... Une image en construction (1750???1914), which explores perceptions of the islands off the co... more ... Une image en construction (1750???1914), which explores perceptions of the islands off the coast of Brittany on the ... argued, many landscape preservationists nonetheless adopted the views of the mid???nineteenth???century conservative social theorist Wilhelm Riehl, who suggested ...
This article explores the trajectories of two women architects, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Ju... more This article explores the trajectories of two women architects, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Juliette Tréant-Mathé, who, in contrast to most of their female counterparts in interwar Europe, devoted much of their architectural work to the design of social housing. It examines the nature of the shared social activism that informed their work, while considering the gendered dimension of their architectural designs in the 1920s and 1930s. It assesses how Schütte-Lihotzky, in particular, participated in the discussions about the relationship between Existenzminimum, or the minimum level of conditions needed for living, and the construction of housing for single professional women, and how the design of domestic architecture could respond to their needs. Finally, it examines their largely unexplored contributions as women architects to broader debates about “the new dwelling” and the role of architecture in modern life more generally.
This article explores the environmental transformation of the moorland (landes) of southwestern F... more This article explores the environmental transformation of the moorland (landes) of southwestern France from a much maligned “wilderness” or “empty space” to a forested landscape coveted for its productive potential as well as its aesthetic beauty. This occurred in two stages from the eighteenth century to the present and was effected by the French state and local landowners. It bears resemblance to processes of environmental change in North America, Central Asia, and Africa, where states and colonial or imperial powers took measures to develop alleged empty spaces through seizure, development, and settlement. Drawing on paradigms of colonial rule and Henri Lefebvre’s theory regarding the production of space, the article examines the eradication of the “wilderness” of the region of the Landes, which led to the displacement of its pastoral populations and the end of their way of life. It explores the role of technology in consolidating the power of territorial states and empires and t...
This article explores the trajectories of two women architects, Margarete Sch€ utte-Lihotzky and ... more This article explores the trajectories of two women architects, Margarete Sch€ utte-Lihotzky and Juliette Tr eant-Math e, who, in contrast to most of their female counterparts in interwar Europe, devoted much of their architectural work to the design of social housing. It examines the nature of the shared social activism that informed their work, while considering the gendered dimension of their architectural designs in the 1920s and 1930s. It assesses how Sch€ utte-Lihotzky, in particular, participated in the discussions about the relationship between Existenzminimum, or the minimum level of conditions needed for living, and the construction of housing for single professional women, and how the design of domestic architecture could respond to their needs. Finally, it examines their largely unexplored contributions as women architects to broader debates about "the new dwelling" and the role of architecture in modern life more generally.
This article explores the environmental transformation of the moorland (landes) of southwestern F... more This article explores the environmental transformation of the moorland (landes) of southwestern France from a much maligned "wilderness" or "empty space" to a forested landscape coveted for its productive potential as well as its aesthetic beauty. This occurred in two stages from the eighteenth century to the present and was effected by the French state and local landowners. It bears resemblance to processes of environmental change in North America, Central Asia, and Africa, where states and colonial or imperial powers took measures to develop alleged empty spaces through seizure, development, and settlement. Drawing on paradigms of colonial rule and Henri Lefebvre's theory regarding the production of space, the article examines the eradication of the "wilderness" of the region of the Landes, which led to the displacement of its pastoral populations and the end of their way of life. It explores the role of technology in consolidating the power of territorial states and empires and the significance of the parallels that can be drawn between the Landes and France's overseas empire. Finally, it attests to the porosity of the boundary between manmade and natural landscapes, while illuminating the process by which the artificial forested landscape of the Landes ironically came to be redefined and revalorized as "natural" national heritage that was ripe for environmental protection by the second half of the twentieth century.
