Over the course of the nineteenth century, the population of Paris rose from half a million to two and a half million before reaching almost three million on the eve of World War I. This huge increase was fueled by migrants coming from all over France (and also from other countries). Among them, a growing share came from Brittany. This book tells their story from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s. It is a story of integration and adaptation but also of changing perceptions. When the first Bretons arrived in Paris, they were objects of disdain and mockery but as time passed, Bretons became more and more part of the city, while maintaining an identity of their own. The book is organized in chronological order with each chapter describing a different period: the first migrations era; the Belle Époque (the two decades before World War I); the interwar period; and finally, the post-World War II era. The author uses both a large range of secondary sources and her own collection of marriage records to combine in each chapter a description of the cultural atmosphere of the time and an analysis of migrants' conditions at the individual level.

The originality of the book, then, lies in that combination of cultural and social history. It allows the author to compare the perception of Bretons by others to the migrants' own trajectories. The description of the cultural atmosphere around Breton migration is based on the use of many contemporary sources including Emile Zola's novel Germional and the famous cartoon character Bécassine, a Breton maid from the countryside, portrayed as ignorant and stupid but possessing a good heart. Leslie Page Moch also uses studies by doctors or social scientists depicting Bretons in tough, sometimes offensive, terms. All of her sources try to understand the “Breton issue:” why did so many of them leave Brittany? In addition, Moch takes advantage of the many recent historical studies of Bretons or migrants to Paris. The author also employs a very different kind of source, her own collection of marriage records for the years 1875, 1890, 1910, and 1925. She focuses this effort on two key areas of Breton migration, Paris's 14th arrondissement and the city of Saint-Denis. This database allows her to depict migration networks (inferred from witnesses at the wedding, or marital endogamy) and to picture a detailed image of Breton migrants.

Both types of sources prove useful to modify and sometimes contradict the extreme images of the history of Breton migration, which Moch calls “smooth integration, the stereotype of a community apart, and the ‘black legend' of wholesale migrant failure” (p. 179). None of these portrayals proved true, although none was entirely false. For instance, the migrants were themselves a heterogeneous group, from the typical maid from the countryside living in painful conditions at the complete mercy of her employers to the successful physician who deplores city's toll on Breton migrants to the heavy-industry unionized worker of Saint-Denis. Finally, the integration of Bretons in Paris is a complex process that depends on the state and on the migrants themselves, but also on many intermediary organizations such as religious charity or community organizations.

Overall, the author does a great job in demonstrating how the perception of Breton migrants changed over time, for instance when Bécassine went from nasty caricature to celebrated French cultural treasure (p. 177). The book is much more successful as cultural than social history, however. For instance, it is rather disappointing not to see direct sources other than marriage records. Moch points out correctly that French sources to study internal migration are scarce and that the sources most readily available (military registers or election records) are basically flawed as they record only males. But many other sources exist and could have been easily mobilized here, not to mention used together or in combination with the marriage records: death records, which are similar to marriage records but without the selection issue of married individuals; estate tax returns, which list wealth at death for the whole population; or census and other records. Using the most easily available source may been efficient, but it reduces the scope of the analysis.

Some economic historians will be disappointed not only by the lack of quantitative analysis but by how little economics are involved in this history of migration. For instance, Moch does not elucidate the economic motivations behind the decision to migrate, both push and pull. She also bases her discussion of migrant economic success entirely on a few anecdotes. But the book's most important drawback is the lack of comparative analysis. Lacking any comparative standard, it is hard to know just how different the Breton experience really was. Even more problematic is the author's claim that her story of migration and integration has something to teach us about today's newcomers, migrants from Africa or Asia. To be sure, today's migrants have many things in common with nineteenth-century Bretons. They are migrants, they are despised, and they face both hostility and exclusion. But today's migrants also differ in important ways. Most importantly, they come from countries that have been colonized by France. Without any specifics on that comparison between today and the past, this aspect of her argument remains unconvincing.

In short, this book is a very interesting and very well-written monograph on the migration of Bretons to Paris. It draws on the extensive recent literature to produce a useful survey of that migration. But it will be of modest to those interested in understanding migration either yesterday or today.