Presenting the regional, social and economic variety of pre-modern France, this survey of rural life examines the crucial external relationships between peasant/priest and peasant/seigneur as well as the not less important ones that existed within the peasant life lived from cradle to grave.
This book, first published in 1971, is a close analysis of some of the typical peasant uprisings of the seventeenth century. The goal of the movements in France and China was a return to a more traditional society, but in Russia the peasants attempted to replace rigid order with a more democratic society.
France achieved national unity much later than is commonly supposed. For a hundred years and more after the Revolution, millions of peasants lived on as if in a timeless world, their existence little different from that of the generations before them. The author of this lively, often witty, and always provocative work traces how France underwent a veritable crisis of civilization in the early years of the French Republic as traditional attitudes and practices crumbled under the forces of modernization. Local roads and railways were the decisive factors, bringing hitherto remote and inaccessible regions into easy contact with markets and major centers of the modern world. The products of industry rendered many peasant skills useless, and the expanding school system taught not only the language of the dominant culture but its values as well, among them patriotism. By 1914, France had finally become La Patrie in fact as it had so long been in name.
"Using methodologies derived from cultural studies, new historicism, and the history of ideas, Amy S. Wyngaard argues that changing ideas of individual, class, and national identity in the eighteenth century were elaborated around portrayals of the peasant."--BOOK JACKET.
The contention of Georges Lefebvre that the peasantry occupied center stage during the early years of the Revolution is vindicated with the support of fresh evidence culled from archives, unpublished theses and other sources.
A beautiful volume that brings to light the forgotten Le Nain brothers, a trio of 17th-century French master painters who specialized in portraiture, religious subjects, and scenes of everyday peasant life In France in the 17th century, the brothers Antoine (c. 1598-1648), Louis (c. 1600/1605-1648), and Mathieu (1607-1677) Le Nain painted images of everyday life for which they became posthumously famous. They are celebrated for their depictions of middle-class leisure activities, and particularly for their representations of peasant families, who gaze out at the viewer. The uncompromising naturalism of these compositions, along with their oddly suspended action, imparts a sense of dignity to their subjects. Featuring more than sixty paintings highlighting the artists' full range of production, including altarpieces, private devotional paintings, portraits, and the poignant images of peasants for which the brothers are best known, this generously illustrated volume presents new research concerning the authorship, dating, and meaning of the works by well-known scholars in the field. Also groundbreaking are the results of a technical study of the paintings, which constitutes a major contribution to the scholarship on the Le Nain brothers.
The example of Old Regime France provides a source for many of the ideas about capitalism, modernization, and peasant protest that concern social scientists today. Hilton Root challenges traditional assumptions and proposes a new interpretation of the relationship between state and society.
In 1920s France the far-right peasantry wanted an authoritarian and agrarian society. This study examines their singular lack of success and the enduring French perception of themselves as a peasant nation.
This volume combines elements of human geography, historical demography, economic history and folk culture in a depiction of a great agrarian cycle, lasting from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. It describes the conflicts and contradictions of a traditional peasant society in whic the rise in population was not matched by increases in wealth and food production.
This lucid and wide-ranging survey is the first study in English to identify a distinctive urban phase in the history of the early modern crowd. Through close analysis of the behaviour of protesters and authorities in more than fifteen seventeenth-century French cities, William Beik explores a full spectrum of urban revolt from spontaneous individual actions to factional conflicts, culminating in the dramatic Ormee movement in Bordeaux. The 'culture of retribution' was a form of popular politics with roots in the religious wars and implications for future democratic movements. Vengeful crowds stoned and pillaged not only intrusive tax collectors but even their own magistrates, whom they viewed as civic traitors. By examining in depth this interaction of crowds and authorities, Professor Beik has provided a central contribution to the study of urban power structures and popular culture.