge University Press 2015

doi:10.1017/S0963926815000292
First published online 26 May 2015
Urban growth and police reform

in Marseille (1855–1908)
C É L I N E R E G N A R D
Aix-Marseille Université (AMU)-CNRS-UMR 7303 Telemme 5 rue du château de
l’horloge, 13090, Aix-en-Provence, France
abstract: This article deals with Marseille’s social and political history between
the 1850s and 1910s. During this period of extensive economic and demographic
growth, the municipal government and police never seemed able to handle the
consequences of these rapid changes. The case of Marseille thus allows us to test
the connection between a growth situation interpreted as a ‘permanent crisis’
and police reform. The persistence of the crisis discourse invites us to examine
the connection between the alarmist rhetoric and reforms in law enforcement. Is
the first the cause of the second and, if not, how do we interpret the continuing
complaints of a crisis for more than half a century, when they must have lost
their effectiveness? This article examines the weakness and discontinuity of the
relationship between claims of a crisis and police reforms and situates these reforms
within the political context of tensions between the national and local levels.
In France, unlike the United Kingdom, the urban growth that characterized
the industrial period came relatively late, only really starting in the second
half of the nineteenth century.1 This growth was also very localized,
concentrated in the capital and the large industrial cities. Thanks to
Marseille, the Bouches-du-Rhône department was second behind Seine
in its rate of urbanization between 1851 and 1911.2 The growth of the city
was remarkable on a national scale.
From 1830 to 1910, the economic boom took the city to the height of its
commercial and industrial influence.3 The value of industrial production
was multiplied by 12, and the growth rate averaged 3 per cent per
year. During the same period, the activity of the port increased tenfold,
benefiting from advances in navigation. The surge in industrial activity
1 For urban history during the nineteenth century, see J.-L. Pinol, Le monde des villes au XIXe
siècle (Paris, 1992); for French urban history, see G. Duby (ed.), Histoire de la France urbaine,
vol. IV: M. Agulhon (ed.), La ville de l’âge industriel. Le cycle haussmannien (Paris, 1998; original
edn, 1983); for general aspects of the history of nineteenth-century Marseille, see Marseille
au XIXe siècle, rêves et triomphes (Marseille, 1991).
2 The first census measuring the growth rate of urban populations in France was taken in
1851. For these statistical aspects, see Agulhon (ed.), La ville de l’âge industriel, 27.
3 For a detailed table of this growth, see C. Regnard, Marseille la violente. Criminalité,
industrialisation et société (1851–1914) (Rennes, 2009), introduction, 16 et seq.
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250 Urban History
benefited from the opening onto the Mediterranean, which it also enabled
and sustained.
It was a particular kind of economic growth, based less on raw materials
or rich subsoil than on men. Geographically isolated from the rest of the
country and with practically no natural resources, Marseille nevertheless
underwent a genuine early industrial revolution based on a constantly
replenished supply of labour.4 This ever-present labour force was the
common denominator of the three sectors the growth was based on:
building, maritime activities and industry.
The economic boom was accompanied by a population explosion
between the period of the July Monarchy (1830–48) and the early
twentieth century. Officially, the population increased from just over
195,000 inhabitants to almost 560,000 between 1851 and 1911. Due to the
falsification of census results, it would be more correct to say that there was
a 250 per cent rather than 300 per cent increase in Marseille’s population
between these two dates, but it remains a remarkable phenomenon. Such
a surge in the population could not be caused by natural increase, which
in Marseille, as elsewhere in France, was rather sluggish. The growth of
the city was enabled by immigration. A trend that dated back centuries
was reinforced and reconfigured: not only were there more immigrants,
they came from further away, in particular from Italy. The great wave
of immigration from the Italian peninsula began in the 1870s. Between
1851 and 1911, the number of Italians in Marseille grew from 8 per cent
to 20 per cent of the city’s population.5 They joined immigrants from the
rest of Provence and the French Alps, plus a large floating population, as
indicated by the various censuses.
This economic and human growth created a dynamic of rapid urban
spread. Over the second half of the nineteenth century, Marseille came
to occupy the full 22,000 hectares of the municipality’s administrative
zone.6 Urbanization overtook villages as industrial facilities established
themselves there. While it would not be appropriate to refer to
‘segregation’, the urban zone did nevertheless appear to be divided
between middle-class neighbourhoods south and east of the Old Port
and working-class and industrial neighbourhoods in the north. The rate
of new settlement was rapid, and sometimes preceded the provision of
amenities, thus leading to problems of supplies, sanitation and law and
order. Similarly, the construction of new port areas at the beginning of
the Second Empire produced a new high-use transit zone that needed to
4 X. Daumalin, N. Girard and O. Raveux (eds.), Du savon à la puce. L’industrie marseillaise du
XVIIe siècle à nos jours (Marseille, 2003).
5 P. Echinard and É. Temime (eds.), Migrance. Histoire des migrations à Marseille, vol. II:
R. Lopez and É. Temime (eds.), L’expansion marseillaise et ‘l’invasion italienne’ (1830–1918)
(Aix-en-Provence, 1990); S. Mourlane and C. Regnard, Empreintes italiennes. Marseille et sa
région (Lyon, 2013).
6 M. Roncayolo, Les grammaires d’une ville, essai sur la genèse des structures urbaines à Marseille
(Paris, 1996).
Police reform in Marseille (1855–1908) 251
be integrated into the rest of the city (the challenge of the Rue Impériale
project).
This growth was noticed by contemporaries; it formed part of the general
interest shown in the city from a national point of view. Marseille entered
the national imaginary during this period, becoming the subject of strong
opinions that oscillated between fascination and repulsion.7 From the
local point of view, it represented a real challenge that upset municipal
functions, in particular the maintenance of law and order in the city. It was
naturally a recurring topic in the multiple exchanges between the national
security services (la Sûreté) and the departmental Prefecture, between the
Prefecture and the city’s police headquarters (commissariat central) and
between the police headquarters and the office of the mayor.8
Apart from presenting evidence of the reality of the upheavals caused
by this growth, we can thus also offer an analysis of their representation.
Throughout this period, many different correspondents described a crisis
situation. The municipal government and police never seemed able to
handle the consequences of these rapid changes. The case of Marseille thus
allows us to test the connection between a growth situation interpreted as
a ‘permanent crisis’9 and police reform in a city that was not covered by
the special police regime applied to Paris and Lyon, but was still in a
special position due to its economic importance and status as a city-port
and border town.
There were in fact several reforms of the various law enforcement
agencies in Marseille during the period under consideration. The
persistence of the crisis discourse thus invites us to examine the connection
between the alarmist rhetoric and reforms in law enforcement. Is the first
the cause of the second and, if not, how do we interpret the continuing
complaints of a crisis for more than half a century, when they must lose
their effectiveness?
After presenting the main critical aspects of growth that contributed to
the discourse of ‘crisis’ in Marseille during the nineteenth century, we will
focus on the producers of this discourse to highlight the different readings
of the crisis. This will allow us to examine the weakness and discontinuity
of the relationship between claims of a crisis and police reforms and to
situate these reforms within the political context of tensions between the
national and local levels.
7 On the popular ‘imaginary’ of Marseille, see L. Montel, ‘Marseille capitale du crime. Histoire
croisée de l’imaginaire de Marseille et de la criminalité organisée (1820–1940)’, University
of Paris X-Nanterre doctoral thesis, 2008.
8 These documents form the basis of this study. They are collected together in the 4 M series
of the departmental archives of Bouches-du-Rhône (AD BDR).
9 This paradoxical expression is used to formulate the central question of this article, which,
indeed, is to establish whether this permanent crisis is really a ‘crisis’ or rather a discursive
phenomenon.
252 Urban History
Complaints about growth
The acceleration of trade and intensification of maritime traffic throughout
this period led to expressions of concern, all more or less explicitly
insisting on the need to increase or adapt law enforcement in the port
area or the centre of the city. Already in 1855, the managers of the
Messageries Maritimes shipping line stressed the critical situation they
found themselves in, attempting to cope with a commercial boom that in
other ways the company benefited from:
The number of passengers departing or arriving on our ships, including military
travellers, has risen to about 12,000 per month . . . Apart from the activity caused
by the arrival and departure of travellers, the depot in which all this traffic takes
place must at the same time be used for loading and unloading goods. You can
understand from this, Monsieur le Préfet, how essential it is to have constant
policing.10
The company requested the right for its security services – ‘a kind of
internal police force . . . whose mission becomes more difficult every day
and its efforts more futile’11 – to issue notices of infractions, and was
assigned two sergents de ville on the condition that it covered their salaries.
This quick response, representing a temporary solution, demonstrates the
Prefecture’s adaptability, but also reveals a case-by-case approach that did
not make any profound changes to the overall operation of the police.
The same observation can be made throughout the decades that follow.
In 1861, Charlemagne Émile de Maupas, then prefect of the department
of Bouches-du-Rhône and a senator, drew the attention of the Ministry
of the Interior to the particular effects of the country’s economic and
commercial growth on the Mediterranean port. Stressing the impact of
the free trade agreements that were concluded in 1860, he highlighted the
need to ‘reorganize the police service’ so that it ‘reflects the importance
of [the] city’.12 According to Maupas, the rapid increase in trade, while
undoubtedly bringing remarkable economic growth, threatened the safety
of the inhabitants of Marseille, as its corollary was the arrival of a foreign
population whose volatility and criminal tendencies he deplored. The
senator, who counted on his influence as a close associate of the emperor,
was not the only one to develop such an argument. From the 1870s,
it reappeared in the writings of local police officials, starting with the
commissaire central. In 1883, he described an ‘incessant back and forth’ and
the ‘continuous to and fro of liners of all sizes and from every place, of
traders, industrialists and foreigners from every country’, leading to an
‘inevitable population increase’ in the city and ‘the presence of the mixed
elements of this population’.13
10 AD BDR 4 M 4, services manager of Messageries Maritimes to the prefect, Sep. 1855.
11 Ibid.
12 AD BDR 4 M 4, letter from Senator Maupas to the minister of the interior, 3 Dec. 1861.
13 AD BDR 4 M 8, letter from the commissaire central to the mayor, 1 Dec. 1883.
While the increase in trade raised concerns, the fact that maritime activity
also opened the door to people of all nationalities and backgrounds –
sailors, travellers on a stopover, migrants, refugees and workers coming
to take advantage of the wealth of jobs created on the port – generated
even greater anxiety. It was in fact the population growth, more than
the growth in trade, that was seen through the lens of a crisis. We see
a twin preoccupation: on the one hand, the idea that Marseille was a
haven for criminals from all countries, and on the other, the increase in the
city’s foreign population, whose behaviour was associated with what were
described as rising crime levels. Well before the 1880s, which represented
a high point in xenophobic tensions in Marseille and nationally,14 a dark
view was taken of this population growth. Already in 1860, the commissaire
central stressed the disruption caused by ‘the significant population
increase’ and the urgent need to increase the number of sergents de ville as
a result.15 Prefect Maupas, the recipient of this correspondence, was even
more explicit in passing the message on to the Ministry of the Interior. He
stressed the problems posed by the presence of a large floating population
in Marseille and the high proportion of Italians in the city. Long before the
great wave of Italian migration in the 1870s and 1880s, he wrote, ‘over the
last 10 years the population has increased significantly and this increase
continues . . . in an upward direction; foreign, disruptive and dangerous
elements are introduced each day into the local-born population’.16 In
this letter he stressed at three different points that the difficulties increase
‘every day’. For this Parisian, the unruly behaviour of the Marseillais
population was not only caused by the natural esprit méridional of the
locals, but was exacerbated by the Italian presence.17 The views of the
prefect and the commissaire on the harmful effects of Italian immigration
and population growth in Marseille were passed down from higher to
lower ranks in the 1870s and 1880s. This argument was used constantly by
the commissaire central over these decades, to such a degree that, given the
context, including the drama of the Marseille Vespers,18 these letters can
14 L. Dornel, La France hostile. Socio-histoire de la xénophobie 1870–1914 (Paris, 2004); L. Lucassen,

