The positioning of country dwellers outside of history by the French construction of the countryside has made it difficult to construct fictional or historical images of country dwellers that give them an active role in stories of national development. Change in the countryside therefore has had to be fundamental and essential: turning “peasants” into “Frenchmen” involved reconstructing those who lived in the countryside. Even given the relatively slow and gradual character of the French movement toward an urban and industrial society in the second half of the nineteenth century, this period brought out the ambiguities of the French discourse about the countryside, as the different nature of “peasants” coexisted with the prospect of their incorporation into the French nation. But while this discourse, and histories that participate in it, speak of a transformation of country dwellers, it makes more sense to describe rural history as a process in which country dwellers changed their placement with regard to French culture. Rural culture coexisted with French culture, leading to a renegotiation of rural and French identities and new meanings for the term “peasant.”

The physical setting in the countryside, especially away from Paris and the new industrial regions, remained much the same from the French Revolution until well into the twentieth century. Schools and mairies were built, and hedgerows and other obstacles might be torn down or constructed, but these only added to the legacy of centuries of rural civilization.