ABSTRACT
The Ligue syndicale burst onto the Parisian scene with an astonishing suddenness. In July 1888, when it began publication of its own weekly newspaper, La Revendication, the organization counted a membership of not more than 6,000. The Ligue syndicale advertised itself as a nonpartisan defense association of small shopkeepers. The organization's rapid and impressive success attests to the formation of distinctive small-shopkeeper interest. The constitution of petit commerce as a distinctive group endowed with a coherent set of interests owed as much to state policy, radical ideology and pressure-group politics as to objective socioeconomic circumstances. Social and economic circumstances generated an inchoate retailer discontent, but it was the political conjuncture of the 1880s and preexisting ties of solidarity that transformed discontent into a mass movement committed to the defense of petit commerce. The Ligue syndicale's deteriorating relations with organized shop employees placed in yet sharper focus the political and institutional parameters of what it meant to be a petit commercant.
