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Title: The Peasants of Languedoc by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, John Day (translator) ISBN: 0-252-00635-6 Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr (Pro Ref) Pub. Date: December, 1977 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: Economic and Social History
Comment: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie is a French historian whose works have had considerable exposure in English. The fascinating "Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error" (and alternate titles) may be the best-known of his works, as well as the most controversial among historians, based as it is on village gossip recorded by Inquisitors. Perhaps more representative are detailed studies of a popular demonstration / riot in "Carnival in Romans" ("Le Carnaval de Romans," 1979), and a study of folktale themes as transmitted in popular and literary versions from the south of France, in "Love, Death and Money in the Pays D'Oc" ("L'argent, l'amour et la mort en pays d'Oc," 1980). Underlying much of this production, however, and perhaps giving Ladurie the confidence to interpret the notoriously difficult inquisitorial records, is the less-inspiring sounding "Les Paysans de Languedoc," of 1966, here translated under an equally plain and literal title, appearing in English only three years after the original French edition. In any case, it clearly underlies his later investigations of provincial culture and society.

This is a sophisticated analysis of primarily economic records from one of the traditional provinces of southern France, covering mainly the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It deals with the basics of ordinary life - production, consumption, property, and taxes, and how they interacted. There are interesting confirmations of what can go wrong when people act without much guidance from economic theory in determining self-interest. For example, wide-spread cutting of wages in a time of rising prices reduced income and purchases, ultimately putting meat beyond the reach of most consumers. This was a catastrophe for some of the same employers, who were cattle-raisers (or owners of grazing land) with a diminishing market. (If I understand Ladurie's tables and charts correctly -- and this involves some interpretation on the part of a non-professional -- the typical response to their falling profits was to cut wages again, again reducing the cash in circulation, and reinforcing the cycle in a time when markets for most goods were strictly local.)

It is definitely not light reading, but Ladurie is not above adding characterizations (such as "tight-fisted fellows") to otherwise anonymous groups of property-owners and employers, sacrificing a little of the appearance of objectivity for the sake of human interest. Generally speaking, Ladurie draws such positions from the hard data, and the attentive reader may well reach the same conclusion; I remain happier about the practice from a literary point of view than an historical one.

"Peasants of Languedoc" represents a major move toward understanding the history of people left out of official histories, although the original description as "total history" is rather misleading. Taken together with Ladurie's later cultural studies, however, it does mark a considerable advance.