Author: admin

(chapter 2 )
Late in the morr in• of Angus t 12, 1999, a rap-tag process ion of French sheep farmers’ families gathered in Renaults and Citroens or the edge of the Lar Mac Plateau in Southern France. Idling behind four tractor trailers, they rolled down the slope of the plateau toward Millar, a town of twenty- five thousand dug deep in the Tann River Canyon. About halfway down the hill, the procession turned off the highway into a parkin lot where a half-built, nondescript, brown edifice stood locked behind a chain-link fence. Two yellow and red bags fluttering over the parking lot revealed the building’s future vocation as a McDonald’s restaurant. The farmers had def- initely not come for the food. They were about to perform what they called a “symbolic dismantling.”
No one who had been warned about the event knew what a “symbolic dis- mantling” was, yet nothing ar the time suggested it would be anyd ring more than a run-of-the-mill French demonstration. The Larzac farmers said they were demonstrating to protest a grab bag of issues: the 100 percent surtax rhe
U.S. govemmer+t had recently slapped on Roquefort cheese, the World Trade OTgani2atiOR, mu/2inatiODa/ COrQOTatiOtlS, %8eDgtiCa{ly mOdi(ied /OOd, and fast food. There were a few local TV reporters standing by, smoking distractedly While the farmers poured onto the asphalt in front of the McDonald’s. Four policemen had shown up to make sure noting got out of control. 16 sixty millior frenchmen can’t be wroeg
The farmers drove their tractor-trailers straight through the fence. One protester broke open the McDonald’s door, while several others jumped from the trucks onto the restaurant’s roof to be in painting the ir slogan on the brown tiles: “Out with McDo, Protect our Roquefort” (the famous blue cheese).
The rest of the farmers proceeded to strip off roof tiles, paneling, pipes, and every other removable part of the restaurant they could find, and started piling the lvIcDonald’s remains onto their trucks. While the farm- ers joyfully sacked the restaurant, their wives handed out chunks of blue- rippled Roquefort cheese on French baguet{e bread to bystanders. After an hour and a half, the restaurant was stripped clean and only four walls, the windows, and a foundation remained. The farmers drove the debris to the prefecture of police and deposited it on its front step, then headed home to tend to their sheep.
Little did the authorities know that this McDonald’s was about to become one of the most famous in the world. The man who had come up with the idea of the “symbolic dismantling,” josé Bové, was also about to become one of the most famous Frenchman in the world and a household name in his homeland.
We had been living in France for six months at the time, and were used to seeing demonstrations almost everywhere we traveled, but this was the first time we’d heard about a group protesting globalization—or so it seemed. August is a slow month in France’s newsrooms since the whole country takes the month off for holidays, so the Paris media relished the opportunity to report on a colorful, provocative event that had an international angle. Within a few days, the story of the McDonald’s protest virtually monopolised the French media. The police arrested four of the farmers’ leaders, but couldn’t find the ring leader, }osé Bové. They declared him a fugitive. When Bové turned himself in (he had been vacationing in Bordeaux), all the national papers and television stations were there to document his surrender. When French authorities saw the story was getting blown out of proportion, they decided to release the farmers, but Bové refused to pay his bail, ñ h Gandhi. The sympathetic farmer, with his droopy musrache and shackled wrists, was back in che headlines. And the story grew.
the land on their mind i2
In the next two weeks eighteen European deputies, from greens and communists to the extreme right, demanded Bové’s release including
socialist prime minister Lionel josp in. There were scores of demonstrations by unions and farmers across the country. Messages of support flowed in Atom as far away as Amazonia and The New York Times ran an article por- traying Bové as France’s new “anti-globalization hero.”
Since we had moved to France six months earlier to study lUhy they were resisting lobalizarion, we thought we had struck gold. Talk of the World Trade Organization’s upcoming Seattle conference wa, in the air and anti-American sentiment had been intensifying sin,ce the beginning of the NATO bombings in Kosovo. Bové’s story seemed to be the culmina- tion of all of this.
