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Custom and Law in the Social Order: Some reflections upon French Catalan peasant communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Louis Assier-Andrieu
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Extract

Until assuming the violent form most strikingly exemplified in France by the explosions of 1789 and 1848, the century-long movement of resistance and emancipation of the European peasantry mainly occurred in the legal domain. The focus of opposition was towards the attempt to impose a normative system which sought to undermine the working rules of peasant communities. It was carried through, for example, by protesting against seignorial obligations or by asserting claims to the free use of forests and communal pastures. In such actions the peasant will, revitalized by periodic subsistence crises, tried to maintain control over legal institutions, and therefore to retain relative social autonomy.

Type
Articles
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , Spring 1983 , pp. 86 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1983

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References

1. Soboul, Albert, Problèmes Paysans de la Révolution Francaise, 1789–1848, (Paris, 1976Google Scholar).

2. The fieldwork upon which the author's discussion is based was carried out from 1976 to the present in Capcir and Cerdagne (Pyrénés–Orientales). For a detailed consideration of the evidence, see Assier-Andrieu, L., Coutume et Rapports Sociaux. Etude Anthropologique des Communautés Paysannes du Capcir, (Paris, 1981Google Scholar).

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7. The routes and public roads, flowing water, natural wells, the meadows and ‘coustumiers et coustumes … sont les usagiers et usages de bois, pascage ou pasnage. Francois Regueau, Glossaire du Droit Francois, 1583, Eusebe de Lauriere, ed. Slatkine Reprints (Genève, 1969) reprint of the 1704 Paris edition (Noirt, 1882).

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10. In southern regions this process is considered to be a result of the diffusion of Roman law, while in northern France it was derived from royal authority (e.g., Ordonnance de Montils-les-Tours, Avril 1453). Cf. Hinojosa, E. de, ‘La Admision del Derecho Romano en Cataluny,‘ Bolletin de la Real Academic de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, A. 10 (1910) 209–221Google Scholar; Rius, J. M. Fonty, ‘La recepcion del derecho romano en la peninsula ibérica durante la edad media,‘ Recueil de Mémories et Travaux de la Société d'Histoire du Droit et des Institutions des Anciens Pays de Droit Écrit, VI (1967) 85–104Google Scholar; A. Gouron, ‘Les étapes de la pénétration du droit remain dans l'ancienne septimanie au moyen age,’ Annales du Midi (1957); Dawson, J. P., ‘The Codification of the French Customs,’ 38 Michigan Law Review 765–800 (1940Google Scholar).

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13. For a more detailed investigation of this complex process, see Assier-Andrieu, Coutume et Rapports Sociaux, supra note 2, 35–6.

14. Fibhol, Rene, ‘La rédaction des coutumes en France aux XVe et XVIe siècles,‘ in Gilissen, John, ed., La Rédaction des Coutumes dans le Passé et dans le Présent (Bruxelles, 1962) 63–78Google Scholar.

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18. The Capcir is considered to be one of those Pyrenean ‘redoubts’ refractory until the late nineteenth century to a men's literacy process that happened to be effective as soon as eighteenth century in the western region of Béarn. Fabre, Daniel, ‘Alphabétisation et cultures populaires dans les Pyrénées. Propositions pour une recherche,’ in Les Pyrénées et les Carpathes (XVIe-XXe siècles,) (Varsovie-Cracovie, 1981) 113–34Google Scholar.

19. It would be necessary to gather all the acts dealing with private land access in each community over several generations.

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