ABSTRACT
Was it unexpected that, with victory, the immediate attention of the Larzac peasants would turn to agriculture? And can this turn be seen as a reactionary move as the writer of the Amiras article cited in the last chapter suggests? My answer to both questions would be no. After all, if the battle of the Larzac came to be seen as a struggle between national power and local control, local control meant the right to remain on the land—a right that, in the final analysis, even after the victory, would have to be proved through successful farming. Besides, the Socialists had already made a commitment to agriculture. In their campaign, they had promised to create an office foncier (land office) that would, in some undetermined form, provide land to newly installed farmers lacking the means for high capital investment. 1 Some in the government saw the Larzac as the perfect place for the experimental implementation of such a program. Although, by 1983, the idea of creating of a national land office had been definitively abandoned (Crisenoy and Boscheron 1986:106), the reforms that would have been provided were carried out on the Larzac.