The Immigrant Threat: The Integration of Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since
1850 (Urbana, 2005), in particular: ‘A threat to the native workers: Italians in France
(1870–1940)’, 74–99; G. Noiriel, Immigration, antisémitisme et racisme en France XIXe –XXe
siècle. Discours publics, humiliations privées (Paris, 2007); Regnard, Marseille la violente, 177
onwards.
15 AD BDR 4 M 4, note from the commissaire central to the senator, 4 Nov. 1860.
16 AD BDR 4 M 4, senator to the minister of the interior, 3 Dec. 1861.
17 AD BDR 4 M 4, correspondence between the prefect and the minister of the interior,
1860–65.
18 In 1881, France conquered Tunisia, leading to the deterioration of diplomatic relations with
Italy, which had imperialist aspirations in relation to this territory. There were many Italians
in Marseille at the time (approximately 60,000 in a population of 360,000). On 17 Jun. 1881,
the victorious French troops landed in Marseille and the city was in a state of jubilation: a
large crowd gathered to admire the parade and façades were decorated with flags. As the
troops approached the Vieux-Port, at the beginning of the Rue de la République, whistles
were heard that were attributed to the Italian Club. This incident, considered as a national
254 Urban History
be said to have helped build a discourse of xenophobia on the side of the
agents of law and order in the city. Referring to the Italian community in
1883, the commissaire central claimed:
It is this depraved and parasitic element that, seeking to live at the expense of
the economy and its workers, sometimes injects terror and sorrow into our quiet
and orderly population. This is the source of this perpetual ferment of perversity
and criminality, a giant reservoir for all of these vagabond, stateless and nameless
foreigners. This is the ever-renewed breeding ground for the thieves, murderers
and hardened criminals who seem to have singled out Marseille as the preferred
stage for their exploits.19
In a climate of tension aggravated by the Long Depression (1875–95),

