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Rural Manufacturing in the Rouergue from Antiquity to the Present: The Examples ofPottery and CheeseAuthor(s): Dick Whittaker and Jack GoodyReviewed work(s):Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 225-245Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2696653 .Accessed: 23/10/2012 07:29

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Rural Manufacturing in the Rouergue from Antiquity to the Present: The Examples of Pottery and Cheese DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

Cambridge University

In looking at the production of pottery and cheese in the southwest of France, we want to suggest that over the long term the region had a much more com- plicated history of production than its present, predominantly rural economy might suggest. The manufacturing processes were linked symbiotically with other local activities, and were often carried out by "peasants" working in agri- culture for a good part of the year.

Some of these products were exported on a large scale to distant parts over a long period and were produced not only on a commercial, but with pottery approaching an industrial scale. Our data came from a local region in rural France, but they suggest that for both Europe and elsewhere attempts to lay out a periodisation of the economy, especially in terms of an age of manufactures and what has been called proto-industrialisation, have been much too rigid and need to be rethought.

The region has been affected by the fact that the advance of industrialisation in the twentieth century has paradoxically led to the de-industrialisation of the region, resulting in the continual migration of its workforce. So this manufac- turing sector is hardly proto-industrial in a chronological sense. While it dis- plays many of the features associated with the idea of proto-industrial produc- tion, it has to be seen not simply as a forerunner but as a widespread example of manufacturing and even industrial activity that needs to be considered in its own right and that goes back many centuries. Certainly the region was a long way from subsistence agriculture-a label that has often been pinned on it.

A recent symposium on proto-industrialisation, a term invented by Mendels only in 1969, defines this concept as "the expansion of domestic industries pro- ducing goods for non-local markets which took place in many parts of Europe between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Often, although not always, such industries arose in the countryside, where they were practised alongside agriculture."' For Mendels this proto-industrial phase, which covers the period

1 Ogilvie and Cerman 1996:1.

0010-4175/01/225-245 $9.50 (? 2001 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

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226 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

Marx called "the age of manufactures," preceded and prepared for modern in- dustrialisation.

There is a more precise use of proto-industrialisation, which includes the di- rect intervention of merchants in production by means of "putting out," or pro- viding the raw material (for example, yarn) and possibly the machinery (looms) needed to produce the finished goods. Meanwhile, it was the weavers who pro- vided the labour and the place of work. The system of "putting-out" was a no- table feature of pre-industrial Europe but was by no means limited to that con- tinent, or that period, being characteristic for example of the production of printed cottons in India. Indeed, in advanced pre-industrial economies this prac- tice is an ever-present possibility for supplying the market.

There is another, wider use of the term which covers virtually any form of domestic or even local manufacture. Such activity is a feature of many post- Bronze Age societies, and to call this proto-industrial displays a highly teleo- logical approach to history, rather like referring to the gathering activities of hunting societies as "proto-agricultural." Perhaps in the very long run they can be so regarded, but in most contexts the concept is less than helpful.

We want to suggest that this is the case even in Europe, where such activi- ties go back a long way and are characteristic of significant segments of the rur- al scene. In this paper we examine two types of manufacturing activities in the countryside of southwest France, which both show just these characteristics but which also extend the process back in one case to the twelfth, and in the other to the first century C.E. For this countryside was never marked by a purely peas- ant subsistence economy based on domestic production alone, but was always more complex, and more commercial.

The argument touches upon Tilly's thesis that the French countryside was heavily involved in production for regional, national and even international markets by the end of the eighteenth century.2 He sees the processes of popu- lation growth, industrialisation, urbanisation and state consolidation as neces- sarily dissolving old rural solidarities. His argument has been criticised by Jones and others, especially in relation to the mountainous region of the south- ern Massif Central, where production for domestic consumption prevailed well into the nineteenth century and market networks were largely limited to the short range.3 Cottage industry, it is claimed, was an adjunct to agriculture, not vice-versa.

In this paper we engage both points of view. On the one hand, for some rur- al products (wine, cheese, pottery, and silver) commercialisation and inter- national exports can be traced back to the Roman and Medieval periods; later on, apart from the development of coal and smelting in the Aubin basin near Decazeville in the nineteenth century, there was the prosperous silkworm in- dustry in the Bas Vivarais and the Cevennes, the wine production of the rich

2 Tilly 1979. 1 Jones 1985:56.

RURAL MANUFACTURING FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT 227

merchants of Rodez around Marcillac, the silver mines around Villefranche- de-Rouergue and the Lot valley, as well as the commercial ribbon- and lace- making in the Velay. The lace merchants of le Puy provided employment for about fifty thousand country workers on the eve of the Revolution, and perhaps 130,000 by 1855; silk occupied as many. On the other hand much of this was in part, at least, the product of a cottage industry. In later periods the cottage textile industry, principally production of woollens and canvas, was directed mainly at local and indeed personal consumption, but some worsted yarn and cloth produced in the village was finished in larger centres and marketed inter- nationally. By the end of the ancien regime the fabrics of the region were ex- ported to Switzerland, Italy, the Levant, the Spanish colonies and Canada. In a few localities there were some signs that domestic textile production would dominate the economy, with the prospect of a take-off into industrialisation, but that did not happen and the market shrank to the locality. However the Roman pottery production near Millau was more concentrated and used quasi- industrial methods. The workforce, producing pottery for export and local use, included the very poorest individuals, and most establishments appear to have been shared by quite modest artisans, operating seasonally, either singly or in small cooperatives.4 The dangers of using terms like "industrial" and "manu- facture" for "un monde de petits artisans" are stressed by Jacob and Leredde, but the scale of the operation seems to warrant their use nonetheless.5

Even the longstanding annual transhumance from the plains to the mountain pastures that provided summer grazing and allowed production of rye on the lowland farms took on a commercial aspect. The fatstock from the hills were taken to the cities of the littoral for slaughter. In addition, the transhumant an- imals produced milk to be turned into cheese, which could be exported far and wide. There was a constant symbiosis between "domestic" agricultural pro- duction and the export trade, as well as between various aspects of commercial activity throughout the region.

