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darnellbrandon's review against another edition
4.0
This is one of the best books I've ever come across on French history. Despite a minor in European history, I felt like I knew very little of what is discussed in Robb's book.
Some highlights include the chapter on just how many languages were prevalent in France until the 20th century, a ghastly description of traders carrying babies hundreds if miles to Paris doped on wine (in the 1780s), and the way peasants cheated taxmen by loading their dogs with salt in another village, leaving them with an accomplice before heading home, and then having them released to sprint past any checkpoints on the route home, thus evading taxes (Robb writes it a hell of a lot more eloquently).
The only reason this one didn't get a fifth star is because a couple of the chapters dragged on - it is hard to be compelling when talking about the methodology of building roads or years-long mapmaking projects. Even those chapters had their high points.
If you want incredibly interesting history told in a conversational way with a great attention to detail, read this book. There is so much to like.
Some highlights include the chapter on just how many languages were prevalent in France until the 20th century, a ghastly description of traders carrying babies hundreds if miles to Paris doped on wine (in the 1780s), and the way peasants cheated taxmen by loading their dogs with salt in another village, leaving them with an accomplice before heading home, and then having them released to sprint past any checkpoints on the route home, thus evading taxes (Robb writes it a hell of a lot more eloquently).
The only reason this one didn't get a fifth star is because a couple of the chapters dragged on - it is hard to be compelling when talking about the methodology of building roads or years-long mapmaking projects. Even those chapters had their high points.
If you want incredibly interesting history told in a conversational way with a great attention to detail, read this book. There is so much to like.
liberrydude's review
3.0
Lots of bizarre info here and it was a chore to get through but it was worth it. Who knew that the bicycle decreased inbreeding in France? Seems like France was not the monolithic entity I had always thought of it as being. Its creation as a state sounds as hodge podge as Italy and Germany.
margaret21's review against another edition
5.0
This is a wonderful book. It's a history book, a geography book by someone who can write, someone who knows the country through his thorough explorations on his bike. By this slow means of travel he experiences the country as its earlier inhabitants did, as a series of 'pays' each with their own singular characteristics, language, customs and experiences. He backs up his anecdotal research with solid scholarship. Hi discoveries as a curious traveller do much to explain the fierce regional loyalties that still exist in France. This is a book to read if you like history, exploring, travelling, language, and above all France. A 'must' for travellers in France who want to understand the place they're travelling to and through. Riveting stuff.
alundeberg's review against another edition
5.0
On my most recent trip to France, my friends and I decided to spend our last night in Tours at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant-- where one could get home-cooked meal. There we were feted by a local man, who had already seen the bottom of a wine barrel and who was happy to hear that we loved Tours but baffled by our love of Paris. "Paris is shit!" he repeated. We argued about charms, or lack thereof, of the City of Light throughout the evening, but he also graciously offered to pay for our meals. The next day my friends and I left, taking two trains to Gare de Montparnasse and hiking what seemed to be five miles of tunnel to catch a Metro to Gare du Nord to board the EuroStar to London. Both were interesting events to note in a travel journal: Why did the man hate Paris so much? Why do all of the main train lines go through Paris (if you ever tried to map an east-west route, no matter what you try, you end up going though Paris) and why in the bloody hell it doesn't have one main station?
These questions, plus many more that I didn't even know I had, were answered by Graham Robb's "The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography". Boring title? Yes. Wildly informative, enlightening, interesting, and entertaining? Absolutely. Robb lets his readers discover the France that none of us knew existed. It turns out that what we typically know of French history and culture is not reflective of the country and its people, but rather it is Parisian history and culture that we learn. What lay outside of that city's walls is a different story all together. This is best represented when he discusses the poet Alfred du Vigny in 1844, "He lived in metropolitan France whose express roads and canals were universally admired as engineering marvels, but not in the other France, which was still recovering from the fall of the Roman Empire" (216). In another well-placed jab against the National Front, he explains how there is no "pure" Frenchman and how France was invaded by numerous groups such as the Romans, Gauls, Celts, Vikings, and Normans, all who helped shaped the different regions. Culture and language, like the terroir of wines, varied within short distances. Someone from a village three miles away could have a completely different language and would be seen as a foreigner. Robb explains how much of France was terra incognita even up to WWI, when most citizens did not know what Alsace-Lorraine was or that it had been taken by the Germans.
