Editing Peasant (section)

==France==
{{Main|French peasants}}

Information about the complexities of the French Revolution, especially the fast-changing scene in Paris, reached isolated areas through both official announcements and long-established oral networks. Peasants responded differently to different sources of information. The limits on political knowledge in these areas depended more on how much peasants chose to know than on bad roads or illiteracy. Historian Jill Maciak concludes that peasants "were neither subservient, reactionary, nor ignorant."<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1093/fh/15.3.273|author=Maciak, Jill |title=Of News and Networks: The Communication of Political Information in the Rural South-West during the French Revolution|journal=French History|volume= 15|issue=3 |year=2001|pages=273–306}}</ref>

In his seminal book ''Peasants into Frenchmen: the Modernization of Rural France, 1880–1914'' (1976), historian [[Eugen Weber]] traced the modernization of French villages and argued that rural France went from backward and isolated to modern and possessing a sense of French nationhood during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.<ref>{{cite journal|jstor=3788392|author=Amato, Joseph A. |title=Eugen Weber's France|journal=Journal of Social History|volume=25|year= 1992|issue=4 |pages=879–882|doi=10.1353/jsh/25.4.879 }}</ref> He emphasized the roles of railroads, republican schools, and universal military conscription. He based his findings on school records, migration patterns, military-service documents and [[Economic history|economic trend]]s. Weber argued that until 1900 or so a sense of French nationhood was weak in the provinces. Weber then looked at how the policies of the [[French Third Republic|Third Republic]] created a sense of French nationality in rural areas.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Weber, Eugen |title=The Second Republic, Politics, and the Peasant|journal=French Historical Studies|volume=11|issue=4 |year=1980|pages=521–550 |doi=10.2307/286349 |jstor=286349}}</ref> The book was widely praised, but some<ref>{{cite journal|author=Margadant, Ted W. |title=French Rural Society in the Nineteenth Century: A Review Essay|journal=Agricultural History|year=1979|volume=53 |issue=3|pages=644–651|url=https://www.proquest.com/openview/dcc5f48d087ef148eca00a9bc74952b2/1}}</ref> argued that a sense of Frenchness existed in the provinces before 1870.