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Motionless History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie*
Affiliation:
Collège de France
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Extract

The subject of the course that I shall offer this year at the Collège de France is the economy and society—or, better, the traditional ecodemography of the world long gone—as they “functioned,” if one may use this term, from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, or, more precisely, from 1300-1320 to 1720-1730. Forsake of convenience, this world will be de-limited by the present frontiers of France—a decision of pure form with no implication of tri-color or fleur-de-lys. We shall be concerned with about 15 to 20 million people in every period, although there will be long intervals between actual dates. To be sure, a similar study could be carried out (and probably will be if it has not been already) among our neighbors: Germany, Italy, without a doubt Spain, but possibly not the British Isles. One of the paradoxes of such an undertaking is that the Kingdom of England, where The World We Have Lost was first defined with such penetrating insight, is of all western countries the one where that world was the least typical and the least stable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , Winter 1977 , pp. 115 - 136
Copyright
copyright © Social Science History Association 1977 

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Footnotes

*

Inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, November 30, 1973. First published in Annales E.S.C., XXIX (1974), 673-82. Translated with permission of the author and the publisher by John Day. Consulting editor Rachael Rockwell Graham. English translation copyrighted 1977 by the Social Science History Association.

References

Notes

1 A royalist insurrection in western France at the time of the Revolution; from the name of one of the rebel leaders, a certain Jean Chouan, (tr. note)

2 J. P. Enthoven.

3 J. N. Biraben, (personal communication).

4 G. Bois in his unpublished doctoral thesis.

5 Goy, J. and Ladurie, E. Le Roy, eds., Les fluctuations du produit de la dîme (Paris-The Hague, 1973)Google Scholar.

6 Goubert, P., L’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1973)Google Scholar.

7 Lebrun, F., Les Hommes et la mort en Anjou (Paris-The Hague, 1971)Google Scholar.

8 See the studies of M. Chance distributed at the Congress of Royaumont on the Unity of Man (1972).

9 See in this connection the forceful demonstration of Jean-Marc Debard, “Subsistances et prix des grains à Montbéliard de 1571 à 1793,” unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris, 1972.

10 Garden, M., Lyon et les Lyonnais au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar.

11 See, in the wake of many similar studies, Ganiage, J. A., “Structures de la natalité dans cinq villages du Beauvaisis,” Annales de Normandie (1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Chaunu, P., La Civilisation de l’Europe classique (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar.

13 Dupâquier, J. and Demonet, M., “Ce qui fait les familles nombreuses,” Annales E.S.C., XXVII (1972), 1025-45Google Scholar.

14 Abel, W., Crises agraires en Europe (XIIIe-XXe siècle) (Paris, 1974)Google Scholar. Translated from the second German edition.

15 See the studies of A. and Gordus, J., for example in Annales E.S.C., XXVII (1972), 1235-56Google Scholar.

16 Goubert, P., L’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1973) II, 136Google Scholar.

17 This extremely doubtful presupposition is practically explicit in the work of Morineau, M., Les faux-semblants d’un démarrage économique (Cahiers des Annales no. 30) (Paris, 1971), 336Google Scholar: “Taking into account the excessive mortality, which was almost general between 1680 and 1700 [I would say between 1680 and 1715, L.R.L.], France seems to have recovered her 1670 level of population by the