Integral Outside: The Financial Curb Market, the Electric Telegraph, and the Politics of Pricing in Second Empire France

Financial markets in nineteenth-century France were far more complex than an analysis of the official Bourse or its state-authorized brokers would suggest. Most financial transactions occurred on an illegal yet tacitly tolerated curb market called the coulisse, which played a vital role in expanding market liquidity during the Second Empire while also attracting controversy as a site of complex speculative activity. Existing historiography attributes the 1859 suppression of the Paris coulisse to aggravated competition between state-authorized brokers and coulissiers following the market downturn of 1857–58. Based on police, ministerial, prefectoral, and judicial archives, I present an alternate account that stresses the twin roles of financial innovation and the telecommunications revolution in breaching the limits of the state’s tacit toleration for the coulisse. I emphasize the lesser known coulisse in Marseille, suppressed at the height of a bull market in 1855, to formulate an alternative explanation of the 1859 suppression of its counterpart in Paris. I conclude that the rising importance of the curb markets in both cities reflected the robust, short-term options market developing among coulissiers. Public attention given to the coulisse price lists—distributed via newly opened telegraph lines—challenged the legitimacy of official brokers as authoritative sources of price information and compromised the political interests of the Bonapartist state, which proved decisive in the crackdown.