The region of Brittany has occupied a unique space in the French historical imagination. This wid... more The region of Brittany has occupied a unique space in the French historical imagination. This wide-ranging book seeks both to capture the complex and changing ways in which the region has been represented while, at the same time, exploring how the region forged its ...
t/UGEN Weber comenzo su innovador estudio sobre la modernizacion de la Francia rural con la cita ... more t/UGEN Weber comenzo su innovador estudio sobre la modernizacion de la Francia rural con la cita siguiente del novelista Honore de Balzac: "No es necesario que vaya a America para ver a salvajes... Aqui tiene a los pieles rojas de los Fenimore Cooper".1 El comienzo del libro es revelador, ya que el autor a menudo hizo comentarios ironicos sobre la relacion entre el viejo y el nuevo mundo y apreciaba profundamente ambos, pues habia pasado gran parte de su vida adulta entre uno y otro. Conoci a Eugen Weber hace veintidos anos, cuando yo todavia era una joven estudiante que hacia su tesis doctoral de historia. El tema elegido sobre la integracion y la aculturacion politica del campesinado de la Baja Bretana surgio en parte de la lectura de su obra Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, publicada cuatro anos antes de matricularme en la facultad de la Universidad de Chicago en 1980. Para empezar, me quede atonita al leer el titulo del libro, e im...
From the nineteenth century onward, social reformers, politicians, and the public at large began ... more From the nineteenth century onward, social reformers, politicians, and the public at large began to decry both a growing housing shortage and the insalubrious condition of France’s capital city. As early as the 1820s a governmental study of housing shortages found that between 1804 and 1827 the population of Paris had increased from 547,756 to 890,431, but available housing had not kept pace, which resulted in significant overcrowding. While the population density per hectare was 159 in 1800, it had risen to 307 by 1846, and housing in the city was “no longer commensurate with the number of inhabitants.” Moreover, the problems were worse in the city’s poorer districts, where rents were exorbitant. Following several cholera epidemics and a sharp rise in the number of cases of tuberculosis during the course of the nineteenth century, the issue of housing also became one of public hygiene. The cholera epidemic of 1832 claimed 18,602 victims in Paris alone, and the issues of overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, and insalubrious housing could not be ignored. By 1865 the utopian socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote that “the home of the citizen, of the common man, has not yet been built. We don’t have a minimum of housing any
In 1860, a guidebook writer by the name of Denecourt addressed a plea to Napoleon III, asking him... more In 1860, a guidebook writer by the name of Denecourt addressed a plea to Napoleon III, asking him to protect the forest of Fontainebleau as a 'national museum'for the public's contemplation. For him, Fontainebleau,'with its splendid horizons, its superb masses of ...
In recent years a number of books have been published on the European museums that were constitut... more In recent years a number of books have been published on the European museums that were constituted from the non-European art and artifacts collected during almost two centuries of European colonial expansion. These volumes have focused primarily on the ethnographic museums—including, among others, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, the Horniman Museum in London, the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris, the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, and the GrassiMuseum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig—that were founded throughout Europe during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth.1 During the past ten years, Western Europe has witnessed the creation of a new wave of museums devoted to non-European art and culture. Some have been founded using existing ethnographic collections, while others have been created with no collections at all. These new museums, as well as some exhibitions associated with older museums—such as the 2005 show Colonial Violence in the Congo: The Colonial Era, held at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren, Belgium—have implicitly or explicitly evoked Europe’s colonial past. New institutions in this group include the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, the soon-to-be-inaugurated Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Mediterranée (MCEM) in Marseille, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou in France’s overseas territory of New Caledonia, the Musée du Quai Branly (MQB) in Paris, and the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de
... Reforestation, Landscape Conservation, and the Anxieties of Empire in French ColonialAlgeria.... more ... Reforestation, Landscape Conservation, and the Anxieties of Empire in French ColonialAlgeria. Caroline Ford. ... The limitations of and lacunae in the sources for Algeria in this period present the historian with a formidable challenge. ...
