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Change in Rural France in the Period of Industrialization, 1830–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Paul Hohenberg
Paul Hohenberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

France has been well characterized by Raymond Aron, following de Tocqueville, as Immuable et changeante. Nowhere does variability (across space) combine more strongly with stability (in time) than in the economy of rural France in the nineteenth century. Judging again by titles, we must give higher marks to the author of The Eternal Order of the Fields than to the man who argued that Capitalism and Agriculture were growing ever closer, to the advantage of the former.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-first Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 219 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1972

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References

1 Paris, Calmann-Levy, 1959.

2 Maspétiol, R., L'ordre éternel des champs (Paris: Librairie de Médicis, 1946).Google ScholarDesbons, G., Capitalisme et agriculture (Paris: M. Rivière, 1912).Google Scholar

3 Data on agricultural density in 1882, where the denominator is expressed in “standard” hectares, are highly correlated, across departments, with the inverse of agricultural labor productivity, which implies that the process of standardizing land amounts to weighting it by the value.of what is actually grown on it. The data are from Goreux, L. M., “Les migrations agricoles en France depuis un siècle et leurs relation avec certain facteurs économiques,” Etudes et Conjoncture, XI (1956), 360–361. The correlation is noted in the present author's unpublished study of migration and natural change in fifty-eight departments of rural France, 1836–1901, referred to hereafter as Rural Migration. Note that ifGoogle Scholar

where T, N, and Q are standard land, labor, and output, respectively.

4 The cadastral data, aside from the difficulties inherent in their use, do not even refer to properties but to côtes foncières, or units of property, of which several may form a holding or vice versa.

5 See J. C. Toutain, “Le produit de l'agriculture française de 1700 à 1958,” Cahiers de l'I.S.E.A. (Série AF, no. 2) Number 115, 1961, 95–110, for capital estimates.

6 Examples range from Sirol, J., Le rôle de l'agriculture dans les fluctuations économiques (Paris: Sirey, 1942)Google Scholar, to Pautard, J., Les disparités régionales dans la croissance de l'agriculture française (Paris: Gauthiers-Villars, 1965).Google Scholar Historians who have written in this tradition include Wright, Gordon, Rural Revolution in France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, and Barral, P., Les agrariens français de Méline à Pisani (Paris: A. Colin, 1968).Google Scholar But the classic work remains Augé-Laribé, M., La politique agricole de la France de 1880 à 1940 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950).Google Scholar

7 An outstanding recent example is Brunet, R., Les campagnes toulousaines (Toulouse, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, 1965), covering large parts of three departments, but with careful delimitation of sub-regions.Google Scholar

8 See, especially, the work of H. Mendras and Lawrence Wylie.

9 , L. Wylie, Ed., Chanzeaux (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 157Google Scholar, points out that large numbers of “flowthroughs” have spent time in Chanzeaux, their passage either unrecorded in census data altogether, or compressed into a small net change. See also Wylie, L., “Demographic Change in Roussillon,” in Pitt-Rivers, Julian, ed., Mediterranean Countrymen (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1963).Google Scholar

10 Rural Migration.

11 Ariès, P., Histoire des populations françaises (Paris: Editions A. Self, 1948) describes small coal-mining towns in the Pas-de-Calais, and the new working-class neighborhoods of Paris (where in-migration also contributed), in the 1870–1914 period. See pp. 202–67 and 268–368, respectively.Google Scholar

12 Only the southern part of the Massif Central, the Nièvre, and the Côtes-du-Nord are in this position. See Rural Migration, which excludes high mountains and the Mediterranean coast.

