ABSTRACT
Even if one considers only the two departments of the Côte d’Or and the Saône-et-Loire, Burgundy exhibited remarkable diversity in the structure of landed property, as it did in its landscape and its rural economy.1 Large-scale property was present everywhere, but its importance varied greatly from one region to another. In analysing such property, we are obliged by the incomplete state of scholarly research to concentrate on the first half of the nineteenth century, for which we can both establish a fairly precise inventory of large landed properties and analyse in a concrete way the methods employed by their owners to establish and exercise their power. For the later period, we shall have to be content with an evaluation of the solidity-or fragility-of this hold in the face of the major tests constituted by the rise of democracy and the great agricultural depression.
