Marseille

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MARSEILLE

MARSEILLE. Overlooking the Mediterranean, and located not far from the mouth of the Rhône River, the port city of Marseille linked the economy of France to Italy, Spain, the Ottoman Empire, and North Africa. A city conscious of, indeed proud of, its Greek origins and its ancient lineage, Marseille entered the realm of France in 1481 when control of Provence passed by inheritance from the Angevin counts to the kings of France. Despite Marseille's recent incorporation, it rapidly became one of the crown's bonne villes ('good cities'), a city that enjoyed a special relationship with the monarchy based on its strategic position and its resolute Catholicity.

The population and economy of Marseille grew substantially over the early modern period. In 1524, approximately 15,000 people lived in the city; by 1698, inhabitants numbered about 65,000; and, during the French Revolution, Marseille's population fluctuated between 93,000 and 110,000. Earlier, its economy was based on its position as a regional commercial center, and later as a Mediterranean entrepôt (warehouse). In the late sixteenth century, Marseille succeeded in dominating Europe's trade with the Levant and the Barbary Coast, but, until 1660, this trading nexus experienced spurts of growth tempered by periods of contraction. Under King Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) and Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), the king's finance minister, royal policies ensured more sustained growth for the city and its ties to the Levant. In 1669, the crown created tariffs that discouraged any trade with the Levant that did not occur under the auspices of Marseille merchants and their enterprises. Henceforth, most of the wheat, sugar, coffee, and cotton textiles that entered France from the Levant would pass through Marseille, the bonne ville.

The families that prospered by this privileged trading position had long dominated urban society and municipal politics. In a number of cases, their elite status was reinforced by claims to nobility, since it was possible in Marseille to engage in commerce and to call oneself noble or écuyer (literally, 'horseman' or 'squire'). This merchant aristocracy was organized into factions by marriage connections and ties of patronage, and it was through such factions that aristocrats controlled the municipal council and acted as major players in provincial politics (though the seat of provincial and royal government was in nearby Aix-en-Provence). In the process, they competed to manipulate the masses of fishermen and laborers who made up the majority of Marseille's population.

Factional struggle characterized, and explains, much of the political narrative of early modern Marseille. Even during the period of the Wars of Religion (1562–1598), politics and factionalism constituted far greater sources of instability than Protestantism because Marseille always remained a staunchly Catholic city. Indeed, reformed Catholicism became deeply associated with the communal values of the city, and Marseille's numerous confraternities (all-male lay religious organizations) provided a vehicle for a new style of religious life. This local revival of Catholicism began in the early sixteenth century, long before the era of religious conflict in France, and the fact that Protestantism and religious violence were notably absent in Marseille suggests the extent to which Catholic reform succeeded. Like the city itself, reform and the confraternities fell under the control of the merchant aristocracy.

But reform, albeit Catholic, was not entirely without conflict. In the 1580s the reform movement in Marseille developed connections to the Catholic League throughout France, whose political goal was to maintain a limited monarchy in which power was shared by the king and the nobility. In 1591 Charles de Casaulx (1547–1596), with a good deal of popular support, seized control of Marseille's government and initiated a more radical agenda that served the goal of France's Catholic League. His dictatorship and Leaguer program set the city in opposition to Henry IV, thereby jeopardizing its status as one of the monarchy's bonnes villes. After Henry's conversion to Catholicism, Casaulx sought an alliance with Philip II of Spain. By refusing to accept France's first Bourbon monarch, Casaulx and supporters discredited the city and this phase of its Catholic mission. As a result, Casaulx was assassinated in 1596 by an elite conspiracy, and his demise opened the way for control by elites more willing to comply with the absolutist vision of Henry IV. In this way, Marseille, ever the bonne ville, became a cornerstone of Bourbon policies in Provence.

See also Catholic League (France) ; Confraternities ; Henry IV (France) ; Levant ; Louis XIV (France) ; Wars of Religion, French .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Emmanuelli, François-Xavier. Vivre à Marseille sous l'Ancien Régime. Paris, 1999.

Schalk, Ellery. "Marseille and the Urban Experience in Sixteenth-Century France: Communal Values, Religious Reform, and Absolutism." Abridged and edited by Raymond A. Mentzer. Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, 27 no. 2 (2001): 241–300.