But his incredible popularity left us a bit mystified. After his release from prison, Julie decided to shadow Bové for a few months, following him to conferences and pro tests to try to put her finger on why the French had turned him into an iccn. Later that fall, we visit+•d Larzac and met the other farmers who were jailed after the McDonald’s sacking. The fastest route to LarMac is a good ten hours from Paris, but it turned out to be time very well spent because in Larzac we discovered that Bové’s protest and growing personality cult were less about globalization than they were about the peculiar relationship the French have with their land. In Larzac, farmers carry out their business pretty much the way it’s always been done, on family farms of a couple hundred sheep each, feed- ing their stock mainly what they grow on their own land. As we would soon see, innovation is not a particularly popular concept there. The farmers we met were.tar more likely to wax on about what they were feed- ing their sheep at the moment, scoop ing up handfuls of grass and grain and explaining the proportion and provenance of the different grains and grasses. José Bové is one among twenty-five hundred farmers in the one hundred—mile radius of the town of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon who raise sheep mainly for milk used in the famous blue Roquefort cheese. On his farm in the hamlet of Montredon, he and his two associates at the time were rais in• 550 sheep, forty pigs, and seven cows, both for meat and milk,
18 sixty million fre nchmen can’ t be wrorug
and producing the ir own salty cheese, lo Tomrne, which they sold directly
on the market.
this kind of production—so it’s no sqtpti ‹
ciOLrsl}’
toyst
the French react 3bt5pt Roquefort cheese is a two hundred million dollar per year business. About 50 percent of the fifteen thousand tons produced each year are bortg•ht by the French, who pay more than thirty dollars a kilo for the del- icacy. Roquefort cheese can only be produced in rhe caves of the town of Roctuefort-sur-Soulzon because it is aged usin a par ticular bacteria that reproduces there. It was the first non-wine produce in France to be granted the AOC label (Abbelbñon d’Originc Conrrñlée). According to the stan
to the World Trade Organization and its agenda. José Bové became a hero for decidin to rake on the WTO himsel(.
A lot of the peculiarities of French society, ,p |ud¡
pt
g their obsession
their land. During our first week in France, we
friendly, helpful women who operated a bed and bf’eakfast our of t}i¢ 5q –
ond floor of their apartment. ]osée was a retired teacher who vOlrtnteered dards of this centrally controlled quality assurance stamp, cheese can only
for an association to assist v ictimt ttiye
Anne was a-professor of micro- be ca!led Roquefort if it meets three conditions: the milk used to make it
biolO•y ac a Paris univers ity. They were a modem and worldly lesbian con- must come ftom the sheep of the twenty-five hundred sheep producers who
operate in a radius of about one hundred miles of the town; three-quarters
pie who read Le
Monde
and kept up to date on cultural events in tht•
For a few days we yere sure we were in the presence of true
¡ty. of what those sheep eat has to come from the ground of that same one hun drecl—mile radius; and the cheese must be aged in the Roquefort caves. (I r’s
We weren’t. Like mod t people
were
de
trot ince
(rhe
Faiisiennes.
who live in Paris, our hosts told us they the same logic that applies to the labels of champagne. Champagne comes from the re tion of Champagne, and Bordeaux come from around Bordeaux.) AOCs ate a kind of non moveable trademark recognized by both the European Union and the World Trade Organization. The owners of the Roquefort caves, the Besnier Group (who purchased the whole deal from Nestlé and Perrier), can only make as much cheese as the ground in the designated radius of Roquefort can produce. the area supports about seven hundred thousand sheep.
Such restrictions obviously limit che production. Farmers get good
prices by limiting the quantity of milk they produce and increasing its
€ xpress ion, borrowed from ancient Rome, means
“artywhete outside of the capital”) . “Mon poys c’•st l’Anperin” (My Country is the Anjou region) j
osée
informed
uS.
Anne picked up the cue, and reported, “Mon boys
c’est
ie DijOnnOfS.”(My country is the Dijon region). We were puzzled. We thought their country was France.
