The Catholic Agricultural Enlightenment in France
Author | : Liam Mannix |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 325 |
Release | : 2018 |
ISBN-10 | : 0438092465 |
ISBN-13 | : 9780438092464 |
Rating | : 4/5 (65 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: This dissertation helps explain how and why agriculture escaped its Malthusian structures through the practices of the ecclesiastical proprietors that owned the most productive land around Paris in late ancien regime France. It shows how a confluence of agricultural, social, religious, intellectual, and political factors enabled and encouraged clerics, armed with unique corporate advantages, to build a partnership with tenants that was among the most dynamic in the late ancien regime economy. This matters because it gives a hitherto unrecognized "religious" agronomic and Enlightenment dimension to the French path to modernity.