Robb shows what regular life was like in France and how "France" was discovered by traders, mapmakers, canal and railroad builders, migrants, adventurers, and the monarchy who made sure that all roads (and eventually trains) lead to Paris. He explains how most regions did not know what made them "regional" until they went to Paris and tasted their "regional cuisine" for the first time. How Parisians viewed each region was very different from the reality, and the idea of regional culture was exported from that city. Paris also exported its arrogance and snobbery. Part of their snobbery was tied to how most French people did not know how to speak to French, using a local patois instead. Robb describes this process as colonization; at the same time as Paris colonized Algeria and Indochina, it slowly took over its country and unknown regions. It wasn't until the late 19th century that a complete map was finally made.
Robb's research is impeccable and extensive. Much of the fun that comes from reading this is all of the journal, diary, and travelogue entries he includes. Couple that with his storytelling, wry wit, and obvious love of France, this is the perfect book for any Francophile or anyone who is interested how culture is made. It will enliven my next trip to France and, yes, even shitty Paris.
These questions, plus many more that I didn't even know I had, were answered by Graham Robb's "The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography". Boring title? Yes. Wildly informative, enlightening, interesting, and entertaining? Absolutely. Robb lets his readers discover the France that none of us knew existed. It turns out that what we typically know of French history and culture is not reflective of the country and its people, but rather it is Parisian history and culture that we learn. What lay outside of that city's walls is a different story all together. This is best represented when he discusses the poet Alfred du Vigny in 1844, "He lived in metropolitan France whose express roads and canals were universally admired as engineering marvels, but not in the other France, which was still recovering from the fall of the Roman Empire" (216). In another well-placed jab against the National Front, he explains how there is no "pure" Frenchman and how France was invaded by numerous groups such as the Romans, Gauls, Celts, Vikings, and Normans, all who helped shaped the different regions. Culture and language, like the terroir of wines, varied within short distances. Someone from a village three miles away could have a completely different language and would be seen as a foreigner. Robb explains how much of France was terra incognita even up to WWI, when most citizens did not know what Alsace-Lorraine was or that it had been taken by the Germans.
Robb shows what regular life was like in France and how "France" was discovered by traders, mapmakers, canal and railroad builders, migrants, adventurers, and the monarchy who made sure that all roads (and eventually trains) lead to Paris. He explains how most regions did not know what made them "regional" until they went to Paris and tasted their "regional cuisine" for the first time. How Parisians viewed each region was very different from the reality, and the idea of regional culture was exported from that city. Paris also exported its arrogance and snobbery. Part of their snobbery was tied to how most French people did not know how to speak to French, using a local patois instead. Robb describes this process as colonization; at the same time as Paris colonized Algeria and Indochina, it slowly took over its country and unknown regions. It wasn't until the late 19th century that a complete map was finally made.
Robb's research is impeccable and extensive. Much of the fun that comes from reading this is all of the journal, diary, and travelogue entries he includes. Couple that with his storytelling, wry wit, and obvious love of France, this is the perfect book for any Francophile or anyone who is interested how culture is made. It will enliven my next trip to France and, yes, even shitty Paris.
firerosearien's review
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
Basically, everything you thought you knew about historical France is wrong.
ladyeremite's review against another edition
2.0
As a book, this is fun, absorbing, and well-written. As history, this is pretty bad. The author fails both to thoroughly understand secondary sources or thoroughly analyze primary sources. In the effort to make the "forgotten France" of the 18th and 19th century provinces all the more distant, Robb willfully discards a generation of post-Weberian scholarship that has deeply nuanced and complicated this sometimes idealized vision of a loose confederation of isolated, backward pays (whose debt to Eugene Weber Robb never actually acknowledges) and then, bizarrely, asserts that professional historians base their narratives on Paris. Yes I guess historians do do this *if you don't take the time to actually read then ones who have written on the countryside in the past 50 years.* While making similarly derogatory remarks about "condescending" Parisian bourgeoisie, the then naively relies on their accounts of the provinces as an unadulterated window into life.
thelaurasaurus's review against another edition
1.0
My mum gave me this book for Christmas one year after buying it for my boyfriend and deciding it looked a bit too dry for him.
It was too dry for me, too, and I gave up at page 27. However, please note I don't really have any interest in the history of France. If you do, then this may be perfect for you.
It was too dry for me, too, and I gave up at page 27. However, please note I don't really have any interest in the history of France. If you do, then this may be perfect for you.