Now in these things, a large part of what we call natural, is not; it is even quite artificial: t... more Now in these things, a large part of what we call natural, is not; it is even quite artificial: that is to say, the tilled fields, the trees and other domesticated plants that are placed in order, the rivers kept within bounds and directed toward a certain course, and such, lack both the state and the appearance that they would have in nature. (GIACOMO LEOPARDI) The field of "environmental history" emerged as a separately defined area of scholarship in the 1970s. In the United States, where many of its practitioners believe it to be most deeply rooted, historians quickly created a number of new professional as
In recent years a number of books have been published on the European museums that were constitut... more In recent years a number of books have been published on the European museums that were constituted from the non-European art and artifacts collected during almost two centuries of European colonial expansion. These volumes have focused primarily on the ethnographic museums-including, among others, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, the Horniman Museum in London, the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris, the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, and the Grassi-Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig-that were founded throughout Europe during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. 1 During the past ten years, Western Europe has witnessed the creation of a new wave of museums devoted to non-European art and culture. Some have been founded using existing ethnographic collections, while others have been created with no collections at all. These new museums, as well as some exhibitions associated with older museums-such as the 2005 show Colonial Violence in the Congo: The Colonial Era, held at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren, Belgium-have implicitly or explicitly evoked Europe's colonial past. New institutions in this group include the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, the soon-to-be-inaugurated Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Mediterranée (MCEM) in Marseille, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou in France's overseas territory of New Caledonia, the Musée du Quai Branly (MQB) in Paris, and the Cité Nationale de l'Histoire de
... Une image en construction (1750???1914), which explores perceptions of the islands off the co... more ... Une image en construction (1750???1914), which explores perceptions of the islands off the coast of Brittany on the ... argued, many landscape preservationists nonetheless adopted the views of the mid???nineteenth???century conservative social theorist Wilhelm Riehl, who suggested ...
This article explores the trajectories of two women architects, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Ju... more This article explores the trajectories of two women architects, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Juliette Tréant-Mathé, who, in contrast to most of their female counterparts in interwar Europe, devoted much of their architectural work to the design of social housing. It examines the nature of the shared social activism that informed their work, while considering the gendered dimension of their architectural designs in the 1920s and 1930s. It assesses how Schütte-Lihotzky, in particular, participated in the discussions about the relationship between Existenzminimum, or the minimum level of conditions needed for living, and the construction of housing for single professional women, and how the design of domestic architecture could respond to their needs. Finally, it examines their largely unexplored contributions as women architects to broader debates about “the new dwelling” and the role of architecture in modern life more generally.
This article explores the environmental transformation of the moorland (landes) of southwestern F... more This article explores the environmental transformation of the moorland (landes) of southwestern France from a much maligned “wilderness” or “empty space” to a forested landscape coveted for its productive potential as well as its aesthetic beauty. This occurred in two stages from the eighteenth century to the present and was effected by the French state and local landowners. It bears resemblance to processes of environmental change in North America, Central Asia, and Africa, where states and colonial or imperial powers took measures to develop alleged empty spaces through seizure, development, and settlement. Drawing on paradigms of colonial rule and Henri Lefebvre’s theory regarding the production of space, the article examines the eradication of the “wilderness” of the region of the Landes, which led to the displacement of its pastoral populations and the end of their way of life. It explores the role of technology in consolidating the power of territorial states and empires and t...
This article explores the trajectories of two women architects, Margarete Sch€ utte-Lihotzky and ... more This article explores the trajectories of two women architects, Margarete Sch€ utte-Lihotzky and Juliette Tr eant-Math e, who, in contrast to most of their female counterparts in interwar Europe, devoted much of their architectural work to the design of social housing. It examines the nature of the shared social activism that informed their work, while considering the gendered dimension of their architectural designs in the 1920s and 1930s. It assesses how Sch€ utte-Lihotzky, in particular, participated in the discussions about the relationship between Existenzminimum, or the minimum level of conditions needed for living, and the construction of housing for single professional women, and how the design of domestic architecture could respond to their needs. Finally, it examines their largely unexplored contributions as women architects to broader debates about "the new dwelling" and the role of architecture in modern life more generally.
This article explores the environmental transformation of the moorland (landes) of southwestern F... more This article explores the environmental transformation of the moorland (landes) of southwestern France from a much maligned "wilderness" or "empty space" to a forested landscape coveted for its productive potential as well as its aesthetic beauty. This occurred in two stages from the eighteenth century to the present and was effected by the French state and local landowners. It bears resemblance to processes of environmental change in North America, Central Asia, and Africa, where states and colonial or imperial powers took measures to develop alleged empty spaces through seizure, development, and settlement. Drawing on paradigms of colonial rule and Henri Lefebvre's theory regarding the production of space, the article examines the eradication of the "wilderness" of the region of the Landes, which led to the displacement of its pastoral populations and the end of their way of life. It explores the role of technology in consolidating the power of territorial states and empires and the significance of the parallels that can be drawn between the Landes and France's overseas empire. Finally, it attests to the porosity of the boundary between manmade and natural landscapes, while illuminating the process by which the artificial forested landscape of the Landes ironically came to be redefined and revalorized as "natural" national heritage that was ripe for environmental protection by the second half of the twentieth century.