13 Brasse-Brossard, L., Le destin de l'agriculture française (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1949), 59. These official data must be viewed only as approximations.Google Scholar

14 Banal, p. 28.

15 Brasse-Brossard, p. 62.

16 Franklin, S. H., The European Peasantry (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 4 refers to the “agriculturalization of the countryside” due to loss of rural-based industries.Google Scholar

17 This discussion relies heavily on Toutain.

18 Ibid., p. 200–01. The rural population reached a peak in 1851.

19 Ibid., pp. 139–44.

20 Ibid., p. 207.

21 Ibid., p. 170.

22 On Normandy, see Flatrès, P., La région de l'Ouest (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964)Google Scholar, and Vezin, Ch., L'évolution de l'économie rurale de la Manche depuis un siècle, 1830–1930 (Paris, Law Thesis, 1931).Google ScholarMartin, G., “Evolution de l'agriculture en Auxois de 1840–1939,” Cahiers de l'Association Interuniversitaire de l'Est, XI (1966), describes the transition in a small region of Burgundy.Google Scholar

23 Wright, Gordon, France in Modern Times (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1960), pp. 146–47.Google Scholar

24 de Lavergne, L., Economie rurale de la France (Paris, 1877), documents the active presence of landowning notables in the Anjou and the Maine (p. 189), and in Brittany (p. 204). See also Wylie, Chanzeaux, pp. 36–59.Google Scholar

25 Two Norman departments and three in the Garonne, all quite rural, display this remarkable deficit, while only 24 of 58 rural departments gained more than 10% in the twenty-five year period (1861 population used as the base). See Rural Migration.

26 Ibid. Almost 400,000 people were lost through “net migration” from 58 departments with an 1851 population of 22.4 million, about 80,000 more than left in the 1886–1891 period. Note that “net migration” in French census data is the residual between actual change and the recorded excess of births over deaths, and thus captures all the errors and omissions.

27 Kindleberger, C. P., “Group Behavior and International Trade,” Journal of Political Economy, LIX (1951), 30–46. Toutain, p. 102, records a slight drop in numbers of farm animals, and a slight gain in total weight, from 1882/1884 to 1885/1894.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 It is commonly accepted that, ceteris paribus, family-size limitation was practiced more by land-owning peasants than by other agriculturists. See, for example, Rapport de l'enquête agricole de 1866 (Paris: Ministère de l'Agriculture, 1868), p. 56Google Scholar; Baudrillart, H., Les populations agricoles de la France. 3ème Serie, Les populations du Midi (Paris, 1893), 381. However, there is no clear relation between the rate of natural change and the (spotty) data on prevailing land-tenure arrangements. See note 52 below.Google Scholar

29 Collins, E. J. T., “Labour Supply and Demand in European Agriculture 1800–1880,” in Jones, E. L. and Woolf, S. J., Eds., Agrarian Change and Economic Development (London: Methuen, 1969), 66.Google Scholar For France, Pinchemel, P., Structures sociales et dépopulation rurale dans les campagnes picardes de 1836 à 1936 (Paris: A. Colin, 1957)Google Scholar, studies a part of the Somme and Deguiral, R., “Essai sur les conditions économiques, sociales et démographiques des pays de Garonne au cours du XlXème siècle,” Revue d'Histoire Economique et Sociale, XXIX (1951), 231–34, considers the loss of metal and textile industries.Google Scholar

30 Lavergne, p. 180, for the Loire valley; Deguiral, p. 231–34, for the Garonne.

31 Mendras, H., La fin des paysans (Paris: S.E.D.E.I.S., 1967) p. 303Google Scholar; Chatelain, quoted in Friedmann, G., Ed., Villes et campagnes (Paris: A. Colin, 1953), p. 49.Google Scholar

32 The classic study is Chambers, J. D., “Enclosure and Labour Supply in the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review, 2nd Series, V (1953).Google Scholar But the point was noted as early as the Rapport 1866, p. 55. However, one still finds the old view that the new agriculture chased labor from the land. See Clément, P. and Vieille, P., “L'exode rural,” Etudes de Comptabilité Nationale (1960), 74.Google Scholar

33 Collins, p. 72, states that average weekly wages in France rose by 60% from 1850 to 1882.

34 Ibid., pp. 88–90. The point in the text is made by Brunet, p. 340.

35 Faucher, D., Géographie agraire (Paris: Eds. Génin, 1949), 146Google Scholar, argues that the pastoral economy has been a response to labor shortages that could not be countered by mechanization. On the changes in Normandy, see Vézin, p. 44. Reinhard, M. and Armengaud, A., Histoire générale de la population mondiale (Paris: Editions Montchrestien, 1961), 255, were, I believe, mistaken in attributing depopulation in Normandy to the shift to grass (as well as to loss of non-agricultural employment). The timing indicates that low natality came first. See Rural Migration.Google Scholar

36 Moreau, J. P., La vie rurale dans le sud-est du Bassin Parisien (Dijon: Bernigaud et Privat, 1958), p. 141, mentions the resistance of large landowners to rural credit out of fear that it will enable their laborers to buy land.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., pp. 28–281.

