Conflict and Compromise: Communauté and Seigneurie in Early Modern Provence

In early modem Provence, communautes d'habitants were often embroiled in legal conflict with their seigneurs over multiple issues before multiple jurisdictions. Over the past several decades, historians have become interested in early modem litigiousness, not only in France but in Western Europe and the Americas as well. With this recognition has come a keen appreciation for the invaluable perspectives on society and culture provided by court cases and legal documents. Within French historiography, an early indication of this "judicial turn" is found in Pierre de Saint-Jacob's pioneering work, Les paysans de la Bourgogne. Here, Blaufarb discusses communaute and seigneurie in early modern Provence. He also notes that that law demarcated the actors, defined their shared and opposing interests, formed the vocabulary through which they would transact their relations, and erected the stages-both judicial and infrajudicial--on which their dramas would be enacted.