The region of Brittany has occupied a unique space in the French historical imagination. This wid... more The region of Brittany has occupied a unique space in the French historical imagination. This wide-ranging book seeks both to capture the complex and changing ways in which the region has been represented while, at the same time, exploring how the region forged its ...
t/UGEN Weber comenzo su innovador estudio sobre la modernizacion de la Francia rural con la cita ... more t/UGEN Weber comenzo su innovador estudio sobre la modernizacion de la Francia rural con la cita siguiente del novelista Honore de Balzac: "No es necesario que vaya a America para ver a salvajes... Aqui tiene a los pieles rojas de los Fenimore Cooper".1 El comienzo del libro es revelador, ya que el autor a menudo hizo comentarios ironicos sobre la relacion entre el viejo y el nuevo mundo y apreciaba profundamente ambos, pues habia pasado gran parte de su vida adulta entre uno y otro. Conoci a Eugen Weber hace veintidos anos, cuando yo todavia era una joven estudiante que hacia su tesis doctoral de historia. El tema elegido sobre la integracion y la aculturacion politica del campesinado de la Baja Bretana surgio en parte de la lectura de su obra Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, publicada cuatro anos antes de matricularme en la facultad de la Universidad de Chicago en 1980. Para empezar, me quede atonita al leer el titulo del libro, e im...
From the nineteenth century onward, social reformers, politicians, and the public at large began ... more From the nineteenth century onward, social reformers, politicians, and the public at large began to decry both a growing housing shortage and the insalubrious condition of France’s capital city. As early as the 1820s a governmental study of housing shortages found that between 1804 and 1827 the population of Paris had increased from 547,756 to 890,431, but available housing had not kept pace, which resulted in significant overcrowding. While the population density per hectare was 159 in 1800, it had risen to 307 by 1846, and housing in the city was “no longer commensurate with the number of inhabitants.” Moreover, the problems were worse in the city’s poorer districts, where rents were exorbitant. Following several cholera epidemics and a sharp rise in the number of cases of tuberculosis during the course of the nineteenth century, the issue of housing also became one of public hygiene. The cholera epidemic of 1832 claimed 18,602 victims in Paris alone, and the issues of overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, and insalubrious housing could not be ignored. By 1865 the utopian socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote that “the home of the citizen, of the common man, has not yet been built. We don’t have a minimum of housing any
In 1860, a guidebook writer by the name of Denecourt addressed a plea to Napoleon III, asking him... more In 1860, a guidebook writer by the name of Denecourt addressed a plea to Napoleon III, asking him to protect the forest of Fontainebleau as a 'national museum'for the public's contemplation. For him, Fontainebleau,'with its splendid horizons, its superb masses of ...
In recent years a number of books have been published on the European museums that were constitut... more In recent years a number of books have been published on the European museums that were constituted from the non-European art and artifacts collected during almost two centuries of European colonial expansion. These volumes have focused primarily on the ethnographic museums—including, among others, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, the Horniman Museum in London, the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris, the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, and the GrassiMuseum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig—that were founded throughout Europe during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth.1 During the past ten years, Western Europe has witnessed the creation of a new wave of museums devoted to non-European art and culture. Some have been founded using existing ethnographic collections, while others have been created with no collections at all. These new museums, as well as some exhibitions associated with older museums—such as the 2005 show Colonial Violence in the Congo: The Colonial Era, held at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren, Belgium—have implicitly or explicitly evoked Europe’s colonial past. New institutions in this group include the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, the soon-to-be-inaugurated Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Mediterranée (MCEM) in Marseille, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou in France’s overseas territory of New Caledonia, the Musée du Quai Branly (MQB) in Paris, and the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de
... Reforestation, Landscape Conservation, and the Anxieties of Empire in French ColonialAlgeria.... more ... Reforestation, Landscape Conservation, and the Anxieties of Empire in French ColonialAlgeria. Caroline Ford. ... The limitations of and lacunae in the sources for Algeria in this period present the historian with a formidable challenge. ...
