Peasant and French
Cultural Contact in Rural France during the Nineteenth Century

Describes the negotiation of French national identity during the nineteenth century in terms of the relationship between the French and their rural cultures.

James R. Lehning (Author)

9780521462105, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 April 1995

254 pages, 16 b/w illus. 10 tables
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.3 cm, 0.506 kg

'... the book provides some valuable appraisals of perceptions of peasent life and offers an excellent bibliography'. Hugh Clout, The Agricultural History Review

Peasant and French examines the relationship between French peasants and the development of the French national identity during the nineteenth century. Drawing on methods from cultural studies and social history and a broad range of literary and archival sources, Lehning argues that modern France has in part defined itself as different from the peasantry. Rather than seeing rural French history as a process in which peasants lose their identities and become French, he views it as an ongoing process of cultural contact in which both peasants and the French nation negotiate their identities in relation to the other. The book suggests a new kind of rural history that places the countryside in its national context rather than in isolation.

1. Introductory positions
2. The French nation and its peasants
3. The landscape in the early nineteenth century
4. Changes in the landscape
5. Gender, places, people
6. The ambiguities of schooling
7. Inside the parish church
8. A new site: electoral politics
9. Conclusion: towards a new rural history.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], European history [HBJD]