Educating in economic calculus: the invention of the enlightened peasant via manuals of agriculture, 1830–1870

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study is concerned with the process of the economic normalisation of agriculture in nineteenth-century France. The manuals published for rural inhabitants and for use in primary schools between 1830 and 1870 are presented as a means of analysing attempts at economic rationalisation which were underway during this period, in particular as it would affect the peasantry. Drawing attention to the content of agricultural, the study sheds light on the educational forms in which economic precepts and accounting techniques were presented and the manner in which those techniques were employed to promote ‘best practices’, so as to tentatively orient farm management and the farmer’s decisions. It highlights the social work of ideological production and behavioural guidance that unfolded in the first part of the nineteenth century. Our research emphasises the ethics embodied in these agricultural manuals, ethics that were directed towards a greater focus on profit maximisation on the part of the small- and medium-scale peasantry in tandem with an idea of disciplined and prudent personal and professional conduct.