Living in Moulins or the countryside at the end of the 18th century

Because they make up a corpus relating to the daily life of the many inhabitants of provincial France, marginal to revolutionary events in themselves, the records of the justices of the peace provide a wealth of evidence of the problems encountered here and there. The author attempts to give an overview, from loft to cellar and from head to toe, of the customs of the Bourbonnais province, which became the Allier province in 1790. Within this context, she presents a comparison of factors such as the home, lifestyle, eating and dressing habits of provincial folk, differences which depended on whether they lived in town or country. Far from the Parisian life described with vigor and passion by Daniel Roche, these inhabitants of central France had many identical features, even though life in the western part of Moulins tended to differ from that in the small hill and plateau towns and villages situated between the Sioule and Bouble rivers. This was less a matter of geographical or demographic diversity than the result of differences in social level prevalent in the late 18th century.