Now in these things, a large part of what we call natural, is not; it is even quite artificial: t... more Now in these things, a large part of what we call natural, is not; it is even quite artificial: that is to say, the tilled fields, the trees and other domesticated plants that are placed in order, the rivers kept within bounds and directed toward a certain course, and such, lack both the state and the appearance that they would have in nature. (GIACOMO LEOPARDI) The field of "environmental history" emerged as a separately defined area of scholarship in the 1970s. In the United States, where many of its practitioners believe it to be most deeply rooted, historians quickly created a number of new professional as
In recent years a number of books have been published on the European museums that were constitut... more In recent years a number of books have been published on the European museums that were constituted from the non-European art and artifacts collected during almost two centuries of European colonial expansion. These volumes have focused primarily on the ethnographic museums-including, among others, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, the Horniman Museum in London, the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris, the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, and the Grassi-Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig-that were founded throughout Europe during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. 1 During the past ten years, Western Europe has witnessed the creation of a new wave of museums devoted to non-European art and culture. Some have been founded using existing ethnographic collections, while others have been created with no collections at all. These new museums, as well as some exhibitions associated with older museums-such as the 2005 show Colonial Violence in the Congo: The Colonial Era, held at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren, Belgium-have implicitly or explicitly evoked Europe's colonial past. New institutions in this group include the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, the soon-to-be-inaugurated Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Mediterranée (MCEM) in Marseille, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou in France's overseas territory of New Caledonia, the Musée du Quai Branly (MQB) in Paris, and the Cité Nationale de l'Histoire de
HISTOIRE Ce livre est une réflexion sur l'intégration et l'identité nationale, en France et plus ... more HISTOIRE Ce livre est une réflexion sur l'intégration et l'identité nationale, en France et plus généralement en Europe. Traduction d'un ouvrage paru d'abord en anglais en 1993, il analyse la manière dont se constituaient les nations et se forgeaient les identités, à la fois sous et contre l'influence de forces émanant des capitales des États et de leurs élites politiques. Devenu classique, ce livre a eu un impact intellectuel considérable depuis un quart de siècle dans le monde anglo-saxon et français. La théorie de la modernisation, qu'illustre notamment l' ouvrage d'Eugen Weber, La Fin des terroirs (1870-1914), ne prenait pas suffisamment en compte la façon dont ces identités étaient façonnées par des conditions locales, et les contingences historiques, dont celui de la langue, et des allégeances régionales. Caroline Ford a réussi à remettre en question cette perspective et a montré comment les hommes et les femmes dans un département de Basse Bretagne (Finistère) s'étaient opposés à un État qui, à la fin du xix e siècle, s'efforçait d'intégrer ces régions dites périphériques à une culture politique commune. Elle analyse les stéréotypes fortement péjoratifs qu'utilisaient les représentants de l'État et les observateurs, afin de contester ce que l'on a qualifié de « l'énorme condescendance de la postérité », en attribuant indépendance, rationalité et humanité aux Bretons des campagnes et des villes, vivant très loin de la capitale.
Les Français n'ont pas attendu les années 1970 pour s'intéresser à l'environnement. Tout au long ... more Les Français n'ont pas attendu les années 1970 pour s'intéresser à l'environnement. Tout au long des XIX e et XX e siècles, les catastrophes naturelles – notamment les grandes inondations de 1856 et 1910 – ainsi que les dommages causés par la déforestation, l'urbanisation et l'industrialisation alarment l'opinion publique. Ce ne sont pas seulement les naturalistes et les scientifiques, mais aussi les politiques, les ingénieurs et les artistes qui se passionnent alors pour la cause. Sous le Second Empire on « verdit » les villes. Avec l'avènement d'une bourgeoisie urbaine, la nature devient à la fois un objet esthétique et un enjeu touristique. L'expansion coloniale, elle-même, participe du débat : elle renouvelle la perception du monde dit « naturel » et de son usage. Les débats sont vifs tant les acteurs sont nombreux. Très vite cependant, au tout début du XX e siècle, la France met en place un arsenal juridique visant à protéger l'environnement et – la première – appelle la communauté internationale à coopérer sur le sujet. Caroline Ford signe ici un ouvrage fondateur en offrant une étude synthétique du « souci de la nature » propre à la France.