the Italian presence was constantly emphasized up to the beginning of
the twentieth century, in reports and letters describing the difficulties the
police had in maintaining law and order, or in arguments in support of
police reform.
The last recurring feature of this interpretation of Marseille’s state of
crisis was the city’s geographical expansion, and in particular its spread
into what gradually became suburbs. Even though these suburbs grew
inside the municipal zone, they preceded the provision of amenities and
police services. This presented new problems for the co-ordination and
adaptation of police operations. Here again, Senator Maupas, who took
office in 1860, made a remark of the commissaire central on ‘Marseille’s
expansion’20 into a central point of his argument to the Ministry of the
Interior for more substantial subsidies for the police in his department.
Outlining the factors that were conducive to local crime, he stressed
the harmful consequences of the urban sprawl, describing Marseille’s
situation as ‘almost exceptional’: ‘Its configuration and topography seem
to offer impunity to criminals: the vast suburbs, covered with narrow,
winding streets, lined with high walls and criss-crossing in all directions,
offer a veritable labyrinth where criminals can lie in wait with the
certainty of easily escaping the pursuit of the police officers performing
surveillance.’21 This argument was later taken up by the commissaire central
when discussing changes to the boundaries of the city’s outermost police
districts or organizing night-time police stations in the suburbs.22 In 1882,
insult, led to violence between members of the French and Italian communities on 19 and
20 Jun. The results of this violence, spread out over a few days, were serious, but limited:
3 dead, 2 of whom were French, and 21 wounded, 15 of whom were Italian. Nevertheless,
the event aroused great emotion. It was called the ‘Marseille Vespers’ in reference to the
massacre of French residents in Sicily in 1282, referred to as the ‘Sicilian Vespers’. Cf. G.
Liens, ‘Les “vêpres marseillaises” (juin 1881) ou la crise franco-italienne au lendemain du
traité du Bardo’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 14 (1967), 1–30; Mourlane and
Regnard, Empreintes italiennes, 92–3, and Lucassen, The Immigrant Threat, 81.
19 AD BDR 4 M 8, commissaire central to the mayor of Marseille, 1 Dec. 1883.
20 AD BDR 4 M 4, note from the commissaire central to the senator, 4 Nov. 1860.
22 AD BDR 4 M 7, commissaire central to the mayor, 20 Feb. 1875.
the next commissaire used the same argument to encourage the municipal
government to increase police funding. He noted that ‘the municipality of
Marseille is one of the largest in France, it covers a considerable area and its
very large suburbs are made up of more than 60 rural villages, all densely
populated and an average distance of 6 km from the city’. This, according
to him, required the recruitment of ‘100 guards recruited exclusively from
the ranks of able-bodied ex-army officers between 25 and 40 years old, and
300 police officers who are men selected for their special skills and suitably
rewarded’, plus the creation of ‘a municipal guard on horseback (about
50 men) to patrol the suburbs and secure the outlying districts of the city
with regular rounds’.23
These three arguments were not just products of the imagination.
As indicated earlier, major population growth took place during this
period, based largely on labour force immigration. Marseille was a very
cosmopolitan city in the second half of the nineteenth century and there
were frequent tensions between the different communities, accentuated by
cooling Franco-Italian relations and a latent xenophobia that became overt
at the end of the century. The increase in maritime traffic (of goods and
passengers) also undoubtedly presented new problems of maintaining law
and order. Finally, urban sprawl was a reality that the municipal authorities
struggled to cope with. A specific form of criminality developed in the
suburbs of Marseille, in part due to a lack of police presence.24 These
upheavals therefore had a significant impact on crime in Marseille.25
Even so, analysing this situation as a ‘crisis’ for a full half-century raises
questions about its reality. Apart from some genuinely critical moments
(the Commune, the Marseille Vespers, the major strikes of the beginning
of the twentieth century), should we really speak of a crisis or rather an
alarmist reading of strong growth whose effects were not well anticipated
or managed? In other cities at other times, economic upheavals have
provoked similar comments, and sometimes profound reforms of the
police system.26 There is no question that growth disrupted the different
forms of urban management. In order to promote reform, it was natural to
argue the existence of a crisis in order to alert the relevant authorities and
hasten reform, but also to point out shortcomings.27
The ‘crisis’ argument, apart from its short-term goals, was also more
broadly part of the anxiety-laden representations of the city that developed
over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The correlate
23 AD BDR 4 M 8, note on the Marseille police, commissaire central, 7 Jun. 1882.
24 Montel, ‘Marseille capitale du crime’, and L. Montel, ‘Espace urbain et criminalité
organisée: le cas marseillais dans le premier XXe siècle’, in Y. Marec (ed.), Villes en crise? Les
politiques municipales face aux pathologies urbaines (fin XVIIIe –fin XXe siècle) (Grâne, 2005),
65–74.
25 Regnard, Marseille la violente.
26 V. Milliot, ‘Une ville malade de son espace? Paris et le lieutenant général de police Lenoir
(1775–1785)’, in Marec (ed.), Villes en crise?, 32–40.
27 D. Voldman, ‘Sur les “crises” urbaines’, Vingtième siècle, 64 (1999), special issue on ‘Villes
en crise?’, 5–10.
256 Urban History
of the fascination with the modernity of ever-larger urban centres was a
concern about the consequences of this growth. For many contemporary
observers, the city seemed criminogenic, producing danger and disorder.28
This type of discourse clearly influenced the descriptions of growth in
terms of crisis. While its roots lay in the deep and real upheavals connected
with Marseille’s growth, the interpretation of the situation was also guided
by its goal – police reform – and by representations that were differently
nuanced depending on their author, which we will now examine.
The effects of perspective

