La Calabre de père en fils. Un siècle de la vie d'une ferme (1655-1761)

Résumé En

"La Calabre" from Father to Son : a Century in the Life of a Farm, 1650-1761 From 1650 until 1760 four generations the Maslé family occupied the farm, "la Calabre". In a Brie ravaged first by the Wars of Religion and then by the passage of troops during the Fronde, the first Maslé fought to free their farm from the land taxes which burdened it. Their relative success gave them certain prestige in a village where most of the properties, scanty and poorly cultivated, were barely able to maintain themselves. Their descendants found themselves at the head of "la Calabre" while too young and isolated by repeated bereavements. They let themselves be seduced by the readiness of credit, were charged exorbitant land taxes, and ended up ruining them selves. By means of a close look at one small farm in Brie this examination is able to analyse the narrow discrepancies between demographic data, familial vicissitudes, and economic substrata and thereby shed some light upon the fragile nature of peasant land- ownership, threatened at each generation by new partitions.