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On Rural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France: The Example of Rodès, 1789–1851

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Peter McPhee
Peter McPhee
Affiliation:
Victoria University of Wellington
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Extract

The Route nationale 116 runs west from Perpignan, away from the Mediterranean and up the valley of the Tet River towards the heights of the Pyrenees. For about thirty kilometres, the road follows the river through a district known as the Riberal, a densely populated area of substantial villages and bourgs surrounded by river flats which for centuries have nourished up to six crops of vegetables annually. Just past the peach-growing town of Ille-sur-Têt, the valley narrows to no more than a gorge, and the road has to diverge to skirt a rugged granite bluff and cross over a pass called the Col de Ternère. As the road swings back around the other side of the bluff to rejoin the river and begin its steep climb through the conflent to the highlands, it passes a large cluster of ochre and white houses, with their characteristically southern orange-brown tiles, clinging to the lower part of the hill.

Type
The Politics of Protest in Rural Communities
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , April 1981 , pp. 248 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1981

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References

This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented to the first George Rudé Seminar on French History, at Melbourne University on 22 April 1978. I particularly wish to thank John Merriman, Rhys Issac, and Lewis Siegelbaum for their constructive criticisms, and to acknowledge the hospitality of the administrators of Rodès.

1 In Catalan, the village is known as Rodés, and in the nineteenth century it was variously spelled Rhodès, Rhodez, and Rodez.

2 A convenient collection of population statistics, from the eleventh century to 1968, is by Batlle, M. and Gual, R., “‘Fogatges’Catalans,” Revue “Terra Nostra” (Prades), no. 11 (1973). For Rodès, the original census returns for 1841 and 1856 are in Archives Départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, M 2520, 2479 (hereafter cited as A.D.). Series M (Administration générate et économie) is currently being reclassified.Google Scholar

3 Martimort, J., “Le bassin de Rodès“ (Diplôme d'ètudes supérieures (Géographie)(Montpellier, 1964))Google Scholar. The standard geography of the department is by Sorre, M., Les Pyrénées méditerranéennes. Etude de géographie biologique (Paris, 1913).Google Scholar

4 A.D. U 1530. This file contains the judicial dossier on the incident.

5 A.D. 3M′73. See also 3M′7O.

6 A.D. U 1530.

7 A.D. M3749, decree of 20 February 1850. The mayor and deputy were again dismissed after the coup of December 1851. Ibid., decree of 7 December 1851. One of the judges in the court case was François Saléta, who had been involved in an acrimonious political and personal struggle since 1830 with Edouard Bonet, a republican activist in Prades. See Lapassat, R., ed.,“Les mémoires du citoyen Edouard Bonet,“ Conflent, no. 10 (1962): 168–74.Google Scholar

8 Among the best regional studies of this period are Agulhon, M., La République au village (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar; Vigier, P., La Seconde République dans la région alpine (Paris, 1953)Google Scholar; Loubére, L. A., “The Emergence of the Extreme Left in Lower Languedoc, 1848–1851,” American Historical Review LXXIII (1968): 1019–1951CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marcilhacy, C., “Les caractères de la crise sociale et politique dans le département du Loiret,” Revue d'historie moderne et contemporaine VI (1959): 5–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The best general history is Agulhon, M., 1848 ou l'apprentissage de la République, 1848–1852 (Paris, 1973).Google Scholar

9 For this political repression, see Merriman, J.M., The Agony of the Republic. The Repression of the Left in Revolutionary France 1848–1851 (New Haven, 1978)Google Scholar; and the articles by Merriman, J.M., Machin, H., and Wright, V. in Revolution and Reaction. 1848 and the Second French Republic, Price, R., ed. (London, 1975).Google Scholar

10 Two recent syntheses of rural politics in the nineteenth century are the chapters by Agulhon, M. in Historie de la France rurale, Duby, G. and Wallon, H., eds. (Paris, 1976), vol. 3Google Scholar; and Zeldin, T., France 1848–1945 (Oxford, 1973), vol. 1, chs. 9, 14,17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. They may be contrasted with the recent thesis by Weber, E., Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914 (Stanford, 1976), ch. XV.Google Scholar

11 See, for example, Higonnet, P.L.-R., Pont-de-Montvert. Social Structure and Politics in a French Village 1700–1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), ch. VI.Google Scholar

12 One example of this is the useful article by Bouillon, J., “Les Démocrates-Socialistes aux Elections de 1849,” Revue française de science politique VI (1956): 70–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bouillon sees the votes only as conscious support for the program of the Left, and explains the radicalization of the countryside as the work of propaganda (p. 89). The national program of the Left is reproduced in Kayser, J., Les grandes batailles du radicalisme (Paris, 1962), annexes.Google Scholar

13 A.D. M 3123. This figure is the estimate of the local justice of the peace in 1848.

14 The two documents were reproduced in Etoile du Roussillon, a legitimist paper published in Perpignan, on 21 November 1849 and 17 April 1850.