The themes that structure this perception of a crisis were clearly
transmitted between the different speakers to make up a global discursive
framework. This perception was thus in some ways a shared one, but was
nevertheless inflected in different ways depending on whether the point
of view was national or local.
During this period, the Parisian authorities – which is to say the security
services of the Ministry of the Interior – moved from an authoritarian
position to a more solicitous point of view that was receptive to the
arguments presented in the reports on the situation in Marseille. In the
1850s and 1860s, the repeated requests to reform the status of the Marseille
police – which since 1855 had been under the same regime as other cities
with over 40,000 inhabitants, but excluded from the special status of Paris
and Lyon governed by a Prefecture of Police29 – were brushed aside by
the minister, on the authority of the legislation in force at that time. In
1855, a circular sent to the departmental prefects by the Ministry of the
Interior presented the new decree for controlling the movements of French
and foreign emigrants. This decree did not, however, primarily concern
the Prefecture of Bouches-du-Rhône, since only the departments in the
east and south-west received extra resources under this legislation.30 In
1857, the ministry explained that ‘as long as emigration is not significant
enough to justify the creation of a special police unit (commissariat spécial)’
in Marseille, the local police force had to be responsible for monitoring
migrants.31
28 J.-C. Farcy, ‘La ville contemporaine (XIXe –XXe siècles) est-elle criminogène?’, in Marec
(ed.), Villes en crise?, 20–31; F. Bourillon, ‘Changer la ville. La question urbaine au milieu
du XIXe siècle’, Vingtième siècle, 64 (1999), special issue on ‘Villes en crise?’, 11–23.
29 The Law of 5 May 1855 strengthened the police powers of the prefects and Article 50
gave departmental centres with more than 40,000 inhabitants (17 departments) the state
policing measures instituted in Lyon by the Law of 19 Jun. 1851, themselves modelled on
the powers of Paris’ Prefecture of Police in the department of Seine. For a recent overview,
see J.-M. Berlière and R. Lévy, Histoire des polices en France de l’ancien régime à nos jours
(Paris, 2011).
30 ADB DR 4 M 2146, Ministry of the Interior to the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, 26 Jun.
1855.
31 ADB DR 4 M 2146, Ministry of the Interior to the prefect, 27 Apr. 1857. A few months later,
however, in Nov., four special police bases were created, one of which was dedicated to
Apart from the problems connected with the ports and the movements
of travellers, it was the overall situation of Marseille’s police that the
Prefecture regularly brought to the attention of the Parisian authorities.
Maupas did not hesitate to describe local problems in order to obtain extra
national government subsidies to compensate for the shortcomings of the
municipal administration. Even though Maupas had been at the head of a
short-lived Ministry of Police in the early days of the empire, and despite
his privileged relationship with the emperor, he still could not overcome
the inflexibility of the Ministry. Despite presenting extensive arguments
in support of his requests, they were met with a flat refusal at the end of
1861:
An increase in personnel would therefore be desirable, but I must tell you right
away that the city will have to provide for this increase in essential expenditure
on its own, and it would be absolutely impossible for the State to contribute any
amount whatsoever . . . There is no question that the significant influx of foreigners
into Marseille from all sides requires special surveillance, but this situation and the
increase in costs it entails are inevitable consequences of its size, and there is no
real reason to grant it a favour on those grounds that would not also be extended
to other towns who equally fall under Article 50 of the Law of 5 May 1855. The
city of Lyon, which you would like Marseille to be compared to, is in an entirely
different position.32
This inflexibility did not stop the Ministry from pressuring the prefect
and, through him, the commissaire central, to put an end to what from Paris
appeared to be an inexcusable level of disorder. We can detect a certain
weariness in a letter from Maupas to his superiors in 1862, ‘concerning
the armed assaults the minister has complained about’ and the ‘greater
attention to the work of the police’ the minister asked for, as he once again
explained the situation in Marseille and asked on these grounds for a
financial contribution from the state.33
As the high crime levels in Marseille became a generally accepted fact,
including at the national level, the response of the Ministry of the Interior
was to increase its demands of the Prefecture rather than allocate resources
or change the status of the police force. Apart from not wanting to change
the legal framework governing municipal police forces in France, where
making an exception of Marseille would create a precedent obliging a
complete overhaul of the framework, this attitude is also likely to have
been a product of negative attitudes to Marseille. For Parisians in the
second half of the nineteenth century, the capital of the Midi was an ‘anti-
model’, whose troubles were regarded with disdain and even a touch of
contempt. The attitude of the Ministry at the end of this period could thus
policing ports and railways. In 1868, the Marseille commission for emigration, attached to
the special commission for ports and railways, was established.
32 AD BDR 4 M 4, security department of the Ministry of the Interior to the senator of
Bouches-du-Rhône, 31 Dec. 1861.
33 AD BDR 4 M 4, senator to the minister of the interior, 14 Jul. 1862.
258 Urban History
be explained by the development of this image of Marseille at the end of
the nineteenth century. During that time, the picturesque and turbulent
provincial capital became a symbol of organized crime and depravity.34
On the local level, we should first examine the perspective from the
position of the Prefecture. Before 1867, when the municipal police was
given more powers,35 the prefect was both the representative of the state
in the department and an intermediary between the Ministry of the
Interior and the municipal police, which he managed to a large extent
through the commissaire central. After 1867, the increased powers of the
municipalities meant the Prefecture had to work in conjunction with
these authorities to manage law enforcement in the department. When
faced with the economic and demographic upheavals affecting the city
of Marseille, each successive prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône immediately
set about informing the Ministry of the situation in order to obtain extra
resources for maintaining law and order.
Maupas was an active spokesperson for the Marseille cause. The series
of letters he sent to his superiors in the early 1860s provide an unaffected
portrait of how a statesman from Paris came to recognize the reality
of a critical local situation from his first-hand experience of Marseille.
Taking stock of his first year in his position, he wrote at the end of 1861:
‘my experience over the past year of the many demands and serious
complications that the near-exceptional situation of Marseille caused for
public security services has only confirmed the opinion I submitted to Your
Excellency at that time’.36 The end of his message indicated his status as
an intermediary. On the local level, he was a spokesperson for the state,
just as on the national level he represented the department. His language
combined the two perspectives, no doubt hoping to convince the Ministry
of the need to support the Marseille police and strengthen the special police
units in the city, directly managed by the Ministry of the Interior: ‘Marseille
is France’s front and back door, so to speak. It is through this door that all
its relationships with Italy and the East are established. The political events
occurring in these countries today make this city a vital site to monitor and
where general policing requires more energy and activity.’37
After 1867, the Prefecture found itself even more caught between
the demands of the national government and the desire of the local
government to assert its reinstated autonomy. In the 1870s, commenting
34 Montel, ‘Marseille capitale du crime’, and C. Regnard, ‘Violences de Marseille, violences

à Marseille’, in J.-N. Jeanneney (ed.), L’actualité au regard de l’histoire. De l’affaire Merah à
l’élection du pape François (Paris, 2013), 135–54.
35 The Law of 24 Jul. 1867 abrogates Article 50 of the Law of 1855 and returned policing
and recruiting powers to the municipal government, with the exception of the recruitment
of police superintendents. The central administration reserved the right to decide, on the
recommendation of the municipal council, the organization of the services, the managers
of police personnel and the approval of staff.
37 Ibid.
that ‘the number of crimes, especially night-time attacks, violent robberies,
murders and murders followed by theft, had been increasing for some time
in a most alarming way’, the prefect sent a terse letter to the municipal
government with the aim of eliciting a reaction:
There is no doubt that the state must share in the cost of criminal investigations
(police judiciaire) in a large port where the interests of France as a whole are at stake.
But the city that profits from this large port, that has gathered, grown, worked and
become rich around its basins, cannot avoid also making a large contribution to
this expense. I am working to obtain the intervention of the minister . . . This work
will be fruitless, Monsieur le Maire, if the municipal council does not do the same.
I invite you to submit the question to the council. It is obvious that it must make
a larger amount available to security and local police services than is currently
allocated for this purpose.38
The unique position of the Prefecture explains how it perceived and

represented the crisis situation in Marseille. Before 1867, the prefect of
Bouches-du-Rhône played the role of an advocate for the local cause to
the national authorities, so that the local government would receive extra
funding for police forces that appeared to be inadequate. After 1867, when
the police were placed under municipal control, and until 1908, when
Marseille’s police force was nationalized, the prefect still produced the
crisis argument, but now it was to compel the municipal government to
increase the budget for policing and to instigate police reforms.
Before the 1870s, there were discussions between the office of the
commissaire central and the Prefecture that essentially concerned the
distribution of police districts. The rapid urban expansion posed a
challenge for a police system that always seemed to be falling behind. The
commissaire central had already noted in 1856 that ‘there are drawbacks
to the distribution of the police districts as it exists today’.39 The
outer arrondissements of Marseille were very spread out, some had large
populations and their boundaries were constantly adjusted.
It was only from the 1870s that the theme of the unruliness of the
Marseille population, constantly linked to its foreign and multicultural
elements, was developed in the various reports and messages coming
out of the commissaire’s office. It was during this period that the ‘crisis’
theme replaced the bureaucratic arguments about district boundaries in
the correspondence of the commissariat. Urban expansion and the growth
of the foreign population made it imperative to increase police numbers
by a significant amount. In 1873, the commissaire central noted that ‘in
a city of 312,864 people such as Marseille, [there is a need] not only
to put in place a staffing structure that follows the decree of 30 May
1868, which sets the number of police employees at 369, but to further
38 AD BDR 4 M 7, Prefecture to the mayor, 4 Apr. 1876.