The southern Massif Central is a mountainous area, "the roof of the world," which was underpopulated in the eighteenth century, and which has long been marginal to the wider economy. But below the plateau, in the Aveyron (the pres- ent departmental name for the Rouergue), the economy is much more vibrant. Nevertheless, one observer, writing of the Aveyron after the Second World War, has remarked upon the transformation of a "barely productive subsistence agri- culture" and the department's "subsistence economy," with peasant smallhold- ers eking out a livelihood from small bits of poor land.6 That statement needs to be qualified by a recognition of the rise (and subsequent decline) of the three important industries-coal mining and steel at Decazeville, and leatherwork-

4 Vertet 1974; Favory 1974:100. Among the hundreds of names of Gallic potters recorded on graffitti, not a single one appears on the inscriptions of municipal dignitaries, benefactors or mer- chants (Goudineau 1974:106).

5 Jacob and Leredde 1986:23. 6 Rogers 1991:58, 52.

228 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

ing at Millau-as well as of the longstanding cheese manufacture of Roque- fort, which has significantly expanded in recent years along with agriculture generally. But for many farmers, subsistence did not come from agriculture alone: work on their own plots had to be supplemented by outside employment. As has been noted of the neighbouring area of Quercy in an earlier period, "in the eighteenth century, few peasants owned enough land to support their fami- lies, much less to provide for all their heirs." Some worked as hired hands. "Some were also part-time artisans; many.. .worked as weavers for Mon- tauban's merchant-manufacturers. Only a minority of peasants owned or rent- ed enough land for self-sufficiency."7 In other words, such activities were very much part of their livelihood. While agriculture has always played a predomi- nant role, developments in manufacture have also influenced the region since antiquity, in a whole variety of ways. The southwest has long known a mixture of manufacture and agriculture, not on the large scale that developed in the nine- teenth century, but on one which entailed symbiotic relations for the workers and for the artisanal and manufacturing activities themselves.

In these communities, many activities had two interconnected characteris- tics; they were seasonal and they were symbiotic. If a job was seasonal, then the workers needed to occupy themselves for the rest of the year. Sometimes peasants worked part of the time on their farms and pursued other occupations the rest of the time. That is true in the southwest of France today; one farmer will use his trucks to collect milk from neighbours and take it to the dairy; an- other will engage in some building work in the off-season. Formerly, when farms were much smaller and specialist occupations were more locally based, there were greater opportunities and more pressures. Many villages had their own tile-factory (tuileries) or tannery employing local people; small chalk and coal mines around Saint-Perdoux, and gravel deposits in the banks of the Lot and the Cele rivers provided part-time work for some and full-time work for a few, thus mopping up rural unemployment for peasants with smallholdings or sons not required on the farm until the father had retired.

Such occupations might give rise to some larger-scale activities. The long- standing peasant exploitation of coal around Saint-Perdoux was developed by rich entrepreneurs from Figeac and Paris in the early decades of this century, and it is paralleled by early activities in what became the extensive mines of Decazeville, some twenty kilometres to the southeast along the same coal seam. In the eighteenth century the local peasantry of that area often did not grow enough grain for their own needs and "depended on trade to make up the dif- ference," raising grapes for wine and cultivating hemp. In addition, digging for coal on their own or a neighbour's land "prevented some people from dying of hunger."8 Some "peasant-miners" strongly resisted the advent of external cap- ital to the mines, which in the 1820s eventually led to the bureaucratisation of

7 Darrow 1989:212-3. 8 Reid 1985:10. St-Perdoux's mines have been studied by Tayrac and Bouyssie (1996).

RURAL MANUFACTURING FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT 229

work in that locality and the growth of an industrial proletariat. The miners were supported in their resistance by the carters and boatmen, who were needed to export the limited amounts of coal produced by the miners down the valley of the Lot to Bordeaux, where it was known as "Cahors coal."

It was also possible for those with too little land to work, temporarily or permanently, for wages on other farms, as artisans, or in manufacturing estab- lishments. This applied to both sexes. The women who appear, from archaeo- logical evidence at Lezoux (Puy-de-Dome) and Salleles d'Aude, to have pre- dominated at the Roman pottery sites must have been drawn from local farms, just as happened later, in the "caves" where Roquefort cheese matured. In lat- er periods, many young men and women went to serve as "life-cycle servants," as in England. The paid labourer was as essential to the larger farm as the farm was to the survival of the salaried worker, even though many of the latter owned their own land.9 Etienne Samson, who lived near Montauban in the 1820s, was forced to work part of the year on neighbouring farms because his own hold- ings were too small to enable him to meet the annual payments (as an hy- potheque) that he had to make to his retired father-in-law in respect of the lat- ter's farm, the use of which Etienne had acquired through his wife.10 Even today there are sharecroppers (me'tayers) or smallholders who work in the new- er factories of Bagnac-sur-Cele and farm at the same time.11 Despite the legis- lation of 1946-designed to encourage the end of sharecropping by giving workers a greater proportion of produce, in addition to assistance to take over the land they farmed-owner-occupation has remained low and the size of farms small, particularly in the southwest, thereby forcing smallholders to seek other employment.'2

In the past there was more of this non-agricultural work in rural areas than has been allowed for in many discussions of "subsistence agriculture" or "the domestic mode of production." That fact is often concealed today because of local de-industrialisation. Tilemaking and tanning, for example, were first re- gionalised, then placed on a national or international footing. Around Figeac, for example, the local specialist operations of earlier this century gave way to a big tilemaking plant outside the city. The plant has now fallen into ruins, and tiles are being manufactured on a yet larger scale in Spain and Italy. On the oth-

I Laslett, 1965. In France in the mid-nineteenth century, there were four hundred thousand farm- ers and two hundred thousand sharecroppers, but over nine hundred thousand day-labourers and about two million "live-in" workers (Moulin 1991:59-60).

Darrow 1989:210ff. l In the eighteenth century around Montauban it was the sharecroppers who worked most of

land but of course they had to divide the proceeds with the landlords (Darrow 1989:213). Peasant ownership of land in this period was lower near the towns, where non-farming landlords could find sharecroppers more easily. The units they worked were only a few hectares, and, even when pub- lic land was distributed after the Revolution, the plots were small and often on poor land (Moulin 1991:12, 37).

12 Today the young and dynamic increasingly either choose part-time farming (Moulin 1991:198) or they rent the land of the fast-disappearing peasant occupier in order to take part in agro-industrial production (Enjalbert and Cholvy 1987:480).

