French Rural History

[chickenfeet]

Sometimes there is intense pleasure to be had in going back and rereading an old favourite. Last night I started to read Marc Bloch's French Rural History for the third or fourth time. Now my respect for Bloch as a historian and a person is only just short of idolatry but I had forgotten just how radical he was. Lucien Febvre's preface to the second edition of FRH really is quite fascinating on that point. Here was a man, who in order to understand medieval agriculture got out of the lecture room and the library to talk to real peasants about how much dung an ox produces, how much land that fertilises and how that might affect choices about crop mix. By looking at how "actually existing" landlords and tenants operate he can ask questions about the strategic options and choices facing the rural population that simply can't be considered from wills, cartularies etc. 'It's a fantastic example of how something apparently obvious but previously unthought of can revolutionise a discipline. It's not often that an academic work conceived in the 1920s still retains such a degree of freshness and relevance.

Comments

[violetsaunders.livejournal.com]

Bloch was one of the most formative influences on me when I was an undergraduate. His 'interdisciplinarity' (as it would now be called) was quite precocious - and as you say was one of the first to put into practice the writing of history from a truly 'grass roots' perspective. Have you read his other works?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Pretty much everything from Les Rois Thaumaturges to Strange Defeat.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

This is exactly why I'm such an enthusiast for experimental archaeology - actually doing something can save you from really hideous mistakes.