ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the role women played in faux-saunage, or smuggling salt, in the valleys of the Western Alps during the eighteenth century. Studying how mountain women knew how to find their way through the maze of regulations and power relationships, despite the legal, social and cultural constraints weighing against them in early modern Europe, allows us to discuss the concepts of intersectionality and agency as useful tools for gender historians. This chapter thus seeks to present a concrete study of power relations and the individual’s capacity for action. It compares women’s legal status—heavily devalued during the Ancient Regime—with the reality of women’s lives, characterized by a very wide range of options within their social, conjugal and familial environment that may or may not allow them to go into business. Without ignoring relationships of power and exploitation that were a key factor in the situation of women during the modern era, the objective of this chapter is to set aside the miserabilist vision of women as victims by concentrating more on a description of their manipulation of legal loopholes and their ability to adapt, make decisions and choose their own path.
