Web of Connections.

DAUGHTERS; FAMILY history (Sociology); PEASANTS; SOCIAL mobility; EXTENDED families; RURAL population

Rothschild notes how often the men and women of Angoulême were using the word "revolution", decades before 1789, to describe these episodes of sudden, sharp change. The sights and sounds of Angoulême life, few of which made their way into the official sources that Rothschild draws on, would have included, on most days, peasants with carts trundling produce and livestock through the streets. As a starting point for this study of modern France, Rothschild chose, essentially at random, a woman who led a seemingly unremarkable life in a seemingly unremarkable town in the west-central part of the country in the 18th century: Marie Aymard, the illiterate daughter of a shopkeeper, who was born in Angoulême in 1713 and died there 77 years later. But even in the 18th century, Rothschild has found, a surprising number of the strands in Angoulême's web of connections stretched all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. [Extracted from the article]

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