Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914France 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. |
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User Review - jsburbidge - LibraryThingThis is a very carefully composed and meticulously researched work on the transition from the traditional to the modern way of life in rural France between the Franco-Prussian War and the Great War ... Read full review
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User Review - chrock - LibraryThingThe first section of this book is a completely brilliant survey of sources showing French rural life pre-1870. The same method (endless accretion of detail, beautifully managed) didn't work quite so ... Read full review
Contents
A Country of Savages | 3 |
The Mad Belief s | 23 |
The Kings Foot | 30 |
Alone with Ones Fellows | 41 |
From Justice Lord Deliver Us | 50 |
A Wealth of Tongues | 67 |
France One and Indivisible | 95 |
The Working of the Land | 115 |
Schools and Schooling | 303 |
DieuEstilFrancais? | 339 |
The Priests and the People | 357 |
The Way of All Feasts | 377 |
Charivaris | 399 |
Markets and Fairs | 407 |
Veillees | 413 |
The Oral Wisdom | 419 |
Give Us This Day | 130 |
From Subsistence to Habitat | 155 |
The Family | 167 |
THE AGENCIES OF CHANGE | 193 |
Roads Roads and Still More Roads | 195 |
Keeping Up with Yesterday | 221 |
RusinUrbe | 232 |
Peasants and Politics | 241 |
An Industry of the Poor | 278 |
Military Service | 292 |
Fled Is That Music | 429 |
Le Papier Qui Parle | 452 |
Wring Out the Old | 471 |
Cultures and Civilization | 485 |
Appendix | 498 |
Notes | 505 |
| 573 | |
| 599 | |
Common terms and phrases
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References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 History e-book project |
| Author | Eugen Weber |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | Stanford University Press, 1976 |
| ISBN | 0804710139, 9780804710138 |
| Length | 615 pages |
| Subjects | › › Social Science / Sociology / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |