Agricultural History Review, Volume 53 Part 2 (2005), p. 263

In September 2002 members of the British Agricultural History Society and the Association d’Histoire et Sociétés Rurales met at the Université du Maine (Le Mans) to take stock of rural history on both sides of the Channel. In so doing they followed the example of rural geographers whose fifth colloque will take place in Clermont-Ferrand in 2006. The date was well chosen since the BAHS celebrated its fiftieth anniversary during that academic session and the AHSR celebrated its tenth year. The topic was appropriate since questions about English agricultural history have appeared in the concours d’a grégation (national competitive examination for intending teachers of history in lycées). A selection of the communications delivered at Le Mans appear in Rural ité which contains thirteen major essays – all in French – by five British and nine French scholars. Five shorter pieces offer introductory and concluding statements.

Varying emphases, approaches, scales of investigation and source materials in the two countries are highlighted by Professor Nadine Vivier (Le Mans) and Jean-Pierre Jessenne (Lille). The sheer size of France (four times the land surface of England) and the recency of its industrial and urban transformations make any attempt at comparison with England a major challenge. Until recently, the requirements of doctoral work differed on the two sides of the Channel, with the PhD being a smaller work than the vast doctorat d’état that required many years and would typically be undertaken part-time by university lecturers or lycée teachers who thoroughly exploited their local archives départementales. (Now, a doctorat nouveau régime is quite similar to a PhD). For whatever reason, almost all rural historians in France and England have ploughed their furrows at home; few have undertaken genuinely comparative work or have acquired archival knowledge of conditions across the Channel. Nonetheless, Jean-Pierre Poussou (Sorbonne) has contributed a masterly review essay, entitled ‘L’histoire agraire de l’Angleterre à l’époque moderne, vue de France’, for the present volume.

As with all proceedings from symposia, Ruralité is a compromise between the desirable and the possible, reflecting which scholars were invited to attend and to present papers, the topics analyzed, whether they concentrated on the details of their latest research or provided reviews for a non-domestic audience, and whether they finally delivered publishable copy. Three major themes structure the greater part of the book: women’s work on farms (fifteenth to twentieth centuries); village societies and landholding (sixteenth to eighteenth 264 the agricultural centuries); and trends in agricultural production as revealed by wills and probate inventories (thirteenth to eighteenth centuries).

Gender issues have attracted less attention among rural historians in France than in England but Scarlett Beauvalet (Amiens) and Jacqueline Sainclivier (Rennes) sketch what has been accomplished on French rural women from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and on female farm workers during the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries. Roland Hubscher (Paris) sheds light on the harsh lives of Italian and Polish women whomigrated to work on French farms between the twoworld wars. Jane Whittle (Exeter) and Nicola Verdon (Reading) provide English contributions on the gender division of labour in the countryside. Landholding and rural society in France are examined by Annie Antoine (Rennes), who covers the vast theme of the changing relationship between ownership and tenancy from the late middle ages to the Revolution, andby Gérard Béaur (Paris), who focuses on rural landholding both before and after 1789. Richard Hoyle (Reading) provides detailed case studies of changes in family farming in Yorkshire and Staffordshire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The final theme is dominated by two contributions from English scholars, with evidence from wills being examined for medieval times by Philip Schofield (Aberystwyth) and for the span from 1550 to 1750 by Mark Overton (Exeter). Dominique Rosselle (Lille) gives a view of the importance of wills in pre-Revolutionary France.

As with many collections, the title of this book implies rather more cohesion than is achieved by the sum of its parts. Whether the juxtaposition of a set of single-country essays plus brief linking sections really represents approches comparées is debatable. The fact that all the papers are in French will certainly enlighten French students but may do little – or nothing – to inform their increasingly monolingual counterparts across the Channel. That remark is not intended to belittle the sterling work of Béatrice and Nadine Vivier (vice-présidente of the AHSR) in translating the English papers but is simply a statement of harsh reality. Will the publication of Ruralité (interestingly in the singular) stimulate rural historians from one side of the Channel to undertake fundamental research in the other? I would like to think that the answer might be positive but my own experience of ‘systems’ and academic expectations in both France and England leads me to think that this will be unlikely.

Tables and diagrams in Ruralité are few, as are typographical errors; however the map on page 7 showing ‘Huntshire’ made me smile. Staff of the Presses Universitaires de Rennes, who also handle book projects from history review other universities in north-western France, are to be congratulated for producing a scholarly book for only 20 Euros. Would that British publishers could do likewise!