The Social Geography of Rural Revolt at the Beginning of the French Revolution

Abstract

The rural uprisings that were critical in the collapse of the Old Regime in 1789 have been intensively studied; the comparative analysis of rural revolt is currently a lively topic in American social science. This paper examines hypotheses on the social contexts likely to foster insurrection through the use of a variety of quantitative indicators. The principal tool is logistic regression. Several predictors of rural upheaval suggest some of the revolt-generating processes and structures: economic integration into the market; the political penetration of local institutions by the central state bureaucracy; conflict over land use; and the strength of local communal organization. Many other explanations are not confirmed: literacy does not generate revolt nor does variation in the level of hardship have the consequences expected in much of the literature. Beyond the specific findings, the rural turbulence of 1789 shows itself to be an amalgam of quite diverse conflicts. In the spring and summer of 1789 the peasants of France rose. Their mobilization took many forms and was directed against many targets. A central goal of the revolutionary legislature in that turbulent summer was the demobilization of the countryside, a goal that proved elusive for years to come. But already in the spring, the as yet scattered acts of peasant selfassertion testified to the potential storms, and formed a significant part of the context within which the elections of deputies to the Estates-General took place. The continuing rural turbulence, both demonstrating and aggravating the incapacity of the existing political order, made a major contribution to the sense of crisis that led the representatives of the Third Estate to abandon the concept of the EstatesGeneral to which they had been duly elected, and in an act of revolutionary self-assertion, led them to declare themselves the nucleus of a National Assembly. The wave of rural mobilization that starts in the middle of July, together with the turbulence of the towns, forms the backdrop to the National Assembly's ringing