Social history

This book unravels how the agricultural sector and the rural world in Europe became more and more organised within capitalism in the years 1870-1940 and this with the aim of tackling the important challenges of the time. The focus is not so much on the myriad of individual farmers’ actions but on the collective efforts undertaken through the interplay between the state and the agricultural civil society.

A wide variety of actors from landowners associations farmers’ unions cooperatives scientific institutions and researchers to farmers themselves (or civil society) played a critical role in the process of drafting a policy agenda developing agricultural policies and were instrumental in implementing them in close relationship with the state. The result was a metamorphosis from mobilisation and representation of agrarian interests to a form of self-government or co-government of the agricultural sector at the national level which would only reach its highest point after the Second World War.

These issues are explored by established rural historians covering a period of seven decades (1870-1940). The papers provide a wide geographical perspective from the north of Europe to the Mediterranean.

Claude Langlois est l’auteur d’une œuvre considérable par son ampleur sa diversité et son inventivité qui fait sans nul doute de lui l’un des très grands historiens de sa génération. Il fut directeur d’études à l’EPHE de 1993 à 2005 président de la section des sciences religieuses entre 1995 et 2002 co-fondateur avec Régis Debray en 2002 de l’IESR dont il fut le directeur de 2002 à 2005. Il n’a cessé - du Catholicisme au féminin (1984) à la suite sur Thérèse de Lisieux en passant par L’Encyclopédie théologique de Migne (1992) Le crime d’Onan (2005) et nombre de ses articles - de questionner le statut de l’histoire religieuse au regard d’une histoire sociale d’une histoire culturelle d’une histoire du genre ; il a fait de la production du discours théologique un observatoire aigu du changement religieux.

Où en est aujourd’hui le débat sur les manières d’historiciser la théologie ? Quel parti tirer des voies pionnières ouvertes par Claude Langlois ? Les auteurs de ce volume - historiens sociologues théologiens et spécialistes de littérature - explorent ces questions et donnent à voir à travers la pluralité de leurs contributions un paysage de recherche nourri d’intelligence complice.

Cet ouvrage est le témoignage de leur reconnaissance envers un historien et un professeur qui n’a cessé d’ouvrir des chantiers nouveaux et d’arpenter des terrains en friche livrant sa propre recherche aux surprises de l’archive et à ses détours imprévus sans jamais renoncer au dialogue avec celles et ceux pour lesquels son œuvre continue d’être une précieuse source de réflexion.

This book offers a fresh look at the so-called ‘politicisation’ of the European countryside from the late eighteenth century to the 1930s in the context of waning monarchies rising and staggering parliamentary nation states and fascist and communist dictatorships. The concept ‘politicisation’ however is misleading. The book argues that Europe’s rural societies were far from immobile spaces set in routines that had to be politised from outside and against the grain.

The thirteen articles in the volume demonstrate that instead of politicisation from scratch political thinking and acting of country dwellers - from Scandinavia to Spain from Moravia to France - evolved in a constant dialectical relationship with their urban regional and national surroundings: they reacted to wars revolutions and shifting borders their political loyalties changed so did their political agendas their repertoires of collective action and their role in the establishment successes and failures of political parties separate agrarian parties included.

Plus vivaces que jamais les traditions musicales et dansées du Pays basque peuvent parfois donner l’impression d’une intemporalité qui aurait traversé les siècles. Or ici comme ailleurs les traditions ont une histoire et seule l’analyse du temps long permet de restituer l’épaisseur des permanences mutations emprunts qui émaillent l’histoire de la musique et des danses sur ce territoire. Ce livre s’attache à résoudre l’énigme du recours contemporain à la tradition en analysant l’historicité de la musique à danser et de ses usages sociaux. Des ménétriers rehaussant les corporations urbaines d’Ancien régime jusqu’aux usages sociopolitiques contemporains de la farce charivarique en passant par la relecture de la musique par le mouvement culturel basque au xix e siècle ce livre propose un voyage à la fois musical et sociohistorique qui bien au-delà du cas basque informe sur notre rapport sélectif aux héritages culturels.

Cette monographie constitue la première histoire sociale et doctrinale du shaykhisme à l’époque qajare (1786-1925) qui à côté de l’osulisme de l’akhbarisme et enfin du soufisme chiite constitue depuis deux siècles l’un des principaux courants du chiisme duodécimain. L’auteur qui a résidé longtemps en Iran pour y effectuer ses recherches a plongé dans les sources originales du shaykhisme pour en étudier le rôle religieux politique et social. L’ouvrage se propose de synthétiser les doctrines développées par l’École shaykhie de faire comprendre l’histoire de ses origines et les modes de son implantation sur le territoire iranien d’évaluer l’interaction quotidienne de ses membres avec la société environnante et d’analyser les prises de positions de ses maîtres sur les principaux bouleversements politico-religieux que connût la société qajare.