39 AD BDR 4 M 8, letter from the commissaire central to the mayor, 14 Feb. 1856.
260 Urban History
raise this number to at least 500, which would represent an increase of
131 men’.40 His successor observed an ‘exceptionally unfavourable level
of surveillance’.41 In 1882, it was reported that ‘the press, the public,
indeed everybody in Marseille has been concerned and is still concerned
about the inadequacy of the police personnel’.42 What could be done,
however, when the municipal government had the decision-making power
in this area? The commissaire central could only resort to exhortation: ‘I
earnestly enjoin you, Monsieur le Maire, to be so good as to examine
my proposals and inform me of your decision’, he wrote in 1875.43 In a
report in 1882 on Marseille’s police force, we read, ‘The organization of
the police has always had some disadvantages, but today more than ever,
the services of this administration are suffering as a result and it is truly
time to remedy the situation.’44 The discourse of the commissaires centraux
remained the same until the Law of 1908, which ‘nationalized’ the police
of Marseille in the same way as the police of Paris and Lyon.45 Based on the
correspondence coming out of the commissaire’s office, the crisis seemed
to intensify constantly from the beginning of the Third Republic. Could
the crisis have been a way of inciting the Ministry of the Interior, via the
Prefecture, to place the police under state control and push the municipal
government to increase subsidies for the police?
Those in the town hall were not so easily swayed. While the
independence of Marseille’s municipal government had a long history,46
it became even stronger in the second half of the nineteenth century
due to two factors. First, the city was never Bonapartist, and while
Napoléon III managed to lessen the resentment of a city that a few decades
earlier was still ‘blanche’ (royalist), it was never really an enthusiastic
supporter of the empire, apart from in trading circles.47 Secondly, even
before the Law of 1867, the municipality’s opposition to the regime
was increasingly overt, to the point where it placed Prefect Maupas in
a difficult position. In 1865, Maupas noted that ‘the current municipal
council doesn’t share the same sentiments [as the prefect] towards the
government and the emperor’.48 That year, the municipal elections saw the
election of 26 candidates from parties opposing Napoléon III, representing
the great majority of the municipal council. The trend only became stronger
afterwards. Marseille was an early bastion of Republican resistance.49
The municipal correspondence reflected this political history. While it
40 AD BDR 4 M 8, letter from the commissaire central to the prefect, 23 Jan. 1873.
41 AD BDR 4 M 8, report on the police of Marseille, from the commissaire central, 1877.
42 AD BDR 4 M 8, report from the commissaire central, 7 Jun. 1882.
44 AD BDR 4 M 8, report from the commissaire central, 7 Jun. 1882.
45 For further details, see Berlière and Lévy, Histoire des polices, 73.
46 ‘Midi rouge et Midi blanc’, Provence historique, 36, fascicule 148 (Apr. 1987); Les fédéralismes,
réalités et représentations 1789–1874 (Aix-en-Provence, 1995).
47 É. Temime, Histoire de Marseille de la Révolution à nos jours (Paris, 1999).
48 AD BDR 4 M 4, letter from the senator to the minister, 16 Dec. 1865.
49 F.-X. Emmanuelli (ed.), La Provence contemporaine de 1800 à nos jours (Rennes, 1994), 123–7.
occasionally referred to a crisis, the major concerns that could result
from such a situation were initially swept under the carpet. In 1872,
the mayor, urged by the prefect and the commissaire central to give ‘the
most serious attention to the armed hold-ups, attempted murders and
thefts that have been multiplying to an alarming extent in Marseille for
some time’, simply replied: ‘I can only make a heartfelt appeal to the
enthusiasm and dedication of the police and invite them to increase
their efforts to prevent such serious incidents, reported each day in the
local press, from continuing.’ He added, ‘I recognize, as you do, [the]
inadequacy of the numbers [of police personnel] and I will submit this
question to the consideration of a municipal council committee.’50 The
municipal government did not, however, have the resources required for
such a reform. Moreover, from its point of view, Marseille’s situation was
a national issue, as Marseille was not just a town like any other:
we have to manage, with the resources of the municipality alone, not only the needs
of the Marseillaise population proper, but those of a multitude of foreigners from
all corners of the globe who constantly pass through our city . . . Marseille performs
a national role, it is the gateway to France’s relationships with the Mediterranean
and the East, and the whole country should contribute to the costs this situation
creates for the city, just as it contributes to the security of our internal transport
network.51
The situation of the municipality, and its line of argument, was thus
paradoxical. It showed a certain will to autonomy, but in other respects,
from the 1890s onwards, it was more oriented towards demands for
national support on the grounds of the city’s special status. The ‘crisis’
claim was handled differently depending on what the aim was. Sometimes,
it was simply conceded, as when acknowledging the reproaches of a
Prefecture that wanted to make its authority felt. Besides, it was put
forward more forcefully when it was used to present the city as a national
symbol that was blighted by crime.
Examining this play of perspectives thus shows that, beyond the
question of its reality, the crisis was above all a discourse developed
by the various opposing parties to strengthen their own positions, give
more weight to their arguments or prompt reforms. The balance of powers
between the Ministry, the Prefecture and the municipal government played
a determining role in these exchanges. To confirm this impression, we can
finally examine the real effects of this discourse on the Marseille ‘crisis’ in
the area of police reform.
50 AD BDR 4 M 7, letter from the mayor of Marseille to the prefect, 22 Jun. 1872.
51 AD BDR 4 M 8, report on the project to reorganize the police service presented by Mr
Barbaroux, deputy, 1891.
262 Urban History
The claims of a crisis and police reforms in Marseille:
a faint echo
The permanence of the ‘crisis’ argument in fact stands in striking contrast
to the absence of reform of the Marseille police prior to 1908. Apart from
the laws of 1855, 1867 and 1884, which reorganized the administration
of the municipal police in major French cities and thus in Marseille as a
matter of course, and despite the constant comparisons with the situation
of Lyon in the correspondence, the crisis argument did not bring about any
major reform, as it might have done for Paris in the seventeenth century
or Lyon in 1851.52
The creation of a special police unit (commissariat spécial) in charge of
immigration to police the ports and railways seems, at first glance, to
suggest the opposite. The crisis argument, stressing the increase in traffic
and the number of travellers in Marseille, certainly seems to have produced
