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Local History Author(S): Pierre Goubert Source: Daedalus, Vol Local History Author(s): Pierre Goubert Source: Daedalus, Vol. 100, No. 1, Historical Studies Today (Winter, 1971), pp. 113-127 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20023993 . Accessed: 30/04/2015 04:15 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press and American Academy of Arts & Sciences are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Daedalus. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 122.108.194.54 on Thu, 30 Apr 2015 04:15:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PIERRE GOUBERT Local History shall concerns a or a We call local history that which village few a or town or a villages, small middle-sized (a large harbor capital is the or a area not beyond local scope), geographical greater than common as an an the provincial unit (such English county, Italian a sl or contado, German Land, French bailiwick pays). Local his was even tory, which practiced long ago with carefulness, zeal, and was in the pride, later despised (especially the nineteenth and first half centuries the of the twentieth ) by supporters of general history. But, since the middle of this century, local history has risen again new some even and acquired meaning; indeed, maintain that only can true local history be and sound. a For long period?at least until the time when ideas circulated faster the and when men to move (in eighteenth century) began frequently and quickly (during the revolution of the railways in the most was nineteenth century)?the setting of Europeans the parish in or town the country the small and the surrounding district?that in a is, roughly speaking, the stretch of land covered day's walk, ten ten or in a two or from kilometers to miles, day's ride, about three times more. same in The laws (local custom) prevailed this as as same place, well the cultural habits (methods of cultivating the soil, quality of crops, shapes of tools, date of opening for mead ows and woods), the same social and economic habits (date of hiring servants, date of weekly markets and quarterly and yearly same same fairs), the seignorial rules, the judicial and administra tive and the same beliefs. Most never went area, religious people beyond the boundaries of their districts; their children remained a a a a a there; priest, judge, seigneur, notary, and market were within reach. The cultured part of the population moved about some easily: prospective lawyers would take of their degrees in 113 This content downloaded from 122.108.194.54 on Thu, 30 Apr 2015 04:15:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions D DALUS the went to semi neighboring universities, future priests diocesan not naries when they existed, nobles, when they did travel far away a or because of war, went to their parents' their suzerains' castles or situated outside the bailiwick, sometimes outside the province were course. itself. There also vagrants and beggars, of But all of were them felt they first of all citizens of their native towns and Amiens and provinces?from Dijon and Burgundy, from Picardy, from Nimes and Languedoc, from Aix and Provence, from Saint were Brieuc and Brittany?and secondly they French, though they as always acknowledged themselves the king's faithful and obedient stratum subjects. Only small segments of society?the highest and the lowest?could have felt no association with a particular region or as as place. The great financiers and captains, well the gangs of were beggars along highways, not purposely adrift from their homes; all of them knew (especially when the police questioned the came beggars )what province, diocese, and parish they from. In such a confined life, the intellectual activities of the small on minority dealt with either meditations ancient texts, especially or Roman and Greek, with the history of the region, the region being as understood the land of the family. When they tried to produce histories?as histories were written before Voltaire's Essai sur les Moeurs?antiquities, particularities, and the famous exploits of the or were city province emphasized. By the end of the sixteenth cen were tury, provincial histories?which merely lists of noble fami lies, castles, fiefs, abbeys, and cathedral chapters?or histories of towns and cities?which were enumerations of charters, privileges, famous people, and gossip about the writer's native town?were commonplace. Later, the strongest institutions in the provinces ( the Estates, the parlements), because of their corporate feelings, and as a way of protecting their interests, published their histories. Monks dedicated to research ( for example, the Benedictines ) often decided to and a of documents gather publish corpus regarding own was their provinces; and such work frequently carefully done.1 or These generally contained legislative administrative acts, the concern founding charters, feudal documents, and other evidences ing the great noble families, the pious priests, and abbots who had been influential. were sometimes They apologies, nearly hagiog But cannot even re raphies. they be dismissed, today. They often to text fer the of lost documents and give the only extant version of them. The nineteenth at in was century, least France, the golden age 114 This content downloaded from 122.108.194.54 on Thu, 30 Apr 2015 04:15:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Local History of local history. Following and enlarging upon the example given in the cen by provincial academies the second half of eighteenth or tury, many "societies" that called themselves "scholarly" learned were on some (and occasionally so) appeared the scene, existing a were times for only few years. Their members typical elements of bourgeois society: magistrates, notaries, priests, spinsters, rentiers, a minor few teachers, nobility. Among thousands of papers and hundreds of volumes issued in France from the middle of the a is a nineteenth century, tenth perhaps worth glancing through, hundredth worth keeping.2 This "petit bourgeois" social science from serious and would profit sociological psychological analysis. weakness ex The of many of these pseudohistorical works partly the plains contempt with which professional historians of the early twentieth century regarded local history?a jumble of chance genealogies, usurped glories, proofless assertions. Professional historians disdained such local history also be cause of their own of what chose to see as conception they "gen eral" General was history. history political, military, diplomatic, and a administrative, ecclesiastical. Studying the state involved of war a of study statesmen; studying permitted study the military feats of generals; studying foreign relations involved the publica tion of ambassadors' to a memoirs; studying religion led recounting of the achievements of and popes bishops, generally holy and pious; studying administrative history (written from the records of offices located in was as the a Paris) represented being history of whole people. A retrospective psychoanalysis of the historians of the nineteenth century would probably reveal that many of the historians who to more or chose write about monarchy less identi fied with the a themselves monarch, that the historian of particular minister sometimes was imagined he himself governing the country. An Freudian elementary interpretation could explain many of the were curious histories that published. the first serious at were Yet, attempts local history made by historians and rank intellectuals who with the best. They under stood that a thesis or interpretation, however ingenious, needs to be a supported by precise facts; precise facts have space as well as a time dimension. S?bastien Thus, Vauban, pleading for fiscal used the reform, precise examples of the Vezelay election, his native pays, and Normandy, where he had often been.3 Thus a Messance, demographer,4 rightly opposing the thesis of French so depopulation brilliantly advanced by intellectuals as famous 115 This content downloaded from 122.108.194.54 on Thu, 30 Apr 2015 04:15:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DAEDALUS as as though unqualified demographers Montesquieu and Voltaire, a numerous in proved with strictly regional analysis of parishes the Lyonnais, Auvergne, and Upper Normandy that the French risen population had markedly between the end of the seventeenth the century and end of the eighteenth. Alexis de Tocqueville, with was to at same his great design, which understand the time the dying Ancien R?gime and the French Revolution, used the provincial in ex record offices, particularly Tours, and illustrated with actual states But can amples the accomplishments of the of Languedoc.5 a men historical form depend upon the work of of genius? was more common more com Alphonse Feillet's technique and an in monly used. Feillet, often-neglected historian of the misery was a France at the time of the Fronde,6 contemporary of III. He not Napol?on believed that the French people did suffi ciently know the misdoings of "legitimate" Bourbon monarchies. his to To support rather simple thesis, having do with the misery of the French before, during, and after the Fronde, Feillet used in num memoirs, letters, monographs, and essays published large in one a bers the nineteenth century: could always find French was or village where somebody dying of the plague malnutrition, or where soldiers' violence had created massive disorder in every same month between 1640 and 1660.
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