Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernization Of Rural France 1870-1914
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In a landmark work of modern historical scholarship, Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen chronicles one of the most profound social transformations in European history — the forging of a unified French national identity from the scattered, dialect-speaking, tradition-bound peasant communities of rural France between 1870 and 1914. Weber argues, with meticulous and persuasive force, that the majority of people living in rural France at the onset of the Third Republic were not yet truly French in any meaningful cultural or national sense, and that it was the twin engines of compulsory military service and state-sponsored education that ultimately melded these fragmented communities into a coherent nation. Weber's style is authoritative yet deeply humane, weaving together vast archival research with vivid anecdotal detail to present a portrait of a society in breathtaking flux. Drawing on local records, folklore, and administrative reports, he illustrates how roads, railways, and the spread of the French language dismantled centuries of regional insularity and reshaped the very consciousness of the French peasantry. A towering work of social history that remains indispensable to any understanding of how modern nations are made, Peasants into Frenchmen raises an unsettling question that resonates far beyond its time and place: what does it truly cost a people to become a nation?
Author: Eugen Weber
Format: Paperback
Published: 1979, Chatto & Windus
Genre: European history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In a landmark work of modern historical scholarship, Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen chronicles one of the most profound social transformations in European history — the forging of a unified French national identity from the scattered, dialect-speaking, tradition-bound peasant communities of rural France between 1870 and 1914. Weber argues, with meticulous and persuasive force, that the majority of people living in rural France at the onset of the Third Republic were not yet truly French in any meaningful cultural or national sense, and that it was the twin engines of compulsory military service and state-sponsored education that ultimately melded these fragmented communities into a coherent nation. Weber's style is authoritative yet deeply humane, weaving together vast archival research with vivid anecdotal detail to present a portrait of a society in breathtaking flux. Drawing on local records, folklore, and administrative reports, he illustrates how roads, railways, and the spread of the French language dismantled centuries of regional insularity and reshaped the very consciousness of the French peasantry. A towering work of social history that remains indispensable to any understanding of how modern nations are made, Peasants into Frenchmen raises an unsettling question that resonates far beyond its time and place: what does it truly cost a people to become a nation?