a result in this case.53 This special commission, however, encountering
the resistance of the local police and the power of the shipping lines,
was dismantled in 1870, 10 years after it was created. Its existence was
erratic after that: re-established in 1878, it disappeared permanently in
1885.54 Following this, the main project for reforming the local police,
proposed in 1891 by the deputy to Mayor Barbaroux and based on lengthy
arguments claiming the existence of a crisis, was completely ignored.55
Its introductory sentence highlights the permanence of the criticisms of
the Marseille police and implicitly suggests the ineffectiveness of such
complaints: ‘The organization of the police in Marseille has always, but
more especially in recent years, been the target of the strongest and often
the most justified criticisms.’ The author insisted on this point, multiplying
references to the demands that had been reiterated ‘for a long time’ by
the municipal governments ‘who have successively occupied the town
hall’.56 Lastly, the amendment of Article 104 of the Law of 1884, granting
Marseille a state-controlled police force from 1908, recapitulated the main
themes of the ‘Marseille crisis’ that had been elaborated since the 1860s.
The bill presented by Clemenceau on 24 October 1907, who was then
president of the Council of Ministers and minister of the interior, stressed
the disorganization and inadequacy of the municipal police for handling
a situation described as critical: the urban spread, the presence of a
large foreign population and the existence of organized crime were all
mentioned, in the same way as they had previously been mentioned by
52 Milliot ‘Une ville malade de son espace?’, and A. Nugues-Bourchat, ‘Les ajustements du
quadrillage policier à Lyon (1800–1852)’, in Marec (ed.), Villes en crise?, 54–63.
53 AD BDR 4 M 2147, letter from the Ministry of the Interior to the prefect, 6 Jul. 1874.
54 É. Temime, ‘Immigration et police portuaire à la fin du XIXe siècle. Le cas de Marseille’, in
M.-C. Blanc-Chaléard, C. Douki, N. Dyonet and V. Milliot (eds.), Police et migrants. France
1667–1939 (Rennes, 2001), 251–62.
55 AD BDR 4 M 8, cited report.
56 Ibid.
the prefects and commissaire centrals.57 Several new arguments, however,
were offered in support of this proposed law. In the first place, there was
an emphasis on the presence of ‘Apaches’ in Marseille, and the organized
local gangs called the ‘Nervis’, as an item of concern.58 Their activities
were described with a certain level of detail. Secondly, social unrest was
also presented as a concern. When ‘strikes and demonstrations’ occurred
in Marseille, requiring ‘the concentration of most if not all of the available
superintendents and officers in the areas of unrest’, the rest of the city was
‘almost entirely abandoned to the exploits and plundering of gangs seeking
to do mischief’. Finally, the proposed law alluded to public dissatisfaction
with the situation, describing in particular the shopkeepers, storemen
and industrialists who had rallied together to present a petition of 26,700
signatures to the Ministry of the Interior via the deputies of the Bouches-
du-Rhône.
If it was a crisis that led to the reform of Marseille’s police, it must have
involved different elements to the ones that had been raised previously
without result. Three factors seem to have been decisive. First, the fact
that security became a national issue, as the presence of Apache gangs
in Marseille, as in Paris, was a national security concern at the time. The
attention to the dissatisfaction expressed by public opinion reveals the
new awareness on the part of politicians of the issue of public insecurity.59
Secondly, was the will of this government to maintain law and order,
including in the face of social unrest. We know of Clemenceau’s resolve in
this area, and his position in relation to social agitation in Marseille was
no exception. Finally, Marseille’s police had a reputation of weakness at
that time.60
For the crisis argument to work, the concerns it raises need to be
shared by those it is addressed to. When this is not the case, it leads to
adjustments that serve as provisional solutions. Thus, over the 50 years or
so between 1855 and 1908, the Marseille police underwent many minor
alterations. This complex, almost impressionistic, series of alterations
produced modifications in district boundaries, reductions or increases
in the number of police superintendents and reorganizations of their
duties. Solutions were found in emergency situations, which indicates
the adaptability and ability to co-operate between the different agencies of
law enforcement. In 1875, for example, the commissaire central suggested
to the mayor that the offices of the suburban police superintendents could
57 AD BDR 4 M 9.
58 C. Regnard, ‘Terreurs de quartiers. Jeunesse et violences à Marseille (1850–1914)’, in X.
De Weirt and X. Rousseaux (eds.), Violences juvéniles urbaines en Europe (Louvain, 2011),
143–60.
59 D. Kalifa, Crime et culture au XIXe siècle (Paris, 2005).
60 M.D. Lewis, Les frontières de la république. Immigration et limites de l’universalisme en France
(1918–1940) (Marseille, 2010), 49, and ‘The strangeness of foreigners: policing migration
and nation in interwar Marseille’, in H. Chapman and L. Frader (eds.), Race in France:
Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Politics of Difference (New York, 2004), 75–107.
264 Urban History
be used as night-time police stations, so that the residents felt safer at
night. Keen for his proposal to succeed and anticipating the objection that
could be made on financial grounds, he added: ‘In this way, with a very
minimal outlay, we could organize a service that, I have no doubt, would
enormously improve night policing in the city of Marseille . . . In previous
reports, I raised the possibility of using the individual night guards paid
by the residents of various districts.’ The police did all they could with
the resources at hand to ensure that law and order was maintained.61
Another example is the Decree of 7 July 1881 that made the Chamber
of Commerce responsible for managing the public port rather than the
Compagnie des Docks. The administration of the port was one of the most
important functions of this company, still largely dominated in the first half
of the twentieth century by trading and shipping circles,62 and policing
was one of these functions. In 1899, however, the Chamber of Commerce
formalized a practice that already existed in private (but non-centralized)
law enforcement with the creation of a private ‘brigade’, ‘responsible for
the surveillance of the unloading and storage of goods’.63 In 1904, this
brigade was disbanded, after the accidental murder of a docker by one
of its officers, and the surveillance of goods was returned to guards paid
by the shipping companies or provided by private enterprise. The cost of
this surveillance, which was not very effective in any case, prompted the
Chamber to try once again to assemble a unified police service. This was
achieved in 1920, with a service that included auxiliary guards paid by the
Chamber of Commerce and police officers remunerated by the state.
This case of Marseille allows us to highlight a particular and historical

