City context

Saint-Étienne is located in central eastern France in the Rhône-Alpes region, 60km southwest of Lyon (see Figures 11.1 and 11.2). The municipality (commune) covers an area of 80km and had a population of 180,210 in 1999. The broader Saint-Étienne metropolitan area (aire urbaine) comprises 41 municipalities, with 321,703 inhabitants in 1999. It is France's 16th largest urban region in terms of population.

There were many geographical obstacles to Saint-Étienne's development given its setting – a hilly, cut-off valley with bitter weather. However, discovery of rich coal and iron resources and its location near Lyon, France's second city, proved decisive in its transformation from a small rural town to prominent centre of industrial production.

By the 1300s, locally mined coal was being used in knife production, fuelling a growing weapons industry. Firearms were being produced en masse by local craftsmen as early as the 1570s, and by the 17th century Europe's booming arms industry had given Saint-Étienne national renown. Its Royal Arms Factory was founded in 1764, sponsored by the French royal court, to centralise and expand national arms production, from 3,000 to 20,000 arms per year. During the French Revolution, the city was even briefly renamed Armeville (Arms Town).

Saint-Étienne was also famed for its hand-made lace ribbons, and by 1850 ribbon making employed half the city's working population, producing a higher economic turnover than both the coal and metal industries. As the industrial revolution accelerated during the 19th century, the town's mines were deepened and heavy industry expanded. In 1823, continental Europe's first railway was built in Saint-Étienne to facilitate transportation of coal from over 200 mines in and around the city. Saint-Étienne's regional importance grew in step with its industrial expansion; it was made the chief town of the Loire Department in 1855.

State intervention in Saint-Étienne's industrial development

The French state was keen to make France a self-sufficient industrial powerhouse. It therefore subsidised and promoted heavy industry in the region, identifying Saint-Étienne as one of the nation's ‘workshops’. In 1868, the state consolidated the multitude of local weapon-producing workshops into a single dedicated factory, the Imperial Arms Factory (Manufacture Impériale d’Armes).

By the late 1800s, the city had an industrial fabric of large coal and steel-related factories linked to a dense network of SMEs, providing components and marketing products (Figure 11.3).