The French word pms (pay-ee) doesn’t translate. Literally, it l
ea
p
coUfttf. Bu{ inside France, it refers to areas that are recognized
U
s distinct, t/OUgh they aren’t delineased by le at or administrative boundaries. Over the two years we spent irr Paris we only made two frie
Ft
ds who were true
Par isians, meaning fou rth or fifth generation. The rest told us they came quality as much as possible. Because of those restrictions, there will never be biq• sheep farmin operations in the Larvae area, nor bi• fortunes to
Trégor
jays or another, including
ie
Périq°ord (east of Borcleaux),
ie
(UI Brittany),
Ie
Daiipâ‹nais next to the Alps), or Larzac. make. However, the sheep farmers never go broke either, and the French
There are hundreds of puts in France. If you ask the French where they
here born, they’ll iive you rhe name of their guys, certain ly not
the i mm-
,set their cheese. The AOC system also applies ro wine and other high-
ber £ their Dépnrtcmeni (the
ninety nine administrative units of the quality products like nuts, green lentils, and even onions. Call it subsidies,
call it protectionism, but it sounds logical to most French men and
French territory). Pays are the spiritual countries of origin of th
e
S
°m€ are former kingdoms or
French— women, even if they do indulge in fast food from time to time. (The Bové
anecdotes will recur in chapters 5, 10, 16, 17, ar+d 20.) Trade deregulation
Are
duchies from hundreds of years a o, others
j°°’ ‘egi°ns Abound France’s major cities. of the find the World Trade Organ ination promotes does indeed threaten
to regiona{ cp ruine.
about p‹zys was hOW intricately linked they are
During a hike, a friend of Jean-Benoir’s took a p icture of e o mary million frenchmen can’t be wrong
him ieaning against a road post that read: Rosay-en-Brie 12 km, Coulominiers 37 km, Charnnes 5 km. Brie, Coulommiers, and Chaumes ate
the IàHd Ori their mind zt
lake areas in the center où the country, to rain forests in thé Basque area,
long fishing shores down the west coast, and finally, arid plateau.s north of best known as famous cheeses, but first, they are thtee distinct guys east of
the Mediterranean. Very long and Quiet rivers drain the
territory, the Paris. Beaujolais is not first a wine, but a pnys north of Lyon. Roquefort and
longest being the Loire River, which flows just south of Paris. Around Paris Châteauneuf-du-Pape are other
po s
in the south of France.
vast plains provide land suitable for hijhly productive
a ricuiture, and The French are obsessed with their land, its geography, its history, and the traditions rhat sprang from it, and no matter where they end up living,
everywhere else in the country distinct soil types make it possible to grow almost anything. Only Ital/’S land cornes close £0 ma£Chtng the excep- their guys stays with them. These geo raphical origins occupy a much bi –
tional diversity and generosity of the French
land. But the Germans q°er place in individuals’ identities than even “home towns” do in North Am•_ricans’. Cuisine is extremely varied among France’s different pnys and the French hang on to their regional tastes with a fervor bordering on national pride. Eating with friends can feel like a flag-waving session.
Over our three years in France, we understood that the French attach-
declared the dinner in the rivalry long ago with rheir expression
Leben vie
Gott in Frnnkreicfi: “Living like God in France.
France’s peography also has built-in protection from outside threats. TheFrenchrefertotheir COLrtitryas the Hexagon because it has roughly six
sides.France’sborderswere not delineated by treaties or geometric conven- ment to their land went well beyond the dinner table. It is often said that
tiorrs like parallels and meridians. The Atlantic Ocean
and the the relative paucity of the british Isles and their isolation contributed to their British character, making them defiant of the rest of Eutope, and pushing them to seek elsewhere what their land could not provide. The
Mediterraneanmake up three sides. The border with Spain, an i.mpre•nab1ebarrier of mountains, is the fourth. To the east, the Alps and the Rhinë
make the fiîth side. The sixth side, France’s only real open border, is shared opposite conditions in France seem to have created the opposite result.
with Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany, and a
är£ Of that is the France‘s land is rich and varied. And if anything, that has pushed them to constantly look inward.
Nature has blessed France with a combination of physical characteris-
Ardennes, a series of plateaus and deep canyons that are difficulr to pass.
Themost obvious characteristic the French sharew’iththeir,geopuaphy tics that gave it a natural head start when it comes to gastronomy. The first
lSdiversiry. In a farROuS interview with Newipeqk
in 1961, President is a moderate climate. France isn’t quite as big as Texas, and it enjoys about the same climate. The only instances of cold, even polar, weather are
Charles de Gaulle ( 1944—46, 1958-f›9) asked, “How can anyone •ovem a
country that has 246 kinds of cheese?” What he meant was, “How can any- found in the south, in the high mountain ranges of the Alps and the
one be expected to govern 246 different
kinds of French?” France has Pyr
Geographically, France is spectacularly varied, although it is smaller that Texas. Every fifty miles or so the climate and the landscape change, from permanent snow and glaciers in the Alps to dormant volcanoes and
miraculouslyandcuriouslyprojectedan image of culturel ur+ifOrmity to the Oumide world. Inside, french men and women cherish their regional iden- titres
Ùntil the French Revolution, France was a divided patchwork of
KàËf nalities similar to the present-day Balkans. There was hardly any rela- ti Chip between the Alsatians, the Flemish, the Bretons, the Basques, the Bur undians, the Lyonnais, the Bordelais, the Provençaux,
Ind the Savoyards. They all spoke diKerent languages, lived
graphical areas, and, of course, ate different food. Even one P e sixty milliori feenchmen can’ t be wroeg
hundred years aio a lot of the French still spoke re•ional languages. More than once in our travels in France we met people whose parents or brand parents had never spoken a word of French, although the ir families had inhabirec4 the territory for hundreds of }•ears. France didn’t end up like the Balkans because Paris effectively bulldozed regional clifterences after the Revolution to create a common French identity. Still, many regional dif- feren c es subsis red, in a su bdued way.
