ABSTRACT
One of the most durable myths about the Périgord (now the department of the Dordogne) is that it used to be an area of large-scale property, dominated by great landowners and particularly by an aristocracy dedicated to throne and altar. This ruling class is believed to have dictated its will in the nineteenth century-at least until the Third Republic-to a mass of sharecroppers, farmworkers, rural artisans dependent upon it for employment, and even small proprietors whose holdings were not large enough to give them real economic independence. This was in fact widely believed at the time. In 1843 an inspector of primary schools attributed the educational backwardness of the department to the fact that ‘property here is highly concentrated: whole communes, even cantonal centres, belong entirely to one or two people. The great landowners look askance on the idea of their sharecroppers’ children going to school.’1 This image of a very uneven distribution of landed wealth has been refurbished by René Pijassou, the only authoritative modern writer on the Périgord,2 and it is widely believed by périgourdins today-strengthened by the portrait of the evil Comte de Nansac in the highly successful television adaptation of Eugène le Roy’s novel Jacquou le Croquant, and of the wicked marquis in Histoire d’Adrien, the first French film to be made with patois-speaking actors. Everyone simply assumes that land was concentrated in the hands of an aristocratic few, and that only the Third Republic brought a modicum of social justice to the Périgord.
