Abstract
The census-compilers of the nineteenth century decided that rural communities were those with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants: in 1831, some 26.35 million people (81 per cent of the total). Such a measure included many people whose occupations were not agricultural (such as artisans, teachers and priests); conversely, many larger places included people who directly worked the land in the surrounding countryside. A more useful, if still arbitrary, measure of ‘rural’ would be communities of up to 10,000 people. While some small towns were essentially industrial, most were directly dependent on the rural economy. About one-tenth of the national population lived in these country towns. France was essentially a rural society.1
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Notes
Evelyn B. Ackerman, Village on the Seine: Tradition and Change in Bonnières, 1815–1914 (Ithaca, NY, 1978); Duby and Wallon, France rurale, vol. 3, 80–5.
Hugh D. Clout, ‘Agricultural progress and environmental degradation in the Pyrénées-Orientales during the nineteenth century’, Bulletin de la Société royale de géographie d’Anvers 83 (1972–3), 31–53.
Jean-Claude Farcy, ‘Le Temps libre au village (1830–1930)’, in Alain Corbin (ed.), L’Avènement des loisirs 1850–1960 (Paris and Rome, 1995 ), 230–74.
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© 2004 Peter McPhee
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McPhee, P. (2004). Rural Change and Continuity, 1815–1845. In: A Social History of France 1789–1914. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-3777-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-3777-3_9
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