Introduction to special issue of French Historical Studies on "New Directions in French Environme... more Introduction to special issue of French Historical Studies on "New Directions in French Environmental History"
Link to author interview on "Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France" (H... more Link to author interview on "Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France" (Harvard UP, 2016)
Ce livre, qui a pour origine une thèse de doctorat, s'ouvre sur un paradoxe fondamental. Les clim... more Ce livre, qui a pour origine une thèse de doctorat, s'ouvre sur un paradoxe fondamental. Les climatologues et les historiens de l'environnement sont arrivés à la conclusion que le climat de l'Amérique du Nord britannique avait subi un refroidissement systématique, caractérisé par de longs hivers et par de courts étés humides et frais, lors d'une période que le glaciologue François Matthes appelle le « Petit Âge glaciaire ». Pourtant, les élites métropolitaines et locales du XVIII e et du XIX e siècle étaient convaincues que le climat des terres colonisées par les Européens était devenu plus tempéré, alors même que le refroidissement associé au Petit Âge glaciaire persista de la fin du XVIII e au début du XIX e siècle. De surcroît, tous ces hauts fonctionnaires, ces marchands, ces ministres, ces naturalistes, ces propriétaires terriens et ces observateurs pensaient que les colons étaient à l'origine de ce changement climatique salutaire grâce au progrès agricole et au défrichage des terres. Dans ses Observations sur l'État de Virginie, Thomas Jefferson écri-vait que le climat y était « devenu bien plus modéré, même de mémoire d'homme d'âge mûr » ; le président de l'université de Yale, Timothy Dwight, regrettait quant à lui que certains étrangers considéraient toujours que le climat d'Amérique du Nord était inhospitalier pour les colons européens alors que, d'après lui, il n'en était rien.
Xavier Maréchaux's study of Catholic priests who renounced their vows of celibacy and married dur... more Xavier Maréchaux's study of Catholic priests who renounced their vows of celibacy and married during the French Revolution, Consulate and Napoleonic Empire seeks to understand why priests married and left the Church and the consequences of their actions for themselves, the French state, the Church, and civil society. Despite the abundant archival sources that are available on the subject in the form of letters by married priests to Pope Pius VII as well as those addressed to Cardinal Caprara, who was sent to France by the Pope following the Concordat of 1801, priestly marriage remains a forgotten episode in the history of the Revolution. The book is divided into an introduction, six chapters and a conclusion. While the priests' letters form the backbone of Maréchaux's documentation, especially those available in 21 cartons and microfilm housed in the Archives Nationales, he also uses local studies and departmental archives, which have allowed him to put together a biographical dictionary of 4,200 married priests. Indeed, the book's appendices provide graphs, tables, and maps on the social origin of married priests, their dates of birth, the number of married priests by department from 1791 and 1816, the professions that married priests pursued during the Consulate and Empire, and the civil status (separated, divorced, widowed) of priests who asked to reassume their priestly functions. Maréchaux estimates that 5, 918 priests married from 1789 to 1815. From 1791 to September 1793, when priests were allowed to marry, 8% of them chose to do so. When revolutionaries sought to abolish the Constitutional Church and its clergy and forced them to marry, during the " Dechristianization of the Year II, " 70% did so. After the Terror, more than 90% of the priests who had been forced to marry remained married and continued to renounce their religious vocation, while only 2,7% appealed to Cardinal Caprara and claimed that their marriages were counterfeit. From 1795 to June 1815 another 22% of the priests married, when again, they could do so by choice. Married priests in the nineteenth century were hardly portrayed in a flattering light, as evidenced in abbé Grégoire's scarcely remembered Histoire du mariage des prêtres en France, particulièrement depuis 1789 (Paris, 1826), and they became the butt of an abundant anticlerical literature. Interestingly, Grégoire criticized them for blackening the reputation of the Constitutional Church, while anticlerical writers accused them of cynicism and immorality, while treating them with utter contempt. Maréchaux is intent on rehabilitating them, arguing that they deserve more than insult and neglect. He argues that they were sometimes the victims and at times the perpetrators of revolutionary violence, and that they abandoned their sacerdotal state for a matrimonial state freely in some instances and in others to avoid persecution.
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