ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine ‘popular political expression’ half a century later, during the subsistence crises of 1845–1847 and 1853–1855, and to analyse change and continuity in people attitudes towards the social and natural environments within which they lived. It deals with popular understanding and explanation of subsistence crises. The masses were hardly capable, given the archaic character of the popular culture and education, of objectively relating their experience to the overall structure of the economy. In 1853 the procureur-general at Angers complained bitterly about popular credulity and ill-will and protested against the unfair accusations of hoarding directed against ‘honourable men’. Protests directed against bakers should be regarded as in many respects similar to the market-place riot, in that they occurred in towns and represented in the main a popular attempt to exert some control over prices. Popular reactions might be influenced by hunger or simply by the fear of hunger.
