During the XVIth, some Parisian neighborhoods would seal themselves off at night using huge chains stretched across the streets. The goal is to control the flux of people at night that could disturb the habitants : it's a security measure. Same could be done during the day in case of riots, in order to protect your neighborhood. Some inhabitants could stay behind the chains to control and if need be repel people. On the 12th of May 1588, Paris revolts against King Henri III, because of rumours that he would name for successor Henri of Navarre, the future Henri IV, a protestant. France was at the end of the Wars of Religion, a fifty years or so of civil war that devastated the kingdom. The catholic Parisians mobilize and reinforce their chains to defend against the kings troops. And they used pretty much everything they could find : barrels filled with sand and stones, timber etc. In French, a barrel is a “barrique”. Hence the name barricade.

The 19th century saw a wide use of barricades during the numerous revolutions and uprisings which took place in Paris. Insurgents built barricades in 1827, 1830, 1832, 1834, 1839, February and June 1848, 1849 and 1851. The rise in use of artillery against insurgents made barricades pretty much obsolete, but Parisians kept building them. Barricades have a heavy symbolic weight with them : the insurgents are taking the street back. Building a barricade demands work amongst a team, you need to defend it together, they are a tool of revolutionary mobilization : a lot of barricades were built among neighbors, and allowed to “recruit” people from other neighborhood. You use a pre-existing local solidarity system, and turn it into a tangible symbol of your insurrection against the State. Barricades are the expression of collective will. “Here we stand”.

Source : Corbin Alain et Mayeur Jean-Marie (dir.), La Barricade, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, « Histoire de la France aux XIXe et XXe siècles », 1997, 522 p.