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The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War.

Article Excerpt
Robb, Graham. 2007. The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War. New York: Norton. $27.95 hc. xvii + 455 pp.

Thanks to a 14,000-mile bicycle journey, which retraced "transhumance trails, Gallo-Roman trade routes, pilgrim paths, river confluences" and "four years in the library" (xvi), Graham Robb "discovered" France. Or, perhaps, the quotation marks should enclose "France," for the discovery turned out to be a chaotic patchwork of ethnically distinct pays, unfamiliar to most insofar as they have been invisible to the typical "Paris-centric" view of France. Indeed, as Robb feels compelled to point out, "the provinces [are] not just the hinterland of Paris" (198). Prior to this latest publication, he had authored several studies of French writers; yet, he admits, "My professional knowledge of the country reflected the metropolitan view of writers like Balzac and Baudelaire, for whom the outer boulevards of Paris marked the edge of the civilized world" (xv). Thus, as though in reparation for this oversight, Robb's "historical geography" brings into focus in rich ethnographic detail an astonishing diversity of provincial microcultures, which remained "unfrenchified" for at least a century after the Revolution.

Robb chronicles the disruptions of everyday life in these deeply settled communities as successive central governments, from the first National Assembly onwards, sought to integrate them into a cohesive polity, shaped by the nationalist aspirations and interests of Paris bourgeois elites. However, his book is far from a nostalgic lament for folk cultures and ancient landscapes transformed or eradicated by modernization. To be sure, he finds much to...

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