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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: j-at-home who wrote (300864)	1/23/2005 7:16:44 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

In many ways, during the Third Republic, France was just learning to become a democratic nation, without significant prior experience. An historical warning for those optimistic about Iraq. Eugene Weber also covers the period up to the collapse of the Third Republic in "The Hollow Years - France in the 1930s". amazon.com In "Peasants into Frenchmen" Eugene Weber points out that prior to 1840 French was only one of 36 languages spoken in France and French could be spoken by only 24% of the population - primarily those living in greater Paris and those in government service. It was primarily the railroad which changed this just prior to 1900. The lifestyle in most rural areas was similar to that of a nation like India today. This during the period prior to the Civil War when Americans were incredibly wealthy by comparison. Bread was baked in communal dung ovens, as infrequently as once a year. You were a man when you could cut your own bread - usually with a sword. Peasants ate frogs legs, snails and cassoulet out of necessity not preference. By 1920 these dishes had been long abandoned by rural residents as they became reclaimed and revered by the new gastronome movement in urban France beginning in the 1920s and 1930s. There were reason for this poverty. John Law's introduction of the Monetarist system and it's eventual collapse in 1721, the South Sea Bubble, impoverished France and laid the foundation for the French Revolution beginning around 1789 with the big events on Vendémiaire 1, 0001. The revolution caused further disarray and economic chaos leading to the extreme poverty Weber writes about. amazon.com .