Prosperity (relative)
All Queyrassins elderly now enjoy the same standard of living, mutatis mutandis, as other French remember the difficult times of their youth and of those, harder still, as their ancestors have experiences, they talk about frugal meal what they were sentenced each day, many of bread, soup in the morning and evening milk soup, apples potatoes and bacon, the same clothes they wore long; shoes they were shod to wear through the sole, the little money they earned, food shortages, etc..
past century and a half, those who write about the Queyras insist on poverty or the misery of the peasants of these mountain valleys. Based on what they read in old chronicles, including the famous transitons Molines, Pierre-Grosse, Fontgillarde, or signatures Prosecutors Arvieux, they sometimes reduce the life of these high valleys to the long list disasters of all kinds who beat, with epidemics plague, floods, weather, wolves, fires, avalanches, frosts and famines, plus the wars and their consequences, destruction of property, dead men, the presence of enemy troops or allies that had to be fed, thus giving the impression that Queyras had fallen to the lot only misfortune. General A. William has even subtitled his admirable book The Queyras "splendor and agony of high Alpine valley, splendours returning to the landscape, the ordeal for the inhabitants.
This is not to dispute these facts. Obviously, the agro-pastoral economy, which served for centuries the basis for the Queyras, suffered a deep crisis, which still continues today, so that this economy survives on public aid and the country has become bankrupt if this economy had not been replaced by tourism, a kind of vast mountainous desert. Yet it would be a mistake to project in a relatively distant past - say, the fourteenth to the eighteenth century - an economic crisis that characterized the nineteenth and twentieth century The past is not necessarily a reflection of our present or the distant past than the recent past. The crisis of the agro-pastoral economy, following which the Queyrassins became poorer and have had their standard of living deteriorate, erupted in the years 1830-1850 and was manifested by a decrease in the price of cheese, butter, calves and lambs, the sale produced the main farmers' income breeders Queyras.
It has not always been so. Indeed, an objective analysis suggests that for several centuries until the beginning of the XIXth, Queyras's economy was relatively prosperous (relatively, that is to say relative to other regions Farm South of France) and the Queyrassins enjoyed a relatively high standard of living. Many facts testify to this. There is talk among Top authors Charter of Liberties, granted by the Ruler of the Dauphiné (the Dauphin Humbert II) in 1343 to residents of the five escartons Brianconnais. It was not by greatness of spirit that the Dauphin granted these freedoms, but well understood by financial interest and because, as a result of the many wars that had opposed the Kingdom of Savoy, being short of money, bankruptcy threatened his state. If Queyrassins paid the charter is clear that they were able to ensure their daily survival and could spend the rest of their income to buy these freedoms, which assured them of new revenue and allowed them considering large investments, especially using water from streams to dig canals to irrigate and run the mills.
Looking at marriage contracts and wills of a strict economic point of view, as did a very enlightening Ms. Rosenberg, it is no doubt that Queyrassins, without rolling on gold property course, derived from their activities income which were not negligible. In the eighteenth century, Abriès account daily, that is to say, agricultural workers paid by the day. Throughout the South of France, the legacy of these tools consists of daily (false, rakes, shovels, sickles, hammers, knives, etc.).. It is different in Queyras, where day laborers are not a rural underclass. They married, and acquire property; they write wills. In 1748, one of them, shelter, bequeathed to each of his children, boys and girls, and his grandchildren amounts ranging from 9 to 80 pounds (80 pounds since then the annual salary of a schoolmaster). It is a large estate, which, no doubt, is less than that of peasant proprietors - which explains, among other reasons that so many notaries have been able to maintain a study into the smallest village in the Queyras (There was one in two to Ristolas and shelter) - and important point: at a time, until the Revolution, the birthright governing succession, all children of a deceased person, regardless either sex were entitled to a share of the inheritance. The engineers of the royal armies, and the Blottière Ricord, who have long resided in the high valleys in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, were surprised to find that Queyrassins enjoyed relative prosperity. Harriet Rosenberg's often quoted in A Negotiated World.
Finally, as the last indicator relative prosperity, we must include instruction early and massive Queyrassins men and women, from the XVI th century (and perhaps before). This is an exceptional situation in southern France, and often even better than in rich and prosperous cities of the Paris basin.
course, this was relative prosperity. In other words, it is real only if it is compared to the situation in other rural areas. Living conditions in the Queyras were long (up to early nineteenth s) less bad than elsewhere in southern and western France - which explains, among other causes of population growth. In all campaigns ancien regime, the rule was the rent or sharecropping or wage labor. Farmers cultivating land that does not belong to them. They lived in hovels in which they did not own. Livestock they raised was the herd of another. In Queyras, it was different. Almost all residents were homeowners, which explains, among other factors, the phenomenon of permanent emigration was rare before 1830. They owned land, their homes, their tools and livestock, sheep and cattle, mule. Forests, meadows, steep slopes formed the commons that people managed themselves. Furnaces and mills were public goods. All this represented a capital which has a value and generated income.
0 comments:
Post a Comment