Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France during the Nineteenth Century

Peasant and French examines the relationship between French peasants and the development of the French national identity during the nineteenth century. Drawing on methods from cultural studies, social history and a broad range of literary and archival sources, Lehning argues that modern France has in part defined itself as different from the peasantry. Rather than seeing rural French history as a process in which peasants lose their identities and become French, he views it as an ongoing process of cultural contact in which both peasants and the French nation negotiate their identities in relation to the other. The book suggests a new kind of rural history that places the countryside in its national context rather than in isolation.

In this volume, James Lehning approaches French rural history as something other than a part of the development or modernization of a traditional society. He examines the relationship between French peasants and the development of the French national identity during the nineteenth century and describes it as an ongoing process of cultural contact in which both peasants and the French nation negotiate their identities in relation to each other.