15 Ibid., 12 September 1850. Two good brief analyses of the nature of the populist royalism common in the Midi at midcentury are Agulhon, 1848, pp. 113–25;Cox, M.R., “The Liberal Legitimists and the Party of Order under the Second French Republic,” French Historical Studies V (1968): 454–59.Google Scholar

16 A.D. 2M′6O. Indeed, the municipal council of Rodès was chastised by the Etoile du Roussillon on 12 September 1850 for voting to extend Louis Napoleon's powers in order to avoid the 1852 elections.

17 For the plebiscite results, see A.D.2M′67, 68.

18 A.D. 2M559.

19 Ibid.

20 Archives Communales de Rodes (hereafter cited as A.C.), déliberations du conseil municipal.

21 The numbers of Rodésiens on voting registers under the Second Republic were 180–95.

22 Archives Nationals (hereafter cited as A.N.) BB30393, dossier 233.

23 A.D. 2M′68.

24 This analysis is based on the documents seized by the police and held in A.D.U 1530. An excellent brief analysis of the ideology of the Left is found in Agulhon, 1848, pp. 103–13.

25 The priest of Rodes since 1845, Jean Bataille, was actively engaged in legitimist politics. Though the anticlericalism of the republicans of Rodès was apparently not expressed in personal attacks on Bataille, in neighboring Bouleternère there had been a long-standing and at times violent feud. A.D. 1V9.

26 A.D. U 1530. Six hundred delegates from all over the department attended this meeting. A.D. 3M′73. On Joigneaux, see Magraw, R., “Pierre Joigneaux and Socialist Propaganda in the French Countryside, 1849–1851,” French Historical Studies X (1978): 599–640.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 A particularly interesting source for political conflicts before 1848 is volume 3 of the Journal of Maréchal B.deCastellane (Paris, 1896)Google Scholar, then commander of the garrison at Perpignan.

28 A.D. 2M559; A.C. déliberations. There are some interesting insights into the significance of such displays of popular sovereignty by Reddy, W.H., “The Textile Trade and the Language of the Crowd at Rouen, 1752–1871,” Past and Present XLLIV (1977): 62–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Results of municipal elections in these years are in A.D. 2M529, 39, 59, 63, 66.

30 There is abundant evidence of poverty in the report to the Enquete sur le travail agricole et industriel in 1848. A.D. M 3123. The 1841 census listed six destitute widows, and in 1856 ten women were listed as having “enfants en nourrice,” one way of supplementing a tight family budget.

31 McPhee, P., “Popular Culture, Symbolism and Rural Radicalism in Nineteenth Century France,” Journal of Peasant Studies V (1978): 238–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 For examples of such an argument, see Dupeux, G., Aspects de Vhistoire sociale etpolitique du Loir-et-Cher 1848–1914 (Paris, 1962), p. 377Google Scholar; Loubère, , “Emergence of Extreme Left,” pp. 1026, 1039Google Scholar; Price, R., The Second French Republic. A Social History (London, 1972), p. 203.Google Scholar

33 For some outstanding demonstrations of the way previous experiences informed popular protest, see Rudé, G., The Crowd in History (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class, 2d ed. (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, E.J., “Peasants and politics,” Journal of Peasant Studies I (1973): 3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 A.D. 3M'62.

35 Ibid. Indeed, the legitimists who won the municipal elections of 31 July 1848 claimed that Tixeire had tried to postpone them until 15 August, the fete patronale, in the hope of profiting from the explosive mixture of politics and popular culture. A.D. 2M559.

36 A.D. M 1832. The same year, Mestres also lost a political pension which was being paid to him because his father had been imprisoned under the White Terror in 1816. A.D. 3M′77.

37 A.D. 3M′73.

38 A.D. 2M′66. Escanye's “profession de foi” is in A.D. 2M′6O. A similar pattern emerged in the by-election of 4 June 1848 when Genoude stood as a legitimist candidate; in the section of Ille he won only 3.3 percent of votes cast, but in the section of Vinga he attracted 40.8 percent. A.D. 2M′66.

39 A.D. 2M′65. In May 1849 the whole canton voted at Vinga; the 61.6 percent won by the republican slate no doubt disguises similar internal contrasts as those in 1848 outlined in the text above. A.D. 2M′66.

