Even if we must guard against recounting rural history as a part of the discourse about “peasants becoming French,” stories must have beginnings, and for this one the place to begin is the end of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. As we have already seen, perceptions of the countryside at this time emphasized its difference and isolation from “French” civilization, a perception found not only in linguistic inquiries such as that of Abbé Grégoire but in a number of other places in French culture. Students of the economy, mercantilist and physiocrat, and early demographers such as Messance and Moheau, focused on drawing distinctions between cities and the countryside even if this meant overlooking differences within the latter. Departmental inquiries launched under the Consulate and Empire consolidated this distinction between the French nation, represented by the state and departmental notables, and peasants – a distinction epitomized in the Year 9 by the prefect of the Ardèche as he described well-educated (bien élevé) city dwellers and ignorant or fanatical campagnards. Indeed, the notion of country dwellers separated from the rest of the country is one of the most persistent aspects of the discourse about the countryside and its residents.

This separation provides a seemingly natural starting point for histories, an isolated countryside. But the countryside was neither timeless nor static prior to the nineteenth century, nor was it isolated from French civilization.