Reviews for The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War

The average rating for The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-10-23 00:00:00 Paul Rodgers This isn't an armchair travel book, it's an armchair time travel book. The use of the singular in the title is potentially misleading. It is the result of the author's discovery of France on bicycle and in the archives (but not both at the same time I hasten to add to reassure any anxious library lovers). It is also a book about how many times and how many ways France has been discovered. So we have the two men who tried to discover the boundary between the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil, one died and the other lost an eye in the process (I'm not sure if the discovery of the Benrather line was quite so dangerous). We have the explorers of caves and caverns, Cassini's mapmakers (one of whom is murdered while surveying in the first pages of the book), the first tourists and the sudden attention of the Parisian anthropologists to the supposedly backwards and primitive types to be found in the countryside, though to their chagrin they found that Breton skulls were larger than supposedly superior Parisian types. Then there are other discoveries. The discovery of the world beyond their villages made by generations of migrant workers who spent years working in different cities with people from particular areas dominating certain trades, and the discovery of a notion of being French thanks to universal education, mass literacy and the bicycle. The most profound discovery is that of the pre-modern ways of life that existed. A town's bread baked once a week, or harder yet all the year's baking done at once with the hard loaves softened in water, milk or wine throughout the year. People living a subsistence lifestyle slowing down into a semi hibernation during the winter months, the lives of those for whom going barefoot was a more sensible way of crossing fields than wearing shoes or the stilt wearing shepherds whose way of life disappeared with the coming of modernity. Tying the book together is the discovery of long standing prejudices. The book opens with the still mysterious persecution of the Cargots and ends with that of people of North African descent stuck in high rise suburbs. You are left with a sense of the mass of differing ways of life, habits of speech and economic networks that is hidden by the neatness and precision of a modern map. Please note: as pointed out below by Antonomasia in the comments that that the reception of this book has been most enthusiastic among those of us who know least about the social history of France. So I might offer that although this is a fun read, it would be wise not to take it too seriously, caveat lector (or auditor as applicable).

Review # 2 was written on 2012-07-16 00:00:00 Donald Douglas Moved to gwern.net.