230 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

er hand, a successful engineering factory developed in the town; it made pro- pellers during the Second World War and now makes parts for Airbus Indus- tries in Toulouse, which sells its products throughout the world. But that facto- ry demands full-time, long-term commitment to specialist work, rather than part-time employment of the earlier kind.

While some specialist work was done by farmers, or by surplus labour from the farms, other work of a seasonal type involved individuals shifting from one form of employment to another. In this paper, however, we are concerned not so much with the interdependence ofjobs undertaken by an individual or house- hold (and decisions were often based on the needs of the latter) but of the symbiosis between different occupations in the same region, in which the pro- duction of the material outputs is interconnected. We explore these interrela- tionships in two occupational sectors in the southwest of France, one- the pottery industry at La Graufesenque that flourished in the first and second centuries-long since disappeared, the other-the manufacture of cheese, of undetermined antiquity, together with the related leather industries-continu- ing today. Both built up a large export trade-indeed to some extent they were export-oriented from the beginning-and hence dependent on more than sub- sistence production as well as on long-distance transport.

For the earlier instance we stress the size and complexity of what could be regarded as the manufacturing process, which could be perceived as a kind of proto-industrial production (referring to our first definition) in Bronze-Age so- cieties, even if there is often considerable ignorance about the social and eco- nomic relationships between producers and owners in the ancient world.13 In the contemporary instance of the manufacture of cheese, we focus attention on the symbiotic nature of the activities; these we can show for the later period, al- though we can only speculate on them for the earlier one. All of these activities took place in the environs of the town of Millau in the present day Department de l'Aveyron, formerly the Rouergue (the land of the ancient Ruteni). The ear- ly site itself, which was never granted the status of a town, was known in Ro- man times as Condatomagus, the "market of the confluence," where the Tarn and the Dourbie rivers meet, on the crossroads of at least two age-old transhu- mance routes.

POTTERY

The evidence for the industrial production of pottery around Millau goes back to the first and second centuries C.E. Beginning about a century after the Ro- man conquest, it flourished for some hundred years, being one of the Southern

13 Nevertheless this production was more than workshop manufacturing, as Soviet historians, under the influence of Marx, insisted on describing it. "Factory" was the name proposed by Wool- ley (1963) and his successors for the Near-East temple palace societies, and it is now recognized in Mycenaean palace production during the second millenium B.C.E. In the classical Greco- Roman world, large-scale production was always based on the domanial resources of rich landown- ers, of which the Roman emperors were the most conspicuous, who collaborated in a variety of re- lationships with free artisans and slaves.

RURAL MANUFACTURING FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT 231

Gaullish centres for making the bright red Samian or sigillata ware; this was originally produced at Arezzo in Italy and has been found distributed from the north of Britain to the south of India. 14 It forms part of a wider class of Roman wares whose manufacture developed in several regions of Gaul, including La Graufesenque, before it gave way to imports of African Red Slip Ware in the second century. The pottery was manufactured in a wide range of forms, some of which were elaborately decorated with impressed designs.

From La Graufesenque have come a number of workshop tallies bearing the names of potters as well as the numbers and types of vessels they made. Tens of thousands of plain vessels could be fired together in the same kiln, which would be used by up to ten potters. Stamps of some six hundred potters are known over the century judging from graffiti tallies (of which there are some two hundred fragments). Some of the producers were well-off, living in rela- tively luxurious houses with mosaics and paintings, but most lived much more modestly. In contrast to normal village kilns, which were small (one to two cu- bic metres in capacity, with only an external fire) the "Grand Four" at La Graufesenque, which has been closely studied, had a capacity of some hundred cubic meters, providing from ten to forty thousand pieces on each firing, of which there could have been some twelve a year.15 There may have been as many as fifty kilns, each producing on average twenty-five thousand pieces at a single firing.'6 The huge pottery complex appears to have been run by a co- operative of big and small potters, with no evidence of any overall factory-type organisation or bureaucratic structure. 17 Assisted by limited slave labour doing the heavy work, the potters mass-produced ware for the export trade for a cen- tury, possibly filling orders from the northern armies of Germany and Britain; the scale of operations made it possible to fulfil such orders with comparative speed. 18

The industry was based on the Italian model of Arezzo. Although Mediter- ranean products first reached the Rouergue as early as the sixth century B.C.E., from the mid-second century B.C.E. larger quantities of Italian goods, among which wine predominated, began to flow in through the ports of southern Gaul. 19 At Millau, where, as in many other Gallic centres, there existed a long, local tradition of pottery making, new moulds were introduced, possibly by pot- ters from Italy, and about C.E. 5 firing techniques improved so that the tem- perature of the kiln could be raised above the 950 degrees needed to imitate the

14 Vernhet 1993:112, with a distribution map for Europe. 15 Vernhet 1991:117-9. 16 Vernhet 1991:36. The figure estimated by Vernhet of six million pieces produced in forty

years assumes twelve firings a year in fifty kilns of a capacity similar to that of the great kiln. All this is educated guesswork and assumes constant near-maximum production.

17 Marichal 1986:19, stresses that the potters were not "communaut6s stables." Favory (1974: 100) notes the mobility of potters in the East Gallic workshops.

18 Middleton 1979. The abrupt decline of demand after C.E. 120 is explicable in terms of the transfer of state contracts to Central and East Gaullish potteries, but Middleton (1980:190) believes the clue may lie in the closure of the state silver mines at Ceilhes on the edge of the Causses, with consequent reduction in transport facilities.

19 Gruat 1993:54-6. The classic study of Italian wine is Tchernia 1986.

232 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

high-quality finish of Arretine ware from Italy. Within a decade there followed a mass export trade, achieving its zenith about C.E. 70 and declining fairly abruptly after C.E. 120 into a local pottery which came to an end, apparently as a result of a flood, in the third century.

