Ethnology

This book is the result of fourteen thousand miles in the saddle and four years in the library. It describes the lives of the inhabitants of France – wherever possible, through their own eyes – and the exploration and colonization of their land by foreigners and natives, from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth. It follows a roughly chronological route, from the end of the reign of Louis XIV to the outbreak of the First World War, with occasional detours through pre-Roman Gaul and present-day France. Part One describes the populations of France, their languages, beliefs and daily lives, their travels and discoveries, and the other creatures with whom they shared the land. In Part Two, the land is mapped, colonized by rulers and tourists, refashioned politically and physically, and turned into a modern state. The difference between the two parts, broadly speaking, is the difference between ethnology and history: the world that was always the same and the world that was always changing. I have tried to give a sense of the orrery of disparate, concurrent spheres, to show a land in which mule trains coincided with railway trains, and where witches and explorers were still gainfully employed when Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris.