Change in Rural France in the Period of Industrialization, 1830–1914

France has been well characterized by Raymond Aron, following de Tocqueville, as Immuable et changeante . Nowhere does variability (across space) combine more strongly with stability (in time) than in the economy of rural France in the nineteenth century. Judging again by titles, we must give higher marks to the author of The Eternal Order of the Fields than to the man who argued that Capitalism and Agriculture were growing ever closer, to the advantage of the former.