Cuisine is one of them. For an article he was writiiig on decentra1i:ation, jean Benoit interviewed jean Claude Mandru, a high-ranking civil servant whe raw a nonptofir organization networking cities around Orléans. Jandin lived in Paris and worked in Orléans. His pays was R Lnrrniiie, not far from the Gerlrran border. He replied ro Jean-Benoit’s observation by saying “Ach
so!”
instead of “AT
out.”
A keen observer of present-day regionalisms in France,
]andin believed cuisine became important to the French precisely because it was one of the few modes of expression of local cultures that the French State didn’t eliminate in the centuries of centralisation following the Revolution. Sometimes the nuances became guide elaborate. In an Otléans restaurant, over a plate of beef cheek, jandin explained that although everyone ate red cabbage ir+ his guys, Catholics ate it cold and Protestants ate it hot.
Wine drinkers familiar with French or Italian wines will know the expression
terrors.
In the case of wine,
ter-oii
refers to the particular traces of flavor left by specific soils. The term also refers to the specific local foods of any country. In France, ter oir is divided into the specific foods produced in each geographical re ion of the country. France is obviously not the only country wirh a
zeiioii,
but it probably spends the most energy thinkin• about regional specialties, with the possible exception of IDaly. Partly because of climactic diversity, France has as many
memoirs
as it does poys—and even inside pays foocl production is again d ividecl up into sub-categories of terroir. Everyone in France knows what ,grows in each boys.
Most French
t or s •o
back so far in history no one really remembers who invented certain dishes or drinks. In the Alps, we discovered a popular drink called •éuépi, made from a medicinal plant of the
alpages
(high-grazing grouncls) that are barely accessible. It’s consumed mostly as a
di estif.
Nobody actually knows who made the first enépi, or what its original purpose may
the land on their mind 2$
have been. The
swine goes
for
fore gras.
Nobody Lnoivs who fi ured out that force-feed in° °eese and lucks makes their livers taste delicious. ’the identiy of the first Frenchman to produce non-pasteuri*ed cheese covered ivir5 ;p }d has also been forgotten (thortgh not the recipe).
We started to understand what memoir means to the French at the Snion de l’@@ICtf1ttt1 B agr icultural exhib ition) held every March in Paris. At firs t we were surprised that France’s agricultural show was even held in Paris,
not somewhere “in the provinces.” But of course Paris is located the mid-
dle of France’s riches t farmlands, which were themselves the source of Paris’s early might. With the felon, Paris once again Sexes its muscles for the rest ot the country to see. Each year the president, the prime minister,
and half of the cabinet members do the rounds at the Seton de l’A@ICuItiire, shake hands with farmers, squat down and milk a few cows, and pet prize piglets. Their mo yes are carefully documented by the press. How-ev-er, it’s more of a test than a choreographed photo op. All French politicians are expected to know about farm animals and produce. President Jacques Chirac gets raVe reviews every year for defrly handling lambs and enthusi- aStiCally slapping cows’ rears. But reputations can also be tainted by poor pedormance at the Aston. Former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur made a fOo1 of himself with his poor handling techniques when a lamb relieved itsel( on his suit jacket, and the incident has remained on his record.
