Cultural change
For nations to form, the people living in them had to become unified. Thiswas difficult to accomplish as long as large groups of people livedvirtually isolated from the cities of their country. Peasants in Western countries lived a life of bare subsistence at thebeginning of the 19th century, often with a simple shelter, no furniture,and no change of clothes. Every stick of wood and stone placed around afire was a precious commodity, and they could not survive except looking atissues in a very concrete and practical way. It did not matter what agovernment official in a city many miles away the peasant would never seethought the peasant should be doing. The peasant had to do what was mostlikely to keep him and his family alive. They were self-sufficient, and anysuggestion that implied living in some other way must have seemed reckless For the entire country to pull together with a sense of nationalismrequired that they have a sense that they were all part of the same thing.This perception gradually grew during the last third of the 19th century inFrance as improved transportation brought urban concepts to previouslyisolated people. Until then, France was a country divided b
Measuring acreage according to how much land could beworked in a day made more sense to them than an arbitrary measure based onmathematical rules. Part of the shared culture of a country is its shared traditions. For example, French peasants resisted giving upconcrete systems of measurements for the more abstract Metric system untilit met a real need. However, as lifestyles improved, this increased the need for aregulated currency, because peasants developed both the means to buy goodsand the desire to have them. The desire for these items demonstrated anincreased shared culture among all the citizens. Queen Victoria's jubilee is one such example. Farmers often dug up old Roman coins in their fields and had traditionallyused them as money, although the values given to the coins were notstandardized. Very often those who labored for others were paidin goods (cloth, etc. Poverty as experienced by peasants was relative. School curriculumcontained a heavy load of both political and cultural propaganda. Finally they built many public monumentsto emphasize the over-arching French heritage to all the people. Inventing traditions was not the only tool France had in its effortsto unify its population, but it was a powerful one. However, those trying to move a culture forward sometimes rejected olderways and traditions, viewing them as steeped in superstition or too archaicfor more modern times. To thisthey added national days of celebration and public ceremonies, such ascommemorating the events of 1789.
Common topics in this essay:
Peasants Western,
World Africa,
Towns Draconian,
Ironically France,
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Queen Victoria's,
19th century,
french peasants,
metric system,
standardizing currency,
shared culture,
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