ABSTRACT
In the early years of the 19th century, France remained almost as compartmentalised spatially as it had been during the ancien régime. The economy was dominated by food production and artisanal forms of manufacturing; modes of transport were slow and expensive, which hindered the movement of goods and people and the transmission of ideas. Rural responses to the opportunities offered by the new technology were normally far from immediate since the burden of history continued to weigh heavy in the countryside. By far the majority of holdings throughout France were not composed of single blocks of land but rather comprised a scatter of discontinuous parcels (morcellement) and this fact was of fundamental significance for the practical organisation of farming activities (Passy 1846). Transport improvements in France were paralleled by the construction of railways in the New World and the operation of steamship routes to link Western Europe to the wider world.
