Liberty and Locality in Revolutionary France Six Villages Compared, 1760–1820

Liberty and Locality in Revolutionary FranceSix Villages Compared, 17601820\nAuthor(s): Peter Jones\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521821773, 978-0521821773\nSynopsis\nThis book examines the interface between the old and the new France in the period [tel]. It adopts an unusual 'comparative micro-historical' approach in order to illuminate the manner in which country dwellers cut themselves loose from the congeries of local societies that made up the Ancien Rgime, and attached themselves to the wider polity of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic state. The apprehensions and ambitions of six groups of villagers located in different parts of the kingdom are explored in close-up across the span of a single adult lifetime. Contrasting experiences form a large part of the analysis, but the story is ultimately one of fusion around a set of values that no individual villager could possibly have anticipa.