Stationers, papetiers and the supply networks of a Swiss publisher : the Sociéte typographique de Neuchâtel and the paper trade 1769-1789

What can be learned about the paper trade from digital and archival sources on the business of a single publishing house? Would the lessons it teaches be of merely local interest, or can such a case study reveal wider information about the rhythms, networks and scale of the trade? These are questions we seek to address in this study. This chapter grew from of a desire to explore the rich data on professional groups in the award-winning French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe (FBTEE) database, which documents the trade of a large Swiss publisher-wholesaler, the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN). The papetiers (papermakers and paper merchants) in the database were the ideal case study. Not only did they supply the most important and costly raw material for the books the STN published, but, through the database, we could also trace the outward flow of the paper as a finished product. No other professional group in the database offered this advantage. Furthermore, this was an opportunity to contribute to a largely unexplored area. Although paper manufacturing has been studied in some detail, little systematic attention has been paid to the paper trade prior to the current volume. This is perhaps surprising, given the significance of paper to master narratives of the period under consideration. Paper was, after all, an essential raw ingredient to the revolutionizing of the knowledge industry, the emergence of a largely print-based public sphere, and to the bureaucratisation and extension of administrative government based on mass communication and scientific and statistical approaches to the management of national resources. Further, the production and movement of paper was a nearly example of a mass production industry, although still based on largely artisanal skills. Europe's demand for paper by the late eighteenth-century was colossal. Existing estimates suggest France alone needed an annual supply of 300,000,000 to 700,000,000 sheets to keep the wheels of commerce, government and publishing rolling, and across the eighteenth century demand was growing. How and where to access paper was thus a significant issue for a publisher such as the STN, whose annual demand for printing paper at its peak equated, as we show below, to perhaps1% of French national demand, and a significantly higher proportion of the demand from the Swiss states. Maintaining access and ensuring the flow of paper supplies, in appropriate quantities and qualities, and-since paper was the biggest cost in book production -at a reasonable price, through cycles of fluctuating demand, was a significant logistical challenge. The STN is notable both for its historiographical interest, since it has spawned a large literature, and because it was an ambitiously large operation, printing some 233 editions across its history. At its height in 1777, the STN employed a dozen presses, equalling the largest Parisian publishing houses of the day. It has also left a uniquely rich and accessible archive. This paper draws on both that archive and data about books and paper makers in the FBTEE database. We wish to explore two main questions. First, how (and why) did the STN's demand for paper change over time? Second, how did it develop its supply networks and strategies in response to its publishing and business challenges?