We arrived at the 5nlon expecting to v isit a traditional American farm fair, indoors. We thought there would be cows, p igs, and maybe horses in one section, and tractors and machinery in another, with hot cIo s stands
SOlTt9yhere in the middle. To our great surprise, there was no machinery. Tractors were being exhibited in an obscure hall in a suburb of Paris. There were iqo hot logs, eirher. ThC Paris
Shosv
was abo ut animals and cuisine— and the French were not shy about mixin,• these themes. Cattle pens were
e
°°rat‹°d with huge posters of raw steaks and sausages. There was a stand
*8 live ducks rich t bes ide another one selling their livers in jars. The ght juxtaposition of live animals and meat ruinecl our appetite at first, but once we gon used to it, we nearly made ourselves sick tastin cidre, wine,
° eese, snuciyy p, qpa Hrri/e the (a Savory Savoy potato stew bo iled in cream
andtQciuéed with beblochou cheese) .
9¢ sgxty miIIiori frerichmen cas’t be wr orig
the land on their mind 95
By the end of the evening we undeutood that the point of the Snlon
sausage made our of pig’s intestines, at felon de l’Jgri qttt„¢
ft rea1!y did de I’ wic«lture is not just to celebrate the extraordinary gastronomic gar- den known as France, where olives, basil, and wheat grow next to deer, boars, and bulls. The
$a!on
is a celebration of the dialogue between nature and culture. The way the French look at it, cooking is not a detached process of transforming food. lt’s an extension of the land itself, a naturel prolongation, a system of value-adding where the end product is an exten- tion
où
the dirt where it started. The French are profoundly land ariached, or, as they say, terrien.
As we would discover, though the French cling to their rutal identity through this glorification of rerroir, that idenriry is essentially a myth. Only 2 pement of the French live off of the land. French agro-business is the most aggressive, the most productive, and the most mechanized in the world. France is the world’s second-biggest agricultural producer after the United States. In 2000, the U.S. exported sixty-six billion dollars north of produce; France exported forty billion dollars in produce from a territory fi(teen times smaller. In spite of their attachment to
rroii,
the French are modem food corisumets liée the rest of the industrialized world. There are McDonald’s restaurants in every city and McCain’s food in every grocery score. }udging by the shelves in those stores, it’s fair to guess chat the French eat as much sliced bread, canned food, and indusrrial cookies as any other developed country.
Still, spiritually, the French remain rural. France is the only developed country where the Term “peasant” isn’t pejorative. On the contrary— French farmers pre/er to be called peasants,
even
the ones who drive hall- million dollat tractors. The term denores an attachment to the land that all the French shate, whether they’re urban or rural. For that matter, fea- tures of country liée persist in the cities. There are chain supermarkets in every neighborhood in Paris, but there are still bakeries, cheese shops, and butchers everywhere. Even if the French don’t shop traditionally all the time, they know flow to, and menus in all •ood restaurar.ts change regu- larly, adapting to whats in season. The French insisr on being reminded where their food cornes from. ldeally, cheese made from cow’s milk should taste like a cow, and cheese made from goat milk should tasse like a goat. This nuance seemed beyond us until we ras ted nrdouillerte, a specialty
tasse like a pig. A French policician is famorts *or having said that ondo«iI- letie, like politics, is better with a will of shit.
A week after
celebrated in Paris’s MaraiS neighborhood at a Nancy restaurant called Le
Dôme.
The menu was small and inventive, offerin• refined but robust cui- sine. One of the six courses intrigued us: pigeonneoii (young pigeon). We were new to France and we had had some surprises ar the Snlon de
l’A gricultuie,
so before ordering ii we wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be eating the street variety of the species.
“P%Ortrt6ntt is came, riph t?” we asked the waiter.
“Yes,” he said, gauging our reaction with a wry smile. “Where does it come from?
He looked
co
the ceiling, lifted his arm, flexed his thumb and forefin- ger to mirnic a pistol and pointed up. “Qu
vole . . .
POf! DAtts l’assiette [lt f1ies..- Bang! Straight into the plate].’
This waiter was obviously makir g fun of our ignorance. Stil1, no waiter in a fancy restaurant in North America would dare suggesr a relationship between live animals and the contents of a plate—let alone act out the 5Iaughter before his patrons’ eyes. But for the French, there’s nothing dis- tasteful in the thou ht that What they eat once lived and breathed. On the contrary, they love the idea. Their steak bleeds; they eat oysters live; they btty chickens that still have class; and rabbl£ iS SOld (and cooked) with the head. Our butcher often showed us pictures of rhe cow bein eut into pieces that day. Customers seemto find it reassuring to be that much closer
*° the moment of death; to them, it’s naturel. There is no sanitized vocab-
Uläry
in French to separa’te animals from meat. In English wc cat beef, not COWS; we eat pork, not pijs.
