Revolution and Environment in Southern France: Peasants, Lords, and Murder in the Corbières 1780-1830

McPhee, Peter

ISBN 10: 0198207174 / ISBN 13: 9780198207177

Published by Clarendon Press, 1999

About this Item

From publisher s library. Faint shelfwear on dustjacket. Library marking on the jacket, no marking on spine. Bookplate on inside cover and library stamp. Otherwise, book is new and unread. Pages clean and crisp, spine unbroken. 0420B. Seller Inventory # A0420-232

Bibliographic Details

Title: Revolution and Environment in Southern ...

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

In the forty years after the Revolution of 1789, the peasants and former seigneurs of the isolated and arid region of the Corbières, Languedoc, fought a protracted battle over the consequences of revolutionary change. Central to this conflict was control of the rough hillsides or garrigues used as sheep pastures, which the poorer peasantry seized and cleared. This social conflict culminated in the murder of two nobles by a band of villagers in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1830.
Professor McPhee's book highlights two significant new perspectives on the Revolution of 1789. First, the actions of poorer peasants in massive land-clearance occasioned an impassioned debate about the environmental consequences of uncontrolled tree-felling. Secondly, much of the cleared land was used for vineyards, suggesting the importance of far-reaching changes initiated by the poorest sections of the community.

Review:

This concise and elegant book engages important issues in the history of rural France by analyzing in depth the impact of the French Revolution on a small region of lower Languedoc known as the Corbières ... McPhee's study breaks new ground in its analysis of the environmental impact of the Revolution on the Corbières. (Journal of Modern History)

Peter McPhee is one of our most original and committed social historians of the French Revolution. In this absorbing micro-history of the Corbières region of south-western France, he pours new wine into old ideological bottles. (Gwynne Lewis, Times Literary Supplement)

Combining social, political, and environmental analysis with a final compelling tale, this book advances our understanding of the rural revolution in France on several fronts. (Journal of Inderdisciplinary History)

The book's broad coverage, and its astute linkage of local and national events, will certainly appeal to historians of the revolutionary era ... creative and eminently readable. (Agricultural History)