Peasants into Citizen in the European Countryside: The Modernization and the Politicization of the Countrymen since the 19th Century

The terms of ‘modernization’ and ‘modernity’ have been called into question not only in their French uses, but also in Italian, English and German. This questioning is largely based on historians adopting and using arguments which originate in the economic and anthropological disciplines. To our great regret, the term of modernisation has very much become a taboo amongst historians. Without going into great detail, we would like to outline the two main types of opposition:On the one hand, the term of modernisation is criticised because it is thought to impose hierarchy of values and an image of ‘progress’ and of society which is not well adapted to the society of the 19th Century. This is the easiest criticism to refute as it takes a caricature of historiography as its starting point and puts forward a kind of anthropological refusal of modernisation in the name of consideration of inequalities and balance of power. But on the other hand, and more fundamentally, it is the nature of economic and moral representation of the 19th Century transition to liberal capitalism which is important, especially when it suggests that the market economy had already penetrated the countryside, and this independently of generalisation of urban models.While the economic and social domains have seen the meanings of modernisation and its links with the State called into question, it seems difficult to reject its political and cultural significance and this fundamental coupling by Eugen Weber is reused in recent works about European countryside.The debate around the role of the State in rural politicization, based on readings of Eugen Weber's classical book Peasants into Frenchmen. The modernization of rural France (1870–1914) goes a lot further than the simple question of the efficiency of the administration and the limits of the image of those who represented it: it directly concerns the virtual integration into the State and the role of rural elites between that which is local and that which is national.With using “politicization”, we intend to emphasize, on the one hand, the steps of the national integration of the whole rural society after 1830 and, on the other hand, the political acculturation of the peasants, their positive interpretation of citizenship, their own political agenda (learning to use the ballot after 1848 and adopting the mechanisms of political and not only social conflicts).The aim of our paper is to consider the part played by the State and the “rural elites” in the political modernization of european countryside from 1830 to 1914 by comparing the European situation.With the terms of “rural elites”, we want to pursue the question of the relationships between social power and political influence with exploring the diversity of “rural elites” through the three following meanings: a) the traditional “notable” defined by “fear, respect, sympathy and dependency” (Eugen Weber) b) the mediators of rural society the “élite” as an intermediary class between peasantry and middle-class, between rural and micro-urban society (Henri Mendras) c) the emergence of a new group of local and national political leaders coming from the peasantry.