ABSTRACT
“Modernization”—a term loaded with meanings, if ever there was one! It connotes the multiple, more or less interdependent changes that have overtaken industrial societies. In global terms modernization signifies a break with tradition or with all known social and cultural forms of the past. Furthermore, for many people modernization refers to the idea of progress. In the context of the modern world modernization implies urbanization. This means that, at the local level, a minority of communities are overtaken by burgeoning growth, while the rest are afflicted with a no less frantic rate of depopulation. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the economy of the Jura was already highly industrialized; it was a strongly centralized economy, organized into small enterprises headed by a local, regional bourgeoisie. Industry, furthermore, was diversified: watchmaking, precision machinery, metallurgy, tobacco, lumber, textiles, foods. Its reach extended well beyond the country’s borders.
