Hufton’s magnificent study of the eighteenth-century poor contains the sort of stunning original material that begs for a writer of Robb’s talent to convey to a larger public. Her vision of millions of men and women struggling to get by through an “economy of makeshifts,” many of them tramping at their tragically slow pace through the French countryside, often reduced to petty theft or prostitution to survive, is as colorful and as powerful as Robb’s vision of millions of men and women living their entire lives in virtual isolation, rarely encountering strangers or leaving the valleys of their birth. But Hufton’s tale has the advantage of being supported by the evidence.

Someone who hadn’t read Robb’s book and who relied entirely on the review would never suppose that there is an entire chapter of The Discovery of France called “Migrants and Commuters” nor that said chapter references Hufton’s work several times.

headdesk

All that to get to Power!

I hope ADM will come back and actually respond to Kieran’s query, and explain where Power sits in the historiography at this point. My reading of the chapter left me amused and thoughtful, but also concerned at the level of supposition and approximation necessary to flesh out the sources into a portrait.

My initial reaction—“more like pseudo-social science”—was largely triggered by the combination of overgeneralization (“peasants in mediaeval societies”) and oddly specific quantification (“only eighty people or so”) of a complex social phenomenon. These factoids sometimes have very questionable geneaologies, but because they stick in the head and illustrate something we already think to be true (the narrow social world of the peasant as opposed to our rich modern life, etc.), they get cited a lot.

Peasants into Frenchmen is quite outdated and Robb’s book is just plain terrible

What’s the state of the art on this stuff these days, anyway?

Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen is quite outdated and Robb’s book is just plain terrible (and wrong). Nobody should rely on either book for research. See:

http://www.powells.com/review/2008_02_07.html

http://www.h-france.net/vol8reviews/vol8no61kale.pdf

I love how Power ended that chapter. Thanks for bringing it back to mind!

I’m with Barry—Power certainly supports a limited and stable number of exchange contacts, which is the point Leijonhufvud goes with (though where is 80 from?) but definitely not “would meet only eighty people or so over the course of his/her life” which seems like a weirdly small number.