Industry in the Village. An Essay on Microhistory (Arles-sur-Tech, 14th and 15th Centuries).
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 20964 |
| Format | 15 x 21.5 |
| Détails | 560 p., bibliography, index, 8 maps, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2017 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
This work, based on an investigation as close as possible to the sources and which borrows its methods from micro-history, restores another reality and proposes another economic model of the medieval countryside. The setting is the Vallespir valley which borders the Canigou massif (Pyrénées-Orientales) and, in particular, the town of Arles-sur-Tech. The time is that of the end of the Middle Ages, the 14th and 15th centuries, when the Crown of Aragon extended beyond the Pyrenees towards the plain of Roussillon, Vallespir and Conflent. Thousands of notarial acts still bear witness today to the passion for writing which runs through this mountain society and is concretized in the notarial offices of the towns and villages. Business is done there, contracts are established, successes and failures are recorded. The Vallespir Valley is an industrial district, crossed and unified by the circulation of products, capital, and knowledge, carried by rural entrepreneurs whose biographies have been patiently reconstructed. They allow for a new exploration of the rural economy. Mule businesses, dye works and leather workshops, mines, forges and foundries, and sawmills are workplaces where local and foreign workers, often skilled and from distant horizons, meet. While financing for industry may come from the nearby town, members of the town's notables actively provide investment in businesses that are often owned by their neighbors and relatives. These spaces of work and exchange are also technical territories where innovations are deployed as shared and simultaneous experiences on the scale of the European continent, as evidenced by industry in the village.
This work, based on an investigation as close as possible to the sources and which borrows its methods from micro-history, restores another reality and proposes another economic model of the medieval countryside. The setting is the Vallespir valley which borders the Canigou massif (Pyrénées-Orientales) and, in particular, the town of Arles-sur-Tech. The time is that of the end of the Middle Ages, the 14th and 15th centuries, when the Crown of Aragon extended beyond the Pyrenees towards the plain of Roussillon, Vallespir and Conflent. Thousands of notarial acts still bear witness today to the passion for writing which runs through this mountain society and is concretized in the notarial offices of the towns and villages. Business is done there, contracts are established, successes and failures are recorded. The Vallespir Valley is an industrial district, crossed and unified by the circulation of products, capital, and knowledge, carried by rural entrepreneurs whose biographies have been patiently reconstructed. They allow for a new exploration of the rural economy. Mule businesses, dye works and leather workshops, mines, forges and foundries, and sawmills are workplaces where local and foreign workers, often skilled and from distant horizons, meet. While financing for industry may come from the nearby town, members of the town's notables actively provide investment in businesses that are often owned by their neighbors and relatives. These spaces of work and exchange are also technical territories where innovations are deployed as shared and simultaneous experiences on the scale of the European continent, as evidenced by industry in the village.