Political Programs and Common Fields and Rights in Lorraine during the French Revolution

Abstract

British historiography has focused in the study of common right and fields with the purpose of understanding the role it played in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Nevertheless, its French counterpart has tended to relegate this kind of studies, mainly those concerning common right. In fact, in the last twenty years it has been argued the necessity of studying common right and common fields separately, compartmentalizing historical analysis. The present paper concentrates in a case study of the Lorraine region, and pretends to analyze the role played by the struggles concerning the common right and fields during the French Revolution in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. We suggest that in Lorraine the conflict regarding the common right stimulated, through the transformation of the material base of production, a wider conflict related to rural practices which redefined the appropriation of agrarian production, benefiting the sectors that produced with waged laborers