Fraternity Among the French Peasantry: Sociability and Voluntary Associations in the Loire Valley, 1815-1914 (review)

Fraternity Among the French Peasantry: Sociability and Voluntary Associations in the Loire Valley, 1815-1914. By Alan R. H. Baker (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 373 pp. $74.95.

In the context of arguments about the modernization of rural society, the collapse of the peasant community, the rise of peasant individualism, and the growing sense of community that developed around municipal councils, this book examines fraternal associations in Loir-et-Cher during the nineteenth century. Baker's intention is to trace the tension between individualism and collectivism--not to deny the importance of individualism in rural France but to bring into scholars' views an appreciation of the importance of fraternalism.

The heart of the book is a series of studies about the development of different forms of voluntary association in nineteenth-century Loir-et-Cher. Arguing that traditional notions of cooperation, based on labor exchanges rather than cash payments, formed the basis for voluntary associations, these chapters examine livestock insurance associations, mutual-aid societies, fire brigades, anti-phylloxera syndicates, and agricultural societies. Baker's analyses suggest the importance of the Second Empire, the 1880s, and the decade before the World War I in their spread. Statistical analysis indicates that voluntary associations were more likely to exist closer to Blois, in nucleated settlements, in areas with small farms, and in viticultural communities.

Baker makes a number of speculations about voluntary associations both in Loir-et-Cher and in France as a whole, attempting to make more general statements about the development of fraternity in the countryside. These statements are usually framed in hypothetical terms, and it proves difficult for him to relate his detailed examinations of different kinds of voluntary associations in one department to broader questions about sociability in rural France. He argues that these associations were continuations of older rural patterns of spreading risk, but places this point within a general argument about secularization. He speculates about the importance of voluntary associations in developing democratic political practices in the countryside, but says little about political practices in the countryside.

The strength of Baker's book is its focus on a range of voluntary associations in a department of France, demonstrating clearly the presence and importance of these forms of sociability. Its weakness is its inability to relate these findings effectively to questions of importance about the history of rural France.

James R. Lehning
University of Utah

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