use of the notion of ‘crisis’. The importance of the discourses evoking
a ‘crisis’ situation has been stressed here, but the evocation of such a
situation is not enough to prove the reality of a crisis or to bring about
reform. Marseille appears to have been a city perpetually in a state of
crisis, and this perception has not been challenged since that time, even
less so in recent years. The situation of the city in the second half of the
nineteenth century was undoubtedly complex, given the strong growth
that animated it and the major social and economic upheavals that took
place there. But the ‘Marseille crisis’ was above all a topos that functioned as
a sort of shorthand for referring to the city’s difficulties. Running through
the various communications according to the interests of their authors, it
62 AD 13, 4 M 11, report from Émile Lévy to the Marseille Chamber of Commerce on policing
the ports, adopted by the Compagnie in its meeting dated 28 Oct. 1919. The prefectoral
project for reorganizing the policing of ports, 17 Oct. 1931, p. 1, and AD BDR 4 M 11, letter
from the Ministry of the Interior to the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, 26 Jan. 1920.
63 Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Marseille, reference no. MR 56 11 21 21,
Ministerial Order dated 11 Dec. 1899, cited by L. Montel, ‘Grappillages et surveillance
dans le port moderne de Marseille dans l’entre-deux-guerres’, in M. Figeac-Monthus
and C. Lastécouères (eds.), Territoires de l’illicite: ports et ı̂les. De la fraude au contrôle
(XVIe –XXe s.) (Paris, 2012), 345–58.
was designed to attract attention and bring about police reform, which was
only realized by the police being placed under state control at the end of
this period. There was effectively no reform before 1908. Instead, case-by-
case solutions were preferred, indicating the elasticity of the institutions
and their ability to come to terms with the necessities of maintaining law
and order. The link between crisis and reform, which was far from being
systematic in the case of Marseille, must therefore be questioned. Reform
takes place when all the players involved share the perception of a crisis.
It thus relies not only on a will to act but also and above all upon a shared
representation of the faults in the old system and of the advantages to be
gained by transforming them.

Urban Growth Police Reform. Céline Regnard

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Urban History, 43, 2 (2016)

C Cambridge University Press 2015

Urban growth and police reform

14 L. Dornel, La France hostile. Socio-histoire de la xénophobie 1870–1914 (Paris, 2004); L. Lucassen,

In a climate of tension aggravated by the Long Depression (1875–95),

The effects of perspective

34 Montel, ‘Marseille capitale du crime’, and C. Regnard, ‘Violences de Marseille, violences

The unique position of the Prefecture explains how it perceived and

38 AD BDR 4 M 7, Prefecture to the mayor, 4 Apr. 1876.

This case of Marseille allows us to highlight a particular and historical

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