40 For reports of this phenomenon, see A.D. U 196; A.N. BB20155; Etoile du Roussillon, 13 April 1851; Emancipation (Toulouse), 15 April 1851.Google Scholar

41 See, for example, Agulhon's comparison of the villages of le Cannet and Baudinard in the Var, , in La République au village, pp. 361–75Google Scholar; and Loubere, “Emergence of Extreme Left.”

42 Agulhon, , La République au village, p. 12.Google Scholar

43 For population figures, see Batlle and Gual, “‘Fogatges’ Catalans.” There was only one family living on an outlying mas, and there is no evidence that its members had involvement in politics. It should be stressed here that Rodès can be considered micro-urban only in the sense of having a variety of specialized occupations and public places in a confined space; it was very much a small rural community, however, in the predominance of agricultural concerns and the face-to-face nature of personal interactions.

44 See Marcilhacy, “Les Caractères”; Tilly, C., The Vendée (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).Google Scholar

45 For a discussion of the way this occurred during the Second Republic, see McPhee, “Popular Culture”; Bezucha, R., “Mask of Revolution: A Study of Popular Culture during the Second French Republic,” in Revolution and Reaction,Price, , ed., pp. 236–53Google Scholar; Agulhon, , 1848, pp. 108–10, 128–30Google Scholar. Among those who assume linguistic and cultural particularism to be an obstacle to politicization are Armengaud, A., Les populations de L'Est-Aquitain au début de l'époque contemporarine (Paris, 1961), p.462Google Scholar; Price, , ed., Revolution and Reaction, intro., pp. 41–53.Google Scholar

46 Indeed, one of them at least must have been literate in both Catalan and French, a remarkable achievement for a peasant in a small community.

47 For a discussion of the significance of literacy and proximity to written culture, see Literacy in Traditional Societies, Goody, J., ed.(Cambridge, 1968), intro. and ch. 1.Google Scholar

48 For examples of the application of this idea, see Agulhon, , La République au village, pp. 471–83Google Scholar; Armengaud, , Les populations, p. 461Google Scholar. The republicanism of the Pyrén´ees-Orientales is often explained by the influence of the Arago family, for example, by Tudesq, A.-J., Les grands notables en France (1840–1849), 2 vols. (Paris, 1964), 2:1087Google Scholar. But cf McPhee, P., “The Seedtime of the Republic: Society and Politics in the Pyrenees-Orientales, 1848–1851,” Australian Journal of Politics and History XXII 1976):209.Google Scholar

49 This is the argument proposed by Price, , Second French Republic, p. 2.Google Scholar

50 Vidal, P., Historie de la Révolution française dans le département des Pyrénées-Orientales, 3 vols. (Perpignan, 1885–1889)Google Scholar; E., and Delonca, L., Un village en Roussillon: Ilia terra de Rosselló (Perpignan, 1947).Google Scholar

51 Fervel, J.-N., Campagnes de la Révolution fran¸aise dans les Pyrénées-Orientales 1793–1794–1795,2 vols. (Paris, 1851), vol. 1Google Scholar. See also Greer, D., The Incidence of the Emigration during the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1951).Google Scholar

52 A.C. déliberations.

53 Ibid.

54 A.D. 3M′62.

55 Note the comments on the innovatory nature of midcentury developments by Vigier, P., “Un quart de siècle de recherches historiques sur la Province,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française XLVII (1975):637Google Scholar. The most convincing demonstration of the role of the past in conditioning political behavior in the nineteenth century is by Bois, P., Paysans de l'Ouest (le Mans, 1960), pp. 30–31 and passim.Google Scholar

56 This table is based on an analysis of the Etat civil for Rodès and the census returns of 1841 and 1856.

57 Fine-Souriac, A.,“A propos de la famille-souche pyrénéenne au XlXe siècle: quelques reflexions de méthode,” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine XXV (1978):99–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 In Rodès the number of menages simples declined from 59.64 percent in 1841 to 48.01 percent in 1856; moreover, when families are examined separately, it is apparent that the extended family and multiple households were the norm to which families tended to revert.

59 Analysis of landholding is based on the cadastre and its register; the latter was uncovered, in near complete decay, in a loft in an abandoned house in Rodès. Fortunately, most pages were decipherable.

