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After a short eclipse during the French Revolution, the tradition of academic prize contest developed again in the first decades of the 19th century. All over the province, learned societies founded by members of the urban bourgeoisie organised scientific, literary or historical contests. Their purpose was to create an intellectual emulation by means of competitions and honorific rewards. But those provincial notables knew well that they could hardly contest the cultural supremacy of Paris. Their purpose was to build an intellectual scene of local dimension where they could obtain fame. A sample of more than 600 laureates of history contests founded by provincial learned societies shows that a large majority of contestants were petty bourgeois of popular extraction. For those amateur antiquarians, excluded from elitist academic societies, the expansion of the prize contests offered an opportunity to participate in intellectual exchange and make a timid foray in this very hermetic milieu. The organisers used specific strategies to moderate, or even discourage, the intellectual ambitions of these humble amateurs.