ABSTRACT
Despite the strength of peasant mentalités and a continuity of many aspects of rural life from earlier times, the peaceful century between the Napoleonic Wars and the outbreak of World War I encompassed an intricate transition from the ancien régime économique to the modern state of France. On the eve of World War I, Paris drew foodstuffs to its central markets from a truly national hinterland. Fruit and vegetables were rushed by train to the capital, with producers in each département taking advantage of their distinctive environmental conditions to specialise in commodities that would sell in season. Meat arrived from considerably more distant locations, with all departments save Pyrenees-Orientales and Var dispatching a share of the 44 115 000 kg of carcases sold in Parisian meat markets. The quickening transition from subsistence to commercial farming and from polyculture to specialisation was reflected by profound modifications in the use of the land.