Once the demand was established, what allowed the industry to take off was an ample supply of good clay containing the mineral illite, together with ade- quate water transport to bring the wood needed for the kilns, as well as plenty of water for the pottery itself. All these were available in abundance around La Graufesenque.20 Clay lay on the doorstep; ample water could be drawn from the Dourbie and the Tarn; the large quantities of wood required to fire the pot- teries at Millau and at other centres in the region were to be found on the sur- rounding hills. The Tarn served to transport the pinewood from the hillsides up- stream, at a distance of up to some sixty kilometres, but only during wet seasons, when there was enough water in the river to allow the logs to be float- ed over the many rapids. This wood was also required for artisans processing the metals found along the valley of the Tarn; that is, gold, silver, lead and iron.2' In addition, the pine trees' small branches and needles were distilled into resin much prized by sailors, winegrowers, shoemakers and apothecaries. The pots needed by woodsmen for distillation have been traced over an area of about forty thousand hectares around Millau.22

A measure of "complementarity" existed between the two occupations.23 Woodcutters worked from November to March, during the winter months when the sap was low and the water was high, whereas the kilns worked from April to September, so that it would have been possible to employ some of the same labour force: not, of course, the specialists, but the labourers and slaves.

The Tarn is not normally navigable between Millau and Albi in the summer production season, although another smaller centre producing sigillata ware further down the river at Montans, a few kilometres past the wine-growing cen- tre of Gaillac, existed at the same time, and was able to use the river to export its products to parts of the Roman empire facing the Atlantic, including Eng- land. They also made amphorae for transporting the local wine. Other South Gaullish pottery centres lay on the Garonne river system, but restricted navi- gability meant that, while logs could be transported in winter, roads usually had to be used to transport the finished pots. That was always the case when the pots needed to get over the watershed to the Mediterranean ports, for export both eastwards and westwards. Millau possessed the only stone bridge over the riv- er; it carried the Roman road across the plateau of Larzac and the Mediterranean

20 Ambert and Vernhet (1991:13) estimate that to produce a kilo of finished ware one needed two kilos of clay, ten litres of water and five kilos of wood.

21 Ambert et Vernhet 1991:12. 22 Vernhet 1993a: 117-119, estimated that ten thousand hectares of wood would have provided

enough wood to fire all fifty kilns of Millau for forty years, while paleobotanic studies prove that the Causse pine covered an area of about fifty thousand hectares.

23 Ambert and Vernhet 1991:13.

RURAL MANUFACTURING FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT 233

ports, an arduous one hundred kilometres in all. The long-distance export of sigillata ware, therefore, went by a land route to Narbonne on the Mediter- ranean, From there it followed the sea routes or connected to the river port of Arles, to join the inland route up the Rhone.24 Like the requirement for wood, this overland transport system created enormous employment for transporters as a spin-off from the pottery industry; but, like the potteries, the work was sea- sonal, since in the winter the roads could not take much traffic. At the system's peak, the number of carts required to carry the products of all fifty kilns must have been staggering-perhaps as many as five hundred; moreover, numerous muleteers, stable hands, carpenters and time-keepers were required to service them.25

Apart from the Roman road from Millau over the Larzac plateau, other roads went eastwards to Nimes through the Ccvennes, westwards to the regional town of Rodez and northwards towards Javols in the Aubrac. Excavations just south of Millau on the Larzac plateau have provided evidence of a Roman road built at the beginning of the first century C.E. and subsequently restored, widened and covered with gravel several times between 150 and 250 C.E. This unusu- ally robust road, on which fragments of sigillata ware have turned up, was clear- ly constructed for transporting the "millions of vases" that left La Graufesenque by cart for the southern ports.26 Just south of these discoveries the same road branched off to Nimes, thereby linking Rodez and Millau to the Rhone valley and Provincia (Provence).

We can reasonably expect other uses for the road apart from pottery. The ex- port of leather and silver from the Ruteni (of Rouergue) are documented by Ro- man writers, but it has been plausibly suggested that many carts returning to Millau from the Languedoc and the valley of the Rhone were also loaded with salt, which would have been needed in large quantities for the conservation of cheese, as it was in later periods.27 There is little doubt that the salt routes lead- ing from the Mediterranean to the Rouergue were as highly organised in the Ro- man period as they were later in the Middle Ages.28 Although we cannot prove that finished cheeses were also carried south from Millau, there is a celebrated reference by the Elder Pliny (Natural History XI, 240) to the export of cheese

24 Albenque 1948:51. 25 These figures derive from Vernhet 1993b: 111, who estimates that one thousand pieces of pot-

tery made up a cart load of fifteen hundred pounds (490 kgs) pulled by two mules, and that a kiln required thirty carts to transport each firing. It is difficult to imagine the number of carts needed for all fifty kilns firing twice a month (50 x 30 x 2 = 3000), as he proposes. On this reckoning, one hundred carts would have had to be loaded every day of the dry season, and it would have required four or five times that number on the road to complete the round trip to Narbonne. One graffito notes the use of slaves engaged in some of the transport and marketing (Middleton 1980:188).

26 Sillieres and Vernhet 1985. 27 Ronan 1974; Dausse (1993) gives a general account of commerce in the Rouergue in the Ro-

man period. For the salt route, see below. 28 Thomelin 1998:44 and 49. By tradition the important 'salins de Peccais" at Aigues-Mortes

were named after Peccius, a Roman engineer of the first century C.E. (Thomelin 1998:47).

234 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

from Nlmes, which came down from the Lozere and the Gevaudan (Lesure Ga- balicoque pagis) in the Massif Central. These could have arrived at the city ei- ther directly down the drove roads (drailles), which almost certainly date back to the sixth century B.C.E., or from Millau. A Roman milestone found at the important junction of Severac-le-Chateau, just north of Millau, in 1979 marks the road link with the Gevaudan-Aubrac.

CHEESE

Cheese has long been an important product of the northern shore of the Mediter- ranean, where it had some of the same market characteristics as pottery. It was valued not only for its taste but as a way of conserving a seasonal food into the winter months, and for making possible its transport to other areas, such as the vine-growing regions. There, pastoralism was less prevalent and cheese could be exchanged for wine and other products. At present, the region's representa- tive product is the sheep's cheese of Roquefort, production of which constitutes the major industry of the Aveyron, reaching eighteen thousand tons in 1990 and sold in eighty different countries. Sheep's milk is particularly valuable because of its richness in butterfat, the number of extractions of ricotta (recuite, curd cheese) which can be made from the whey and its relative scarcity (the milk of twenty sheep being equal in volume to that of one cow). In addition, there is the multipurpose character of the animal, which provides wool as well as hides. Both materials were needed for clothing, especially in more northern climes, and they formed an important export in the raw state or as woven cloth.