Travailler sur l’histoire sociale et doctrinale d’un groupe donné c’est également appréhender une période à travers un témoignage nécessairement singulier. Ainsi cet ouvrage est également une contribution à l’histoire de l’Iran durant la période qajare.

In agricultural history specialisation is usually considered as progress turning peasants into market-orientated farmers and allowing them to escape from self-sufficiency. Recent developments in the field of productivist agriculture and the recent rise of alternative agriculture cast doubt on this conventional concept of agricultural specialisation. Several questions arise: Did specialisation necessarily mean that farms concentrated on a single product? Was it always a great step forward? Did it occur in the same form in earlier centuries as in contemporary economies?

The chapters of this book draw attention to several factors relevant to processes of specialisation such as markets transport and the natural environment. The contributions deal with regions in 10 countries of Europe from Sweden to Spain and from England to Bulgaria and with periods between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries. They suggest several conclusions. Specialisation can take place in various forms ranging from focussing on a single major cash crop to giving preference to a combination of products. This is true both at the level of an individual farm as at a regional level. Specialisation did not always improve the farmers’ standard of living. And it was neither a linear nor an irreversible process. This can be observed in periods of war but also in recent developments in post-communist countries.

Annie Antoine professor of modern history at Rennes 2 University (Brittany France) specialises in the history of rural societies and farming practices. Her latest book is a history of the rural landscape in Western France.

This book discusses the relationship between ecology and rural society in fragile environments of the past. Rural land use in these areas entailed an inherent vulnerability for instance because of their poor soils aridity or their location in mountain areas near the sea or in severe climatic conditions. The various chapters analyse how societies coped with this vulnerability by way of the organization of property rights to land. These rights formed the framework which shaped the use of the land and were a main constituent of the relationship between mankind and ecology in these fragile areas. To a large extent therefore they determined - and still determine - the success or failure of rural societies to cope with the challenges posed by their environment. In their turn however these property rights were shaped within a wider social and political context in which political and ideological considerations and special interests also played their part. As a result the organization of these rights was not always geared towards sustainability as demonstrated in these chapters which discuss and analyse long-term developments in several parts of Northwestern Central and Southern Europe.

Bas van Bavel is professor of economic and social history of the Middle Ages head of the section of Economic and Social History and coordinator of the knowledge centre Institutions of the Open Society at Utrecht University (the Netherlands).

Erik Thoen is ordinary professor at Ghent University (Belgium) specialised in rural and environmental history. He is co-ordinator of the CORN history network (Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area).

A continuing ‘cry for the new’ it is said drives present-day consumerism. People are producing and buying new goods in ever-larger quantities. However in the past consumer choices for new products were paralleled and even overlapped by structurally embedded practices such as re-use recycling and resale. Unfortunately far too little is known about these important practices. The ‘birth of a consumer society’ was grounded not only in the appearance of new products and new industries; a similar drive manifested itself in the handling buying and selling of ‘second-hand’.

In this book then the editors confront and integrate historical research on the world of the new and the old. Papers focus on the relationship between material culture and novelty fashion and innovation on the one hand; and/or patina second-hand and re-cycling on the other. Differences existed in the use of old and new products according to time place social and gender groups. By paying close attention to this historical diversity this book explores the changing meanings and motivations of consumption. The geographical coverage will be an urban one. The studied time frame will be ‘the long eighteenth-century’ (from circa 1650 until 1900). It was only then that rapid fashion changes new imports and spreading industrialization changed the existing material culture dramatically. However comparisons crossing time and place do place sweeping ‘modern’ assumptions in perspective. After all: who can decipher how the concepts old and new are changing today with the current popularity of more responsible (social and ecological) forms of consumption and recycling and with vintage-clothing and antique furniture back en vogue?

Bruno Blondé is Research Professor at the Center for Urban History (University of Antwerp). His research interest includes urban networks transport history and the history of consumption.

Natacha Coquery is appointed Professor at the University of Nantes. She has written extensively on the shopping and consumer habits of the French elites.

Jon Stobart is appointed professor at the University of Northampton. He has worked on urban networks and consumption in spatial perspective.

Ilja Van Damme is Postdoctoral Fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research. He has written a PhD on the interrelationships between consumer changes and retail evolutions.

The decade that gave rise to the term ‘the Hungry Forties’ in Europe is often regarded and rightly so as one of deprivation unrest and revolution. Two events the Great Irish Famine and the various political events of ‘1848’ stand out. This book is the first to discuss the subsistence crisis of the 1840s in a truly comparative way. This subsistence crisis may be divided into two rather distinct elements. On the one hand the failure of the potato caused by the new unfamiliar fungus phytophthera infestans which first struck Europe in mid-1845 resulted in a catastrophe in Ireland that killed about one million people and radically transformed its landscape and economy. Poor potato crops in 1845 and in the following years also resulted in significant excess mortality elsewhere in Europe. On the other hand this period and 1846 in particular was also one of poor wheat and rye harvests throughout much of Europe. Failure of the grain harvest alone rarely resulted in a subsistence crisis but the combination of poor potato and grain harvests in a single place was a lethal one. Connections between the local and the global between the economic and the political and between the rural and the industrial make the crisis of the late 1840s a multi-layered one.

