Open with a paradox: the eye-witness testimony of Arthur Young to the wretched poverty of rural life, against the background of long-term and possibly accelerating growth in population. Between Hufton’s ‘economy of makeshifts’, evidence of polarising patterns of land-ownership and access, and overall statistical indications of bare subsistence existence, the question of why there were several million more peasants in the 1780s than a generation or two before.
Potential answers in complexity. Without overstating the patchwork quality of individual and community experience, mapping out some of the ways in which rural life offered multiple avenues for intensifying household earning potential. The wide regional dispersal of classic proto-industries in textiles; the combination with extractive industry and town-based production to create self-reinforcing networks, as in the Cevennes. Seasonal migration and other rural-urban linkages, including the ‘export’ of (largely female) domestic servants. Crop diversification and specialisation – maize, potatoes, vines, market-gardening.
All this nonetheless in a context of rising tension, with evidence of a ‘feudal reaction’ of intensified exploitation of seigneurial rights and claims, and of a willingness to contest such claims. Here we need to chart the ‘mainstream’ outlines of the feudal relationship, its exploitative evolution, and at the same time its interweaving with rural social structures themselves. The place of feudal office-holding, as judges, stewards, bailiffs, agents, etc, in the construction of a ‘rural bourgeoisie’, and the interweaving of such positions with the structures of local government themselves, in both their dimensions as artefacts of communal organisation and conduits for impositions from the state.
Interrogating the burdens on the rural population through the lens of the cahiers. The clear perception of injustice as a fundamental element in the Old Regime order, and the acting-out (in at least some regions) of a forcible restitution from early in 1789. As through into the era of the Great Fear, the presence of the peasantry as an active force in the revolutionary landscape, yet always one awkwardly at odds with bourgeois understandings of the issues at stake.
The continued complexity of rural response to what the Revolution had to offer. Understanding the establishment of municipalities within traditions of communal autonomy, and relating these to issues confronting the peasantry – to redeem feudal dues or reject the compromises offered by the elites; to continue to resist taxation (and to reject the end of regional privilege), or to take the ‘patriot’ stance. The interpenetration of rural and urban politics in different setting – hardline antagonisms in the West, unavoidable entanglements in the Midi.
The Terror, with its accent on brutal searching-out of food for cities and armies, and consequent demonisation of the peasantry. Rural responses, and continuities of alienation into the thermidorian period – how far had the shift from ‘anti-revolutionary’ resistance to ‘counter-revolutionary’ revolt gone for most regions, were there still ‘patriotic’ peasants?
Two decades of warfare and their socio-economic impacts: loss of men to the armies (and the insoumis tradition in some regions); loss of markets for proto-industry; does the burden of tax fall on the rural population, are they better off than before 1789? Emerging from the Napoleonic shadow, is the French countryside stagnant, or vital? How do the liberties gained in terms of communal autonomy (albeit now with appointed municipalities) square against the demands of modernisation: has the revolutionary settlement created a new zone of conflict between rural/agricultural and urban/industrial needs and wants?
Reiteration of the patchwork pattern of local circumstances, customs and social and cultural realities; population growth, albeit slowing; migration both seasonal and long-term; proto-industries (and in some regions more than proto-) and tensions with the quest for household landholding – partible inheritance, family limitation. Persistence of the overriding reality of poverty and subjection – to taxation, to landowners, to aggressive Church missions and intrusive curés, to employment at bare subsistence levels, and to the ravages of disease.
Breaches in this structure – greater intrusion of primary education, beginnings of a loss of patois culture. The crisis years around 1830, and resultant repolarisation of local politics, emergence of legitimism and republicanism/radical Bonapartism as influences/heritages. Continued population growth competing with patterns of agricultural ‘modernisation’ (rendering some labour redundant) and threat of environmental degradation – signs of the countryside approaching a critical transition away from muscle-powered and naturally-fertilised agriculture towards, of necessity (but with disruptive consequences), a more commercial, mechanical and artificial rural production. The peaking of the rural population-wave and the coming of the subsistence-crisis of 1846-8.
A challenge in all ambitious thematic surveys like this one is to find ways of conveying the interconnectedness of the themes, and this chapter offers an important opportunity in terms of the relationship of socially mixed rural communities with ‘outsiders’, whether the State or absentee landowners. The outline touches neatly on the key themes. Partible inheritance is crucial.
I am pleased to see that environmental history will be one of the themes, noting how extreme pressure on resources increased until the demographic turning-point of 1850 and the first reforestation programs. Before then, however, peasant agriculture had been conservative of resources in some ways (natural fertilisers, for example). The cahiers show a remarkable awareness of the threats to the rural environment.
The Weber debate on ‘peasants into Frenchmen’ is outmoded now, since we’ve long known how varied a national consciousness and ‘integration’ was by region. There is plenty of evidence for a Weberian interpretation, but more for the tissue of connections even remote, non-French speaking communities had with the outside world. The rural cahiers of 1789 are startling in this regard. But rural cultures remained distinctive and vibrant well into the twentieth century despite economic specialisation.
There were certainly ‘patriotic’ peasants: there is plenty of evidence of this from the period of the Terror as well. Unwillingness to fight in distant places doesn’t necessarily indicate antipathy to the values and institutions of the homeland, and western alliance soldiers today would no doubt agree!
Looks like an excellent chapter, Dave: will you be engaging with the question as to whether the revolution advanced or retarded the French agrarian economy? When I teach the peasantry at Honours-level, I find that the question helps to bind all the other issues into an overarching, long-term perspective.
Salut et Fraternite!
Mike.