The tradition of cheesemaking in the area of the Larzac was certainly pre- Roman, the evidence being fragments of faiselles, the holed containers for straining and pressing the cheese.29 While such vessels may have had alterna- tive uses, there is no reason to doubt the antiquity of cheesemaking in the area, including sheep's cheese. Making cheese is largely a Mediterranean and steppe phenomenon. India preserves (and consumes) its milk as yoghurt or in the form of ghee; the Chinese used little or no milk, except for the northern nomads.30 The cheeses of the Near East are often closer to yoghurt, while in Africa the making of butter and cheese is marginal: indeed in the "earlier" set of cattle cul- tures, the milk of cows was scarcely used at all, and that is the case today among many agricultural peoples in West Africa. It was around the Mediterranean that cheese became an important item of diet and a method, as with butter, of pre-

29 Albenque, 1948:260, provides a brief reference to "lo fasello," the Occitan word for the ce- ramic strainer used to drain and press the fourmes de fromages, but there has been little systemat- ic study of faiselles in antiquity, which are easily confused with passoirs or colanders. The (later) pottery faiselles for Roquefort were mainly made at St Jean de Bruel, a village in the valley of the Dourbie above La Graufesenque. A complete Roman pottery faiselle from Rodez is illustrated in Dausse (1993:106).

30 Gouin (1990) produces evidence of dried milkpellets exported from India in antiquity. In Chi- na, whether as a cause or effect of the lack of milk in the diet, many individuals are intolerant of milk products.

RURAL MANUFACTURING FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT 235

serving milk through the winter, when supplies were short. In other words, its manufacture was linked to the distinctive seasonality of European farming and herding. But cheesemaking was not only a question of preservation for local consumption; it was an important item of trade. The fact that in antiquity Ro- man writers called attention to cheeses from this general area, whether they came from Roquefort or not, meant that the cheeses had to be transported long distances. And if they were stores of value in this sense, they could serve as me- dia of exchange, as well as items of exchange, in much the same way as cloth served in Africa or silk and tea in China.31

The Elder Pliny also talks of a goat's cheese from Gaul, which is often as- sumed to be "cabecou," a small round, usually soft cheese sometimes known as Rocamadour. While there is no mention of sheep's cheese, it is perfectly pos- sible, according to Albenque, that such a cheese, even a blue cheese, was made in that region, the advantage of which would have been its long-lasting quality. However, the cheese from Nlmes mentioned by Pliny was probably not Roquefort at all but rather the ancestor of the "Laguiole" or "Cantal" cheeses of the Massif Central and associated with the subalpine pastures of Aubrac. These are cheeses made from the milk of cows, formerly of the "race d'Aubrac," a small, vigorous breed that is probably the most archaic of French cattle, being closest in type to the prehistoric bos longiferons.32 In antiquity the Aubrac was almost certainly an area to which cattle, sheep and pigs were dis- patched for summer grazing from a wide area, including Quercy and Rouergue, although the practice is first documented only in the fourteenth century.33 Tra- ditionally the migration started on thejour de Saint- Urban (25th May) and last- ed until the 13th October. At the beginning of the twentieth century sheep were still driven up to the Aubrac, though fewer than before, as vineyards had taken over some of the pasture.34 Indeed, that pasture may first have been improved by the grazing of sheep before becoming suitable for the more profitable cat- tle, while the pigs in turn were fattened on the whey ("le petit lait") which was left over from cheesemaking.35 Meanwhile, in return for pasturing the herds, the summer herders retained the milk36, which they made not only into the hard cheeses mentioned above but into unfermented cheese (tome) in the isolated stone huts or "burons" (also locally known as "mazuc"). That cheese was pureed with potatoes to make the local speciality of l'aligot, a dish that was eat- en at weddings and, unlike everyday food, was cooked outside by men.37

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, these shelters were constructed of elm logs covered with earth or turf. By about 1850 they began to be built of

31 Albenque 1948:258. See also Marre, 1904. 32 Marre 1904:20. In the 1980s the cooperative at Bagnac-sur-Cele was still arranging to send

the cattle of local farmers from the Lot to Aubrac by truck during the summer, when pasture was difficult and hay and maize needed to be conserved until winter.

33 Marre 1904:22. 34 On sheep, see the reference of 1345 to Pierre de Bourbon, cited by Marre 1904:20. 3 Marre 1904:94. 36 Marre 1904:94. 37 Marre 1904:94.

236 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

stone, with a chimney, two stories and a roof of tiles. Nearby were huts (caves) for maturing the cheese (fturmes), vaulted as far as possible and facing north. Today the milk or the tome is sent to central dairies to be made into the final product. As with Roquefort, specialist cheesemaking equipment was developed over time. In this case the containers for separating the curds from the whey were made of wood, without holes. Though they carry the name of ftuisselle, they are quite different from the pottery containers of the same name with holes, found around Roquefort.38

When Monteil published his Description du dcpcartment de l 'Aveiron in 1802 he called the cow's cheese of Aubrac after the town of "Laguiole," the name by which it was known in the south of that region. It was, he said, of good quali- ty, comparable to that of Holland. The Dutch cheeses had been among the first to be "industrialised," produced as they were for an overseas market that was served by a very large merchant marine and navy. In Aubrac, too, the cheese became popular, and production has continually increased. The numbers of pro- ducers rose from 147 in 1848 to 294 in 1892, copying, according to Crozes, the techniques of the Cantal, which produces a similar cheese.39 This growth was achieved partly by increasing the number of cattle relative to sheep and goats; in 1830 there were twenty thousand of the former and twice that many of the latter. Cheesemaking provided a quicker return than feeding animals for slaugh- ter, and expanded rapidly until it reached a climax at the beginning of the twen- tieth century.

Here as elsewhere, the producers themselves often had to eat what was left over from making the cheese for export, just as wheat from the neighbouring department of Quercy was often sent to Bordeaux while the cultivators them- selves ate maize, buckwheat or chestnuts; indeed, the inhabitants of Quercy were often known to the people of Bordeaux as "mangeurs de chataignes." This pattern of consumption was especially common among producers of sheep's cheese, a more valued product. The herders themselves lived on the scrapings (raclures) of cheese or alternatively off the "cottage cheese" that is made by heating up and souring the whey a second time (ricotta in Italy, rebarbe or re- cuite in France), as well as sometimes eating the whey (petit-lait) alone.40 Al- though whey was then a food of the poor, by the end of the nineteenth century it became valued by the well-to-do when the region of Aubrac developed into a centre ("une station verte") for the treatment of the sick (especially children), as well as for catering to the healthy on account of its good air and milk prod- ucts.41

3 Marre 1904:100-1. On the milolule for Roquefort see Marre 1906:97. On aligot see Marre 1904:101-102.

3' Crozes 1987:30-31. 40 See Dumary 1982:179-80. The term r-icotta is also used in southwest France for this prod-

uct. 41 Marre 1904:28.