60 A.D. Etat civil, Rodès.

61 The information which follows is from Capeille, A., Dictionnaire de biographies roussillonnaises (Perpignan, 1910–1914), pp. 290–93 and passim.Google Scholar

62 Marguerite's uncle had also emigrated, serving with emigrf and Spanish forces until his death at the siege of Gerona in 1803. In a corner of the mairie at Rodes is a rem arkable farm register begun by Marguerite in 1821, testifying to her interest in management and her desire for noble respectability. Even allowing for inexact measurement, it seems that the Cornets were expanding their holdings: Marguerite estimated them at 313.75 journaux in 1821, while an enquiry of 1775 had recorded them as 55.5. See Guibeaud, J., “Enquête économique sur le Roussillon en 1775,” Bulletin de la Société Agricole, Scientifique et Littéraire (Perpignan) XLIII (1902):291–336.Google Scholar

63 A.D. 2M559.

64 Ibid. It is significant that the complaint was ignored. This file also contains evidence of a similar complaint in 1843.

65 This analysis is based on the cadastre and register described in note 59. The analysis is of the land actually owned by Rodésiens (63.86 percent of the territory of the commune). The marginal land on the borders of the commune was mostly owned by proprietors from neighboring communes.

66 A.D. 2M′60. Price, , Second French Republic, pp. 23–26Google Scholar, has suggested that peasants were those with 0–10 hectares (all except the top 6 proprietors in Rodés), and that those with less than 1 hectare (about 2.5 acres) would need outside work (122 of the 226 landholders in Rodes were in this category).

67 For definitions of peasants and the transitional nature of this social group, see Shanin, T., “Peasantry: Delineation of a Sociological Concept and a Field of Study,” Peasant Studies Newsletter II (1973): 1–8Google Scholar; Mintz, S., “A Note on the Definition of Peasantries,” Journal of Peasant Studies I (1973):91–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolf, E., Peasants (New York, 1968), ch. 1.Google Scholar

68 A.D. 2M525/2.

69 A.D. U 1530.

70 For a discussion of the continuing domination by legitimist landholders of the political life of the Est-Aquitain under the Second Republic, see Armengaud, , Les populations, pp. 334, 353 and passim.Google Scholar

71 Note here the stress placed by Cobban, A., The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1964), p.89Google Scholar, on the need to go beyond figures for land ownership to an analysis of the type and wealth of land owned.

72 Analysis based on Rodès cadastre and register; see note 59, above.

73 Guibeaud, “Enquête économique.”

74 A.D. M 3113. The approximate nature of all these departmentwide surveys of winegrowing must be stressed; however, the general trend is clear. On the general connection between viticulture and radicalism, see Loubère, L.A., Radicalism in Mediterranean France: Its Rise and Decline(Albany, N. Y., 1974).Google Scholar

75 A.D. 3M*prime;87.

76 Such a correlation is the least convincing aspect of Soboul, A.'s suggestive essays, “Les troubles agraires de 1848,” in his Paysans, sans-culottes et Jacobins (Paris, 1966), pp. 307–50Google Scholar; and “The French Rural Community in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Past and Present X (1956):78–95.Google Scholar

77 McPhee, “Seed-time of the Republic.”

78 Are we then, in the case of the largest proprietors, observing a survival of old Règime agriculture which served to retard capitalist agricultural development in the nineteenth century? And were the winegrowing peasants the initators of agricultural as well as political transformation? See Warner, C.K., “Soboul and the Peasants,” Peasant Studies Newsletter IV (1975) :l–5Google Scholar; Soboul, A., “Sur le mouvement paysan dans la Révolution française,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française, no. 211 (1973), esp. pp. 97–101.Google Scholar

79 For evidence of activity in Rodès in 1850–51, see A.D. 3M′7O; A.N. BB30392B, dossier 195 bis; A.N.BB30393, dossier 233; Etoile du Roussillon, 4 May 1851.Google Scholar

80 A.D. 3M′88, 89. Though Rodès was a somewhat different community by the 1870s, the continuity of personnel is suggested by the presence of six of those arrested in 1850 on theprovisional municipal committee after the Revolution of 1870, and by the election in 1874 as mayor and deputy, repectively, of Jean Roger and Julien Tixeire, whose fathers had filled the same positions briefly in 1830.

81 Marx, K., The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York, 1963), p. 123.Google Scholar

82 Ibid., p. 125. Two useful correctives to the common conception of Marx's hostility to the peasantry are Duggett, M., “Marx on Peasants,” Journal of Peasant Studies II (1975): 159–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hammen, O.J., “Marx and the Agrarian Question,”American Historical Review LXXVII (1972): 679–704CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Only the “sack of potatoes” passage is noted - and accepted - by Weber, , Peasants into Frenchmen, pp. 244–45.Google Scholar

83 Marx, , Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 127–30.Google Scholar

84 Marx, K., The Class Struggles in France 1848–1850 (Moscow, 1952), p. 113.Google Scholar