Boeuf
in Ftench is the generic word for cattle, Whether in fields or on dinner plates. Porc and
cochon
are generic terms for
QL%8S,
Wherher in piggeries or sausage.
Veou
means calf and veal. And when the French order
esCaT ots,
they’re callin a snail a snail.
Thetellmentalitéin France applies to a lot mote than attitudes
°°Wardfarmingandcuisine.
France
is a modem, pose- indusrtial country,
e 6 sixty millio rr french men can’ t be wro rug
but in every thing from regional development to foreign policy, it still shows a dis rinct terrier reflex.
France didn’t urbar ize massively until after the Second World War. In
1945, 40 percent of the population lived directly off of the land—a propor- tion eight rinses h tgher than Britain’s and three times higher than Germany’s—but throughout the process of urbanization, farmers retained a strong voice in public affairs. During World War II, the Ftench overnment created the
Cham6res d’A griciiltuTe,
special chambers o’ commerce for harm ers that have them direct input into the government’s agricultural and regional policy. French farmers’ inllrtence on regional development is hard to miss. We spent our second Christmas holiday in Le Grand Bomand, a quaint Savoy too n less than an hour from Geneva that boasts two thousand inhab itants and two thousand cows. On our afternoon walks we saw small hamlets on the outskirts where producers sold Reblochon cheese and mountain spir- its made out of herbs from miniature farms that literally hung oil the moun- tain slopes—to cally inaccessible to machinery. Such inefficient, urtisanol production exists thanks to direct and indirect subsidies from the Governs ment, like funds for converting part of a farmhouse into a bed-and breakfast.
The French are terrier enough to be willing to pay a for of money ro preserve the countryside—even if they only use it during their seven weeks of holidays. Most French live in cities and work in either industry or the service sector. Their link to the land is more fantasy than reality, butt they still cling to it. We met more than one middle-aged or retired couple who owned two, three, and even four houses in different comers of the country, houses they had inherited over the years. They han,• on to them rather than sell chem to keep a link with their guys. The countryside remains quaint and attractive because it enjoys generous government subsidies of all minds desi ned to rna inta in it for the consumption of tourists, both French and foreigners.
Hunting is another terrier fantasy the French hang on to. Six months after our arrival, in June 1999, the European elections were held. One of the b it election surprises was the appearance of a new party: “Hunting Fishing Nature and Tradition.” At first we thought the party was a joke. We wondered how there could be enough hunters in France to form a club,
the land on the ir min d 22
let alone a polio ical party, and con ldn’t believe rhere as anything to hunt in this country so smal1, so densely populated, and so void of what an•/ North American would call “nature.” W•1l, the joke was on us. It turns out that there are 1.? million hungers in France. The party was forrrred to protest a 1997 directive b} the European Commission to regulate hunting practices, and they obtained 7 percent of the vote, or 1.2 million voters, which means there were three hundred thousand hunters and fisherman out there who vowed something else!
Hunting rights have always touched a raw nerve in France. Prior to the French Revolution, hunting was a privilege reserved for .rhe aristocracy. If French peasants were caught trying to supplement their diet of roots and oatmeal with some game, they were put in the stocks. As we all know, French peasants eventually came to resent this treatment. Shortly after the populace stormed the Bastille in 1789, France’s newly formed Assembiée Nañonale—the parliament—aoolished all aristocratic privi1eg+•s, startin with hunting. Commoners took to hunting with a vengeance, literally, exercising their newly won privi1e,•e first on a few thousand French aristo- crats. Hunting remained a potent symbol. When the monarchy was rein- stalled in 1815, the first thing the new king did was give the aristocrats their hunting privileges back. From one revolution to the next, hunting rights shifted from the people to the nobles and back, until the ri ht to hunt became universal once and for all under the Third Republic, in 1S71.
Being tefien, the French have never cared much about maritime issues. Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and ei•hteenth centuries, France ne leered its navy and its colonies for the benefit of a primarily continental policy. While Britain was stretching its intuence to the
Americas, France was focused on controlling Italy and the Mediterranean. B the time Napoleon rook control of Italy in the late 1?O0s, France had
!°4t America. In the 160 years of the colony of New France ( 1608—1763), France July sent ten thousand colonists. Britain’s poprtlarion was three
^imes smaller, but it managed to send fifteen times more people to America in the same period. by 1765, one English subject in six lived in America,
°°mpared to one French in three hundrecl. After France lost tl • Seven u8 sixty million frenchmen can’ t be wrorug
Years’ War in 1763, Britain gave it the choice of keeping eiiher New France or the “Sugar Islands” (Guade loupe and Martinique), and France chose the Sugar Islands.