RURAL MANUFACTURING FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT 237

Apart from milk, the main ingredient required for cheesemaking was salt. In the medieval period salt came from the salieres along the coast between the Rhone and Beziers. Of special importance was the large-scale exploitation cen- tring in the saline basin of Aigues-Mortes in the Camargues, near Montpellier, which was owned partly by the Templars and partly by the Abbey of Psalmody. It is not without relevance that before mechanisation salt production in the saline basins of the Mediteffanean was caffied out virtually as an agricultural activity by small peasant "battisseurs" at the irregular periods permitted by sea conditions.42 This salt reached Roquefort by way of Montpellier, Lodeve and then along the Roman road over the Larzac.43 The route was protected by the Benedictine Abbey at Aniane and by the Templars of the Larzac plateau until the traffic was taken over by Philippe le Bel, who, when he disbanded the Tem- plars, instituted the hated but profitable gabelle, or salt tax. This sel d'affinage destined for the conservation of the freshfourmes was taken up to the high pas- tures by muleteers, who brought back the cheeses along the drove roads to be matured. One such route ran between Millau and the Gevaudan. More recent- ly, salt has come from the north by boat, via Bordeaux and up the Lot to En- traigues.

The first definite mention of Roquefort cheese dates from 1070 when a char- ter confirms the donation of a "cave" and a farm by the seigneur of Cornus to the great Abbey of Conques. That gift marked the beginning of a phase of ex- pansion of manufacture, during which the monks encouraged their vassals to improve their techniques; a number of religious houses owned "caves" in the rue des caves at Roquefort itself. The production of cheese developed not only for external exchange purposes, but also for the payment of rents. One cheese was taken from each lot transported to the caves for maturing, to be devoted to local expenses and the maintenance of the castle, which was a defensive out- lier for the city of Millau. In 1411 a charter of Charles VI allocated the town the first appelation d'origine. Similar privileges at Roquefort were granted to the Templars, who had established themselves at La Couvertoirade on the Larzac Plateau after the First Crusade, and who controlled the production of sheep's milk until the order was suppressed by Philippe le Bel at the end of the four- teenth century. The King then awarded their privileges to the Knights of St John of Malta, who continued to exercise them until the eighteenth century.

Less reliable sources trace the production of sheep's cheese in the region to well before the first mention of Roquefort in the eleventh century. A legend tells of the Abbey of Conques sending a Christmas present to Charlemagne at Aix- en-Chapelle consisting of two mule-loads of "mouldy" cheese from Roquefort. As we have seen, in the first century C.E. Pliny wrote of the cheese exported from the Gevaudan and Lozere, and Gregory of Tours reports a pagan ceremo- ny, still existing in the sixth century C.E., in whichfourmes for cheese were cast

42 Thomelin 1998:48. 4 Aussibal 1983:63. For the salt routes, see Thomelin 1998.

238 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

into a lake on the borders of the Gevaudan and the Rouergue.44 Whether these references to cheese represent a link with Millau is unknown, but in the nine- teenth century the freshfourmes of the Lozere and the Gevaudan were still be- ing sent to the Roquefort caves for affinage-the biochemical process of salt- ing and maturing.45

Cheese production in the region is distinctly seasonal, and between August and November there is no manufacture. The length of the period during which the sheep of Larzac are milked has increased over time. Around 1750 it lasted for seventy-five days, from Ist May to 15th July. Towards the end of the centu- ry the milking period was extended into August and even September. In 1900 the milk started coming during February. As production expanded, more milk was needed. It was brought from the whole of the Aveyron and from the Pyren- nees, as well as from Corsica, beginning as early as December. That increase in supply, which extended the productive season for the caves, was made pos- sible by the improved system of transport. Recently, however, the main Soci'te' has decided to encourage the distant producers of milk to make their own local sheep's cheese in the areas of origin, instead of incorporating it in Roquefort.46

Milking used to be the most labour-intensive part of the production process, requiring the participation of everyone on the farm twice every day; a herd of two hundred needed eight milkers. The advent of mechanical milking drasti- cally reduced the personnel needed. In 1876 an earlier change had established laiteries, to which farmers increasingly brought their milk rather than making the fresh cheeses on the farm, and today the production of cheese is entirely centralised.

Shearing was also labour-intensive. While sheep do not necessarily fear the cold, warm weather is better for the production of milk.47 On the Larzac the sheep that provide most milk tend to give less wool. Their fleeces were shorn once a year between Ist June and 25th July by travelling teams of shearers; by 1900 the wool was sold only for "country" cloth, having been replaced by the finer wool of Australia and America for most commercial purposes.

In earlier times, milking, the making of cheese and the shearing of sheep al- ways required seasonal labour. Milk was produced from herds either belonging to family farms or kept by landowners; after preliminary treatment at the farms or laiteries, the full maturing of the cheese (affinage) was carried out by the proprietors of individual caves in Roquefort itself. The labour was provided by the many cabaniers and cabanieres who moved into the caves as paid labour during the season from April to June.48 Only in 1842 did some small propri- etors come together into a larger unit, La Socie'te' Civile des Caves Re'unis; this pattern was later followed by others.

44 Albenque (1948:260) claims the ceremony continued until the nineteenth century. 45 Marre 1904:22. The antiquity of the occupation of the Roquefort caves and the region around

is attested by prehistoric and Roman remains (Aussibal 1983:17). 46 Rance 1989:181; Enjalbert and Cholvy 1987:483. 4 Marre 1906:68. 4 Aussibal 1983:47 and 78.

RURAL MANUFACTURING FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT 239

Just as the improved Roman roads had been essential to the export of pot- tery, so it was the railways that enabled the production of Roquefort to expand in Europe. The cheese travelled even further afield by sea. In the United States some migrants from the Rouergue demanded the cheese, thus supplementing the internal market. In 1840 the caves produced seven hundred and fifty thou- sand kilos a year; in 1900 it was six and a half million. The consumers grew in number so that both in France and elsewhere the cheese ceased to be a luxury available only to the rich and powerful. The same period saw new investment of capital in production, extending enormously the capacity of the caves in a process that had begun with the founding of the Societe.

