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Mathieu
ARNOUX and Ghislain BRUNEL, Comments on Mediaeval
Sources of Rural History. About the Necessity of
Publishing, Criticizing, and Reading
Sources
Abstract : The data concerning
rural history in the Middle Ages haven't been fully
exploited : historians can still reuse and reread
many of the texts published in the XIXth century
and many sources listed in recent repertories. It
is necessary to develop the criticism of documents
about landholding (polyptics, inventories of rents
and revenues, surveys of domains, and accounts) and
of the figures they contain, using strict
applications of diplomatics, a cross-Europe
comparison, and a complete study of the origins of
sources. Thus the small number and complexity of
this kind of text will no longer be such forbidding
obstacles and the interpretation of these texts
will be richer. With such a method, if we reexamine
the role of the bishop of Winchester, Henri de
Blois, in Cluny around 1150, we can infer that his
action must be considered, more than pious care, as
a genuine experimen-t of Anglo-Norman
administration and agricultural practices in the
Mâconnais.
Jean-Marc
MORICEAU, Agricultural Change. Transformations and
Innovation in Farming Methods
1100-1850
Abstract : Despite obvious
continuities, agriculture led to a succession of
transformations and innovations antedating chemical
fertilizers and new crop rotations from the 1850s.
Farming methods, agrarian structures and
landscapes, agricultural tools and techniques, and
productivity changed, because of owners as well as
farmers. These mutations were not always as slow
and minor as it is commonly admitted. To place them
in context and evaluate them, this paper proposes
an analysis in a comparative long-term perspective,
by using the centuries-long series of farming
leases and probate inventories. From the Middle
Ages to the second half of the XIXth century, the
study of the relationships between qualitative and
quantitative data provided by these two sources,
analysed by ten-year periods, enables us to
underline the stages and the significance of
changes. This historical perspective also incites
to the study of farming craftsmen and to the
recourse to complete sources, such as agrarian maps
and accounts books.
Gérard BEAUR, Rural Economic
History in the Modern Era : the Disarray of
Quantitative Methods. A Critical
Survey
Abstract : Rightly or wrongly
everybody agrees that rural history is in crisis.
This opinion is apparently a result of the decline
of economic history and of the disfavour of
quantitative methods. By proceeding from the
principle that rural economic history is
fundamentally articulated around three foci :
production, social reproduction, and markets (real
estate market especially). We successively
investigate the progressive deviations of each
problematic and we try to state the controversies
to which they give rise. At the same time, it
becomes possible to determine the unequal
connections they maintain with quantitative history
and to show the successive changes in the level of
analysis. The multiplicity of approaches and of
procedures, and their combination, is precisely the
best way for historic inquiry to produce new
results.
Jean-René TROCHET, American
Plants in Europe : The Innovation in Tools and
Agricultural Techniques in the Modern
Era
Abstract : To what extent did the
cultivation of American plants influenced European
agricultural techniques ? First, these techniques
are identified and compared with their Andean
equivalents, in regions where innovations in
technology and implements are related to new
methods of cultivation. This parallel raises
methodological issues of which the historian must
be aware if he is to assess accurately how
important the changes brought about in material
living conditions. Secondly, it appears that these
innovations have, to a certain extent, been
determined by preexisting agrarian systems into
which new plants have gradually been
introduced.
Nadine
VIVIER, Communal Property in France in the XIXth
Century. Prospects for Research
Abstract : The intense struggle
surrounding the communal landed property is well
known, but no synthesis has ever been written on
the behaviour of peasants. The imprecision and
subjectivity of the otherwise abundant sources and
the great diversity of French regions prevent this
synthesis. Historians, just like the XIXth century
men, want to explain the attachment of peasants for
their commons essentially by economic and social
reasons, or even as a statement of archaism. The
article suggests attributing more importance to the
fact that commons are a medium of identification
for the rural community.
Victor
DANILOV, Agrarian Reform in post-Soviet Russia :
the Point of View of an Historian
Abstract : Contrary to all
expectations, Russian farmers did not receive
favourably the agrarian reform which was supposed
to free them at last. Far from taking advantage of
the right given to them of leaving the Kolkhoz and
Sovkhoz, they chose to adopt an attitude of open
resistance to decollectivization. According to the
author, the failure of the agrarian reform is
explained in a large part by the " bureaucratic
extremism " with which it was accomplished during
the winter 1992-1993, and also by the extreme
subdivision of the process of production and by the
lack of support given to cooperative and individual
formulas. The end of price controls and the
deregulation of services increased the inequality
between urban and rural areas. From Stolypin to
Gorbachev, the transformation of the countryside
has always been forced upon it from above. With no
autonomy of management and no real freedom of
choice, farmers remain victims of the Nomenklatura.
The crisis in agriculture which is reflected in the
general decrease of production opens a new era of
uncertainty.
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