The history of clockmaking in Besançon began significantly at the end of the 18th century, when Swiss clockmakers set up their first workshops in the Comtois capital. Then, little by little, the people of Besançon joined in the clockmaking fever, definitively transforming Besançon into the Capitale française de l'horlogerie (French capital of clockmaking) at the 1860 International Exhibition, held in Place Labourey. The city produced up to 90% of French watches by 1880, and despite a crisis in the 1890s and 1900s, the clockmaking sector recovered and continued to grow. The city continued to play a leading role in the clockmaking industry until the crisis of the 1930s, and recovered before the end of World War II, but the industry lost a significant share of its activity after the end of this conflict. The 1970s brought an end to this mythical epic, as the major companies went into decline in the wake of the oil crisis.
The clockmaking industry continued to play an important role in Besançon's economy and employment for generations. And although today the number of watchmaking workshops has declined, the industry remains represented in the region, which had 89 establishments employing 2,119 salaried workers. Several institutions and buildings associated with the industry remain in the city, including the former Dodane watchmaking factory, the Musée du Temps, the monumental clock at the Viotte train station, and the École d'Horlogerie de Besançon. Companies associated with Besançon's watchmaking history have included Lip, Yema, Zenith and Maty. The Lip affair of the 1970s was significant in the history of the city's industrial and labor relations during the period. Among the individuals associated with the development of watchmaking in Besançon was Laurent Mégevand, who is credited with establishing the industry in the city.
History
Clockmaking in Besançon and its surrounding area before 1793
Clockmaking has existed in the Franche-Comté region since the late 17th century, thanks in particular to the Grandfatherclock. Indeed, this pendulum clock, made in particular in Morez and Morbier in the Haut Jura, is considered one of the region's typical industries, before industrial production came to a halt at the beginning of the 20th century.(fr) Historique de l'horloge comtoise sur horlogerie-comtoise.fr (accessed on October 26, 2010.). For more than three centuries, this simple, robust clock was a great success: at its peak, production reached 150,000 pieces a year in the 1850s.
Besançon's clockmaking activities pre-dated the arrival of the Swiss and the French Revolution,(fr) Pays et gens de France : Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Larousse, 1985, page 18. but were carried out exclusively by small workshops such as Paliard, Lareche, Joffroy, Perrot and Perron, who were considered master clockmakers of their time.Besançon autrefois, page 74. The most illustrious of these is Perron, who is notably the author of such renowned pieces as the Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI clocks, renowned for their high quality. These craftsmen made all the clocks themselves before industrial production was imported to the town by the Swiss.
The founding of industrial clockmaking In 1793, Genevan Laurent Mégevand (1754-1814) settled in Besançon with 80 colleagues, founding the city's clockmaking industry,Laurent Megevand sur Racinescomtoises.net (accessed on September 7, 2010.).Bibliographie franc-comtoise 1980-1990, page 52.(fr) Les Suisses et l'horlogerie à Besançon, sur Migrations.Besançon.fr (accessed on September 7, 2010.).(fr) Besançon sur le site officiel du Larousse (accessed on November 11, 2010.). apparently to escape unemployment(fr) Le musée du Temps sur le site officiel de la ville de Besançon (accessed on October 25, 2010.). or because of his political activities.(fr) C. Fohlen, Histoire de Besançon, t. II, . They subsequently brought 22 clockmaking families to the city, representing between 400 and 700 people,(fr) Laurent Megevand sur le site officiel de la ville du Locle (accessed on September 7, 2010.). mainly from Le Locle and the principality of Neuchâtel, but also from Geneva, Porrentruy, Montbéliard, Savoy, and even the Palatinate. These immigrants were greatly encouraged by the French authorities, notably by a decree in 1793 which founded the Manufacture Française d'Horlogerie in Besançon, offering them spacious premises and subsidies. These links with the Swiss workers' milieu were to prove decisive, both socially and politically, for the Besançon Commune project fomented in 1871.
In 1795, there were a thousand clockmaking in the city, and by the end of the Empire, some 1,500 Swiss lived in the Comtoise capital, 500 of them working exclusively in watchmaking and producing around 20,000 units a year, before this community was gradually replaced by local labor. In 1801, the first clockmaking apprenticeship workshop was set up in the Hôpital Saint-Jacques, but the real craze for clockmaking education in Besançon dates from the 1850s.(fr) L'enseignement horloger à Besançon sur Racines-Comtoises.net (accessed on October 25, 2010.). Watch production rose from 14,700 pieces in Year III (1794-1795) to 21,400 in Year XI (1802-1803). After the end of the favors granted to Swiss immigrants, most of them returned to their native region or saw their businesses go bankrupt, as in the case of Mégevand, who died in poverty in 1814. However, even if the initiators of the town's clockmaking movement were in a bad way, the industrial pole was well established: Franc-Comtois watchmaking was born.