It was the railway, too, that enabled much of the Rouergue to shift from cul- tivation of rye (which gave its name to the Segala region) to wheat, by means of the mass transportation of chalk for making lime and later of chemical fer- tilisers. So what had been poor farming country changed enormously with the improvement of pasture and the production of higher-grade cereals.49 More livestock, sheep as well as cattle, could be kept because of the better grass. The milk of the former was used for Roquefort, that of the latter for the cheeses as- sociated with the Massif Central and the blue cheeses of the Causses around Millau. Roquefort became a global delicacy.

WOOL, MEAT AND LEATHER

The animal herding associated with cheesemaking also involved the local pro- cessing of the associated products of wool and leather. Weaving and tanning had been done in local communities for millennia and evidence of early spin- dles and loom weights are commonplace in the Rouergue. But centres of spe- cialisation gradually emerged in the region. Pliny says that in his day the Rouergue and Quercy were noted for weaving, though he only mentions the production of flax sail cloth. Montauban in Quercy had a textile industry from at least the Middle Ages, importing and exporting wool along the Tarn. In the seventeenth century the industry fell into decline, unable to compete with En- glish fabrics, but in the eighteenth century experiments were made with a new woollen cloth called cadis, which was successfully sold in Brittany and Cana- da up until the loss of Quebec in 1763. The further mechanisation of English production during the Industrial Revolution led to a final decline. However, Castres and Mazamet under the Montagne Noir in the Haut-Languedoc, and Saint-Affrique near Millau in the Rouergue retooled and followed the English model, employing many of the rural weavers who had worked at Montauban.50 The sheep of the limestone plateau of Larzac fed those mills until the coming of merino wool from Australia.

Millau itself was a centre for the processing of wool from Languedoc going

49 On the role of the railway in the development of agriculture in the Segala, the transport of lime from Carmaux and the introduction of wheat and clover, see Crozes 1986:67ff; for the neigh- bouring Haute-Garonne, see Amann 1990.

50 Darrow 1989:33, 51.

240 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

back to at least the fifteenth century; the famous black and white wools of Mil- lau, Saint-Affrique and Severac were known throughout the fairs of medieval France. Local weavers, who were regulated from 1408, produced covers (draps) called blanquets from white wool and burrels from brown, untreated wool; both types of covers were sold as far afield as Burgundy.51

Leather goods, which were derived from the hides of the same animals, were the other main local commodity of this period. Leatherworking has obviously been in existence at Millau, as in other centres of the Rouergue, since the foun- dation of the site.52 Many towns and villages in the region had their own tan- neries right down to the twentieth century, and in the Middle Ages the leather of Millau and Saint-Affrique, which was used for the binding of books among other things, was exported to Montpellier.53 Like makers and merchants of cloth-including the dyers, fullers and those working for them-leatherwork- ers and other artisans were attracted by Calvinism and made Millau a centre of Protestantism in France.54 Like Nlmes and Montauban, the town was allowed to maintain its fortifications under the Edict of Nantes and had a measure of in- dependence until the revocation of that Edict in 1685. From that date, when they were barred from public office, many rich Protestants turned to manufacture, and the owners of the leatherworking factories remain largely Protestant to this day, though the workforce has reverted to Catholicism.

The produce of the Larzac developed a special connection with the making of gloves. The flocks of sheep kept for wool or meat consist of adults of both sexes, but where milk is the desired product, males are surplus to requirements. The slaughter of young males meant a supply of soft skins for the leather in- dustry. Already in the twelfth century there one finds a reference to tanning the skins of young kids, and an ordinance of the year 1656 declares that a master leatherworker needs to know how "to cut and line a coat of white rabbit; to tan the skins of lambs, martens, rabbits and hares as well as to make gloves for fal- conery."55 This is delicate work with the skins of small animals. However, de- spite this expertise and the existence of guilds and corporations, the disruption caused by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes meant that Grenoble became the main centre for glove-making. The great development of the industry in Millau took place only in the eighteenth century, when the market for such items expanded rapidly with the bourgeoisie's attachment to "la mode." In 1750 An- toine Guy brought eleven workers from Grenoble and introduced the latest techniques. At the same time the expansion of the cheese industry of Roque- fort, described earlier, increased the number of lamb skins available.

Lamb skins were mostly obtained from the abattoir of Saint-Affrique. These

51 Frayssenge 1990:26; Delmas 1993:133. 52 Pieces of sheep's or goat's leather were found among the Roman remains at Rodez (Dausse

1993:106), which may be associated with Pliny's reference to the export of leather from Gaul to Italy (Natural History IX, 14).

53 Delmas 1993:132. 5 Frayssenge 1990:32. 55 Baillou 1989:14; Jonquet (n.d.): 4.

RURAL MANUFACTURING FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT 241

were purchased by a courtier and sold to the leather-curers (megissiers) in- stalled by the river, one skin needing two thousand litres of water in its pro- cessing.56 Millau's international reputation was based on the skins of very young lambs, the regord, which were slaughtered at one month, weighing about ten kilos, for their exceptionally supple skin.57 The gloves were made both in the factory and in the home as outwork; some country people preferred to have their daughters work at home rather than letting them reside in the towns. This domestic labour started in April after the lambing season, but the factory even- tually managed to provide year-round work for women and machines; women with this rural background came to form an industrial proletariat that took part in some important early strikes.

