Review of The Discovery of France

Stupendously D&D-able, the way that Fernand Braudel and other "histories of everyday life" always are. The first half of the book is about the myriad and variegated traditional ways of life in France up through ~1900; the lack of a conception of "France" as opposed to individual pays (tiny areas with fuzzy boundaries but strong identities); and the huge ignorance of the land's features and inhabitants in which most people persisted, for most of French history (not that anywhere else was much better). I kept finding parallels to what I know of China, past and present, with countless micro-cultures spread over a vast area. The second half concerns the growing of national identity; the bypassing of village, forest, and transhumance trail by railroad; the disappearance of folkways; and the replacement of ignorance of the contemporary with ignorance of the past.