A family workshop appeared in the 1800s: Lip, founded by Emmanuel Lipmann.(fr) Histoire de l'entreprise Lip sur montres-lip.com (accessed on October 25, 2010.). A testimonial reports the existence of this small workshop as early as the 1800s; it was to become one of France's largest clock manufacturers:(fr) La mesure du temps, montres et horloges, by Éliane Maingot, published in Miroir de l’histoire, 1970, (brochure). "In 1800, the future emperor, who was still only First Consul, was visiting Besançon. On this occasion, a clockmaking presented him with a clock in the name of the Israelite Consistory, of which he was president. This is a character from a novel, wearing a velvet skullcap and an abundant beard. Originally, Emmanuel Lipmann was an artisan clockmaker who, when he wasn't bent over his clocks, magnifying glass in hand, roamed the Alsatian plain, repairing clocks or selling his own work, half peddler, half clock doctor. In winter, he returned to his village, his workshop and his workbench, preparing for the next season [...]. But our man remained faithful to his native Franche-Comté. He bears a name which, minus its second syllable, is today the most popular in the clockmaking industry. [...] He is the ancestor of all the Lip companies who, from a small firm of fifteen people set up in 1867 by Emmanuel Lipmann in Besançon's Grande Rue, went on to become the most powerful of all French manufacturers." In 1807, a pocket watch was presented to Napoleon Bonaparte by the Jewish community of Besançon. This event marked a turning point in the city's clockmaking history, but also for Besançon's Jewish community.
From early developments to initial crisis
During the first half of the 19th century, watch production remained modest: in 1804, around 25,000 pieces were produced, and during the Restoration some 50,000, although a large number turned out to be of Swiss origin; actual production was counted from 1821, with a total of 30,000 pieces. After the Revolution of 1830, clockmaking took off in the region, but remained stagnant in the Comtois capital. It wasn't until the Third Republic that the clockmaking industry experienced a sharp upturn: 5,600 pieces in 1847;Besançon autrefois, page 75. 100,000 in 1854; 200,000 in 1860; 373,138 in 1869; 395,000 watches in 1872; 493,933 in 1882; then 501,602 in 1883.(fr) C. Fohlen, Histoire de Besançon, t. II, In 1880, according to the Chamber of Commerce, Besançon accounted for 90% of French watch production, with some 5,000 workers specialized in this sector, and no less than 10,000 women working part-time. At the International Universal Exhibition held on Place Labourey in Besançon in 1860, the city was recognized as the Capitale de la montre française (Capital of French Watches). In 1862, the first clockmaking school opened in the Comtois capital under the direction of M. Courvoisier, a Swiss master watchmaker originally from Fleurier. The town became home to the first French watch factory in 1874, with production reaching 395,000 pieces that year, representing a 12% share of total world watch production.(fr) L'épopée de la mesure du temps, Le journal de Carrefour, décembre 1999, numéro 58.
However, a crisis struck in the late 1880s: thousands of jobs disappeared and many inhabitants left the town for lack of work, while others saw their wages drastically cut; production fell to 366,197 watches in 1888. The causes of this decline are many and difficult to pinpoint: the industrial crisis, overproduction, misunderstanding and lack of initiative on the part of clockmakers in Besançon, the attitude of the government, which encouraged clockmaking schools in Cluses and Paris while neglecting the Besançon school, and above all Swiss competition, considered unfair by the profession. In fact, the French authorities regarded a watch as a piece of jewelry because of its casing, which was usually made of gold or silver, and the French product was therefore subjected to a series of rigorous, heavily taxed tests designed to check the reliability of the finished piece. Every French manufacturer was obliged to take his boxes to the guarantee office, where an official checked them, and paid a high tax proportional to the product. This check was carried out using a chemical process known as "à la coupelle", which is said to be highly accurate. Swiss products, on the other hand, were not subject to these regulations, and were therefore much less expensive than French watches. What's more, the French administration applied testing and inspection duties to unworked, unpolished, and unengraved cases, whereas at the nearby Swiss border, these duties were levied only on finished products, therefore relieved of the burden of engraving.
Difficult mechanization However, the dominance of Swiss clockmaking was not simply due to administrative differences: the Swiss were far more enterprising and organized than the people of Besançon, and clearly understood that the future of clockmaking lay in technical developments.Besançon autrefois, page 77. At the Philadelphia Exhibition in 1877, the Swiss realized that the progress made by American clockmaking could put them in difficulty, and they immediately began to reform their tools to keep up with the times and remain competitive. French and Franche-Comté clockmaking, though concerned by these developments, continued to rely on the manufacturing methods of the past, and postponed the use of new methods in which they had no faith. As proof, an 1880 Chamber of Commerce report: "Machine tools of a certain power are little used (in Besançon); they have not yet been considered indispensable to the progress of the clockmaking industry. We foresee a time when this will not be the case and when factory work will become necessary, and we dread the time when workers will no longer be able to work with their families." The director of the Besançon clockmaking school, Mr. L. Lossier, pleads the case for non-mechanization, as evidenced by a note dating from 1890.Jacques Borgé and Nicolas Viasnoff, Archives de la Franche-Comté, 1996, page 33.