The French are the only European society that never migrated en mnsse to America at some point in history. The only massive French migra- tion was some three hundred thousand Protestants called Huguenots who were kicked out of the country in the last decades of the seventeenth cent tury. Beirrg no less French than the Catholics, most Ftuguenots decided to move to other European cities rather than migra te to the New Wotld.
French
te
rr
ier
thinking may even exp lain an enigma of French human geography that has puzzled two generations of historians since World War
II. For some reason, the birth rare in France stagnated between 17s0 and 1945. Up until then, France’s population was far greater than that o( other European countries, thanks to the richness of the land. Historians estimate that in 1300 France’s population was between thirteen and twenty million, four times that of Britain. The population rose and fell through epidemics and famines, but by 1740 it had reached twenty-five million, still twice the population of Britain at the time. Then, during the nexr two centuries, until 1940, France’s population reached a plateau of forty million while countries many times smaller caught up with or even surpassed it. Britain’s population rose to fifty million and Germany’s rose to sixty-five million (eighty million when Austria and Czechoslovakia were annexed).
An En fish economist named Robert Malthus formulated a theory in 1798 that probably explains this phenomenon. His idea, put simply, was that the population grew faster than food production—a paradox he thought explained not only famines, but also wats and even epidemics. All agrarian societies had to make choices about how to deal with food shortages. One solution was to upgrade the entire production system with all the social changes this would entail—such as breaking up the feudal system. That was the choice of the Germans, the British, and particularly the Dutch. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these countries went through radical modernization processes, establishing trading economies, importing food, breakin down (eudal ties between landlords and serfs, and a1lovving• vast numbers of people to move to cities and overseas.
the land on their mind p g
While its European neighbors chose the path of unrestricted growth, France adopted a policy of restriction. It’s impossible to establish a cause and-elect relationship, but French peasantry during the same period resis- ted changes in agricultural practices, and yields increased more slowly. Because France was so slow in modernising its modes of a•ricu1tura1 pro- duction, it couldn’t accommodate ’drastic population growth so somehow, somewhere, birth control was introduced—some historians suspect it was as early as the mid-sixteenth century, a century earlier than anywhere else. The French married late and had four or five children at two year intern vals, and since life expectancy was no higher in France. than elsewhere in Europe, the population stagnated. In the nineteench century the French government actually became alarmed by the slow population growth. Politicians and the clergy implored the population to make babies. But the reflex fot restriction was already in place, and nothing could be done.
Wk•ether the conservative agrarian mode of production or the intro-
duction of birth control came first in France is a chicken-or-e ° question. What’s clear is that both phenomena worked together to preserve the pop- ulation from famines and epidemics. The result was char France never
faced the kind of population explosion that led its neighbors to pursue ag restive colonial policies and industrialization.
The French just wanted to stick to the land.
Attachments:
6081536_1_Chap.-2–The-Land-on-Their-Mind-.PDF

Poetry Collection Draft
Taking into consideration the different poetic examples in the reading assignments, you will explore the process of drafting and revising a short collection of poems. Please compose three poems.
There are no length requirements for these pieces aside from the examples set in the reading examples you’ve been provided. Pay particular attention to both content and structure. In poetry, the balance between these two represents the foundation of the creative process. Choose the best words for what you want to convey – don’t settle.
Poems in this assignment should focus on maintaining the balance of content and structure, word choice, line breaks, rhyme, and meter. The secondary focus should be the ordering of the three pieces and the presentation as a collection. Consider how these poems work together even if they seem to be striving towards doing different things.
Guidelines for Submission
Compose three poems, no specific required length but should be substantial for the intended purpose
Use MLA formatting and citations as needed
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51565/black-earth
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51856/evening-56d22fe15dc07
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelbarrow
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45474/o-captain-my-captain
Teh Landlord’s Tale. Paul Revere’s Ride, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44637/the-landlords-tale-paul-reveres-ride

Below is an open letter to the president of the country. using this letter, identify the parts of the exposition text