International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2023

“The Misguided Greed of Peasants”? Popular Attitudes to the Environment in the Revolution of 1789

(Abstract)

Peter McPhee

In this article, McPhee refutes the idea that “during the French Revolution, peasants were greedy and ignorant and deforested excessively,” he points out that the French peasants had an independent opinion on environmental issues long before the naturalistic ideas of the intellectuals appeared in books at the end of the 18th century, it can be seen in the cahiers of the rural parishes during the Revolution. There is a “black legend” in the environmental history of the French Revolution: the Revolution relaxed many of the prohibitions on logging and land clearing, which gave the opportunity to greedy and ignorant peasants. However, a specific examination of the cahiers of the French rural parishes of this period reveals that the peasants considered the factory owners and the lords who had exclusive access to the forests by privilege to be the main culprits of excessive deforestation. At the same time, the peasants opposed the logging and hunting privileges and monopolies of the nobility, the royal family and the church. It can be seen that in the course of the fight against the privileges of the lords, the peasants independently developed a view of the natural environment and spontaneously developed a sense of environmental protection. The “black legend” does not correspond to the facts.