38 Gottmann, J., Documents pour servir à l'étude de la structure agraire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964), p. 293.Google Scholar

39 Rapport 1866, p. 12.

40 Mendras, , Sociologie de la campagne française (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), p. 82, emphasizes the age-old monopoly of hunting rights that nobles enjoyed and peasants resented. Wylie, Chanzeaux, p. 88, notes that peasants bought whatever and whenever they could. The point also runs through Gottmann, e.g., p. 134.Google Scholar

41 Brunet, p. 355.

42 Wylie, Chanzeaux, pp. 56–57.

43 See, for example, Chadefaud, M., Evolution des structures agraires dans le canton de Verteillac (Bordeaux: Editions Bière, 1965), pp. 18–21.Google Scholar

44 Lavergne, p. 307.

45 Kindleberger, C. P., Economic Growth in France and Britain (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 141–45.Google Scholar For discussions of the excessively detailed contracts, particularly in share-cropping, see Monographies des Communes. Merville (Paris: Sociètè des Agriculteurs de France, 1898), pp. 130–31Google Scholar; also Dumont, R., Voyages en France d'un agronome (Paris: Eds. Génin, 1956), pp. 458–59.Google Scholar

46 Brunet, p. 211.

47 For a vivid portrayal of peasant tenacity and cunning (set in the July Monarchy), see Balzac's Les Paysans.

48 Barral, p. 71. For evidence on the difficulties and high costs of buying land, see Augé-Laribé, Politique, p. 207; also Yole, J., Le malaise paysan (Paris: Editions Spes, 1930), p. 86.Google Scholar

49 Brunet, p. 399; Moreau, p. 141; Gottmann, p. 83.

50 Kindleberger, France and Britain, p. 45; Augé-Laribé, M., La révolution agricole (Paris: Albin Michel, 1955), p. 185.Google Scholar

51 Rapport 1866, p. 15. Despite some conflicting evidence, the equal inheritance provisions of the law were clearly observed in the main.

52 The connection between small families and peasant ownership, though frequently noted, is far from absolute. Counterexamples include Lower Normandy and the center west, regions of tenancy, and parts of the Massif Central where freeholds dominated since before the 19th century. The argument here is that access to ownership might depress family size, in the words of Ibid., p. 56 (emphasis supplied).

53 Yole, p. 108.

54 Mendras, La fin, p. 226, but the observation is a commonplace.

55 Franklin, pp. 9–10.

56 Yole, p. 96.

57 Brasse-Brossard, pp. 62–63.

58 Pautard, pp. 156–159.

59 Mendras, Sociologie, p. 48 notes that a small field prevented plowing from becoming too monotonous a task. See also Gottmann, passim. Viau, P., Révolution agricole et propriété fonciére (Paris: Economie et Humanisme, 1962), p. 78, suggests that long familiarity with a piece of land could make it yield more.Google Scholar

60 Wylie, Chanzeaux, p. 129.

61 On the diffusion of techniques, see Mendras, La fin, pp. 37–65.

62 Bairoch, P., Révolution industrielle et sous-développement (Paris: SEDES, 1963).Google Scholar

63 Yole, pp. 24–71 shows, in two detailed case studies from the Vendée, how tenancy helped a family prosper, while acquiring the land they farm led to ruin. Large families accentuated the sharp difference in the two outcomes.

64 Wylie, Chanzeaux, p. 165, indicates that migrants are concentrated at the top and bottom of the social scale.

65 See Monographies des Communes. Peyrusse (Paris: Soc. des Agriculteurs de France, 1898), pp. 196–97, discussing migration to Décazeville, later famous for its dying pains.Google Scholar

66 Wylie, Chanzeaux, p. 334. Italics in text.

67 The quote is from Ariès, p. 113.

68 Rural migration. Though the data pertain only to net natural change, the variations almost surely reflect differences in marital fertility.