By the nineteenth century the manufacture of gloves at Millau had expand- ed sufficiently to use all of its locally-cured hides. By the beginning of the fol- lowing century the production of gloves had risen to five or six million pairs each year, while the tanneries and the megisseries processed fifteen million skins-far more than came from the lambs killed for the production of Roque- fort cheese. The total number of lambs born locally each year was only about half a million (to some ten thousand owners), of which less than three hundred thousand provided skins. The remaining skins were imported. The finished products were then exported to Britain, throughout Europe and to the United States, but from a peak of 150 ganteries in 1950, employing over five thousand workers (including thirty-five hundred female outworkers), few now remain. Leather gloves are no longer in such demand; in any case, production has shift- ed elsewhere and the factories are silent. Tanneries and megisseries still process hides, but little leather is manufactured in the region any longer.58

There is one other by-product of sheep's cheese which deserves a mention. In the regions where Roquefort is made, three quarters of the lambs themselves were disposed of within twenty-five days as agneau de lait. These animals, mostly males, were bought by local butchers, who slaughtered them and ex- ported the carcasses in wicker baskets in groups of twenty, especially to the Languedoc and the Bordelais, though some were sold within the region.59 This delicacy, known locally as agneau gris or pascal lamb, is similar to the famous Roman dish of agnello romano or abacchio, which is a by-product of the pecorino cheese made by the Abruzzi shepherds when they descend with their flocks to the campagna over the winter months. Production timetables, how- ever, have changed, and with them the marketing of surplus lambs. In 1976, in thQ village of Ste-Foy, the Roquefort companies collected milk between Janu- ary and June, after which the ewe's milk was allowed to dry up. The animals were inseminated in late summer and they lambed in late autumn. A few lambs are raised to replenish the flock, but the rest are sold as high-priced meat after

56 A me'gissier is one who tans the skins of small animals. The location of Millau by the Tarn was ideal.

57 Baillou 1989:45. 58 Enjalbert and Cholvy 1987:487. 59 Marre 1906:58.

242 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

being allowed to feed for a month. At that time the average farm in the com- mune sold the meat of about one hundred lambs a year.60

The killing and eating of young male lambs, their processing of the hides into gloves, the transformation of the milk into cheese are, together with the mak- ing of woollen textiles, part and parcel of the extensive development of the pro- duction of Roquefort, whose caves lie close to the open expanses of Larzac on the one hand and to the ancient town of Millau on the other. The manufacture of this cheese has become the largest industry in the Aveyron; its products are exported far and wide, and its consequences are yet more extensive, feeding into the production of gloves and the realm of gastronomy.

This paper has had two aims. Firstly, to indicate that even a region as appar- ently "rural" as the Aveyron is today has been much more than a centre of "sub- sistence" agriculture since the Roman period. Large-scale production of vari- ous kinds has involved the export of goods such as pottery and cheese to distant parts over many centuries. At the same time, local activity of an artisanal kind- including quarrying, mining, weaving and transport-has given employment, sometimes seasonal, sometimes part-time, to peasants in the region, many of whom get some experience of paid employment either on the farms or in the workshops of others. Production was not confined to the "domestic mode," but on the other hand it was rarely completely separate from the land, where work had its seasonal rhythm. In other words, there was a symbiotic relation between the various activities in which an individual took part.

A similar symbiosis existed between some major manufacturing activities; for example, in Roman times between pottery, wood-cutting, the distilling of resin and the construction of roads. We know from graffiti at La Graufesenque that pottery production and probably its associated transport were confined to six summer months (April to September), leaving much of the labour free for rural activities, including possibly the making of cheese or the tanning of leather, during the rest of the year. Certainly at a later period another set of in- terrelated activities centred upon the large-scale production of sheep's cheese, which was accompanied by the butchering of very young lambs, the produc- tion of wool and which, around Millau, led to the growth of leatherworking, at first partly for book production, later for glovemaking and clothing.

The histories of the two industries are very different. The large-scale pro- duction of pottery flourished for a couple of centuries in this region; having tak- en over its prominent role from Arezzo, it eventually gave way to North Africa. Doubtless that shift was due to relative costs of labour and transport, which would have been reduced in Gaul and again in North Africa, where commer- cial sea transport was provided by the grain ships; after the fall of Rome, when these imports ceased, the pottery trade from Africa was no longer viable.61 Roquefort cheese, on the other hand, was a unique product that could not be

60 Rogers 1991:65. 61 Wickham 1994:97.

RURAL MANUFACTURING FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT 243

manufactured elsewhere, depending as it did upon the supply of sheep's milk, the manufacture of gloves, but specifically upon the special moulds growing in the caves. It was impossible to move production, although sheep's milk could be imported from further afield. Originally a luxury product, Roquefort cheese circulated not only throughout the region but throughout Western Europe and indeed the world, in a network which developed from medieval times to the pre- sent day.

Meanwhile the coal mining of Decazeville has collapsed with virtually the whole of the industry in Western Europe, as a result of escalating costs and the availability of cheaper, more convenient, fuels. Locally, craft production of tiles and leather has also given way to large-scale industries, so that nowadays the countryside seems in some ways less differentiated productively than it once was. Large industry has tended to move away. Subsistence farming has disap- peared, with the small farms being incorporated into larger ones, leading to a loss of population every year over the past century.

On one hand the manufacture of pottery and cheese were integrated into the export trade, and on the other they related to more widespread but local arti- sanal and craft activities. In earlier times pottery- and cheesemaking often em- ployed local labour on a seasonal basis, so that the workers were not detached from the land. At the same time, however, such employment changed the na- ture of relationships to the land, and the nature of local agricultural production.

One might see these activities as classic examples of proto-industrial or of manufacturing production, as discussed in the opening section. But the peri- odisation is wrong. These activities are not simply looking forward to industri- alisation. They existed in their own right for many centuries, not only in the ear- ly modern period. Marx saw the age of manufactures as beginning in the middle of the sixteenth and lasting until the last third of the eighteenth century.62 The Industrial Revolution followed, beginning with Watt's invention of a spinning machine in 1735, which heralded the birth of modern industry and the use of machinery, as distinct from tools.63 We have shown these dates to be much too late and too Eurocentric; we find the developed and complex manufacture of pottery at la Graufesenque in the Rouergue, characterised by mass production in elaborate kilns, well-organised transport and export to the corners of the Ro- man empire, from the first century C.E. onwards. And we find the production of sigillata ware shifting from Arezzo to La Graufesenque and then to North Africa depending on the market, especially upon the cost of labour and trans- port. It is precisely the continuation of this process that has brought about much of the de-industrialisation that we find in the region in recent times.

This production was not proto-industrial in any meaningful sense. Much in the region remained agricultural, probably including most of the labour force. One is tempted to call the large-scale commodity production industrial in its

62 Das Kapital 336. 63 Das Kapital 371.

244 DICK WHITTAKER AND JACK GOODY

own right, but that would suggest a more advanced technology. Let us stick with the term "manufacture," at the same time as emphasising the continuity with craft production on the one hand, and with fully-fledged industrialisation on the other.

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