by Leopold Lambert

On January 29, 2014, friends Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli posted an interesting article on Socks (check out their new interface!) based on photographs taken by Mike Ma of a map illustrating the chronology of the bloody week (May 21-28 1871) that eradicated the socialist Paris Commune. Seeing this map made me want to, not only retrace it in a “cleaner” version but add to it other valuable information so to obtain a comprehensive “chrono-cartography” of the 1871 Paris Commune. You can download a high-resolution of this map (28 Mb) here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (i.e. use it in any way you want providing that you’re not making money out of it and that you’re referring to the original map’s credits). This article is built on five chapters that distinguishes each component of the map.

Chapter 1 /// Before the Commune: Avenues and Boulevards

Map with only two filters:
in brown, boulevards and avenues that existed before Haussmann’s transformations / in black, boulevards and avenues constructed following Haussmann’s plan

Superimposition of the Avenue de l’Opéra before and after the Haussmannian transformations (this avenue in particular was not pierced before the Commune but serves as a paradigm for others)

There has been many things written about the urban transformations of Paris orchestrated by Napoleon III’s prefect, the “Baron” Haussmann; many of which address the militarized causes of these transformations, as I often did myself. This aspect of the transformations is admitted by Haussmann himself in his memoirs as part of the strategy. The first part of the 19th-century saw many insurrections and revolutions happening in Paris (1830 revolution, 1832 insurrection, 1848 revolution, etc.) and Napoleon III, after his 1851 coup, was certainly eager to transform Paris to be able to control it. The large avenues and boulevards were thus seen as fundamental components of potential armed interventions of the national army against insurrections. The movement of the troops was thus maximized, the canons could have a clear aiming line, and the dense neighborhood of proletarian Paris were fragmented by these large urban canyons. Another militarized aspect of the transformation also lies in the systematic eminent domain authorized by a 1852 legislation that promises compensations for the moved population but gives it no choice but to be evicted....Continue Reading

> via The Funambulist