This book offers a comparative perspective on the causes and the effects of what is sometimes considered as the ‘last’ European subsistence crisis. It begins with an extensive introduction that treats the topic in comparative perspective. The subsistence crisis had its most catastrophic impact in Ireland and three chapters in the current volume are concerned mainly with that country. A fourth chapter uses price data to shed comparative perspective on the crisis while the remaining nine chapters are case studies covering countries ranging from Sweden to Spain and from Scotland to Prussia. Throughout the contributors focus on a range of common themes such as the extent of harvest deficits the functioning of food markets fertility and mortality and public action at local and national levels.

Cormac Ó Gráda is professor of economics at University College Dublin. He has worked extensively on the history of famines in Ireland and worldwide.

Richard Paping teaches economic and social history and economics at University of Groningen. He has done extensive research on developments in standard-of-living economy and demography in the Netherlands.

Eric Vanhaute is professor social and economic history and world history at Ghent University. He has mainly published on the history of the rural society and of labour markets in Flanders and outside.

Table of contents:

Eric Vanhaute Richard Paping and Cormac Ó Gráda The European Subsistence Crisis of 1845-1850: a Comparative Perspective

PART I - The Irish Famine in an International Perspective

Cormac Ó Gráda Ireland’s Great Famine. An overview - Mary E. Daly Something Old and Something New. Recent Research on the Great Irish Famine - Peter M. Solar The Crisis of the Late 1840s. What Can Be Learned From Prices? - Peter Gray The European Food Crisis and the Relief of Irish Famine 1845-1850

PART II - A Potato Famine Outside Ireland?

Tom M. Devine Why the Highlands Did Not Starve. Ireland and Highland Scotland During the Potato Famine - Eric Vanhaute “So Worthy an Example to Ireland”. The Subsistence and Industrial Crisis of 1845-1850 in Flanders - Richard Paping and Vincent Tassenaar The Consequences of the Potato Disease in the Netherlands 1845-1860: a Regional Approach - Hans H. Bass The Crisis in Prussia - Gunter Mahlerwein The Consequences of the Potato Blight in South Germany - Nadine Vivier The Crisis in France. A Memorable Crisis But Not a Potato Crisis - Jean Michel Chevet and Cormac Ó Gráda Crisis: What Crisis? Prices and Mortality in Mid-Nineteenth Century France - Pedro Díaz Marín Subsistence Crisis and Popular Protest in Spain. The Motines of 1847- Ingrid Henriksen A Disaster Seen From the Periphery. The Case of Denmark - Carl-Johan Gadd On the Edge of a Crisis: Sweden in the 1840s

Comment peut-on être amish de nos jours ?

Quelles relations entre les États-Unis société moderne s’il en est et l’Old Order Amish (Vieil Ordre Amish) communauté traditionnelle issue de l’anabaptisme radical de la Réforme suisse qui a trouvé refuge sur les rives nord-américaines ?

Irénisme ou conflits entre la terre d’asile et l’exilé amish dont la logique de l’exil est aussi celle d’un retrait du monde pour vivre un christianisme authentique ? Reconnaissance ou défiance lorsque cet idéal religieux de “non-mondanité” défend dans une société pluraliste un modèle contre-culturel et se veut une contre-société ?

La vie des Amish du Vieil Ordre aux États-Unis montre que le pluralisme n’empêche pas les tensions et que la volonté de se séparer du monde ne suffit pas à se mettre à l’abri des contraintes de celui-ci.

Être de retrait et être de lumière comme le commandent les apôtres Paul Rm xii 2 et Matthieu Mt v 14-16 l’être amish est un être de confluence en quête de frontières. S’impose à lui une exigence de composition de l’absence dans la présence de l’ombre et de la lumière de la séparation et de l’implication de la tradition et de la modernité de l’agricole et de l’urbain de l’exemplarité et de l’humilité.

Maintenir redéfinir sécuriser des frontières physiques idéologiques et symboliques avec l’extérieur constitue pour les adeptes un défi constant qui engage l’authenticité de leur non-conformisme. En résulte une intense dynamique de la tradition née du dialogue entre les Amish et la société états-unienne intensifié par la multiplication des contacts entre les adeptes et le monde. L’adaptation et l’avenir du Vieil Ordre passent par ce travail de limites à négocier et à reconnaître. Et c’est sur ces lignes de crête que se maintient vivante la tradition de l’Old Order Amish.

Nous avons souhaité suivre ce chemin de crêtes pratiqué par les Amish. Il fallait pour cela pouvoir vivre avec eux privilège qu’ils nous ont accordé et qui a été à la source de cet ouvrage.