Russell, Stephen J.

Dr. Stephen J. Russell is a member of the faculty in History and Government at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He received his PhD in Modern European History from the University of Connecticut. He has taught history at several colleges and universities in New England. Dr. Russell has delivered numerous papers at historical conferences in the United States and Canada on topics related to French rural history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Agriculture, Prosperity and the Modernization of French Rural Communities 1870-1914

2004 0-7734-6484-0
Unlike most historical works pertaining to this period, this work conveys an understanding of the daily routine of farming. It relies on the observations of the novelist and social activist Émile Guillaumin (1873-1956) as well as statistics and reports emanating from government sources. It offers an alternative account of the process and measures of change in rural communities, using the approach that Marc Bloch (1886-1944), the great historian of medieval rural societies, used in his work. It includes case studies of several small communities in the Allier which portray the status of agricultural production and consumption, using government statistic such as comprehensive government data collection efforts and annual surveys published by the Ministry of Commerce.