Rural History (2014) 25, 1, 6177.


C Cambridge University Press 2014 61
doi:10.1017/S0956793313000204

Peasant Vulnerability, Rural

Masculinity and Physical Education in
France, from the Early Twentieth
Century to the Liberation

TONY FROISSART AND THIERRY TERRET

CRIS, University Lyon, 27-29 Bd du 11/11/1918, 69622 Villeurbanne, France
terret@univ-lyon1.fr

Abstract: During the first third of the twentieth century in France, negative and
stigmatising stereotypes of rurality, inherited mainly from the previous century,
were used as arguments to justify recourse to pedagogical innovations in physical
education and sport for people living in the countryside. The invention of rural
vulnerability led particularly to the setting up of agricultural athletics meetings,
rural athletic trail runs and rural horse events by vocational organisations and
associations of educators. These initiatives, carried out mainly by economic and
political interests, concerned mostly men and thus contributed to defining weakened
rural masculinity.
This analysis is based on evidence from articles in regional, national and specialist
press, official texts and physical education manuals dealing with bodily training for
country people.

To this day, the peasant, landsman, has been neglected as far as his physical education is concerned,
all concern has been directed towards the city worker, the factory or workshop worker, the office
worker. Living in an environment of confined air, they need to breathe better; the man of the field
who lives in the open air benefits from it. Here is the error. In terms of gaseous nutrition, air itself is
less important than breathing habits. The landsmans breathing habits are faulty and poor through
the very nature of his work, with his bent-over body which prevents him from properly ventilating
his lungs and thus benefiting from the air in which he lives poorly as far as gaseous nutrition of his
respiratory exchange is concerned.1

The address made by Doctor Philippe Tissie, who was responsible for promoting a
successful physical education method in France, recalled that the issue of rural peoples
bodily training was still not resolved in 1936.2 It likewise confirmed that, contrary to
certain presuppositions, a country dweller may be a fragile being that needed to be
educated, in spite of the virtues of open air life.3 Yet the rural man was considered
to be strong and was even described, at times, as a brute. In effect, the stereotypes
of bestiality and rusticity were recurrently associated with peasantry and were still
frequently conveyed by physical education specialists. The man of the country [ . . . ] may
be compared to his oxen which labour long and hard, announced the famous bodybuilder
Georges Rouhet, by way of example.4
62 Tony Froissart and Thierry Terret

Belief in peasant animality therefore paradoxically articulated vulnerability and mas-

culinity. During the interwar period, these two notions ran through the pedagogical
proposals put forward by advocates of physical education for rural people and led
to the questioning of the significance of their initiatives. Relying on preconstructed
representations of the peasant stereotype, agricultural elites, such as syndicates or rural
horse societies, and fringe physical education advocates, including followers of Hebert
in particular, appeared to legitimise rural sports imbued with virility by highlighting the
forms of vulnerability that reportedly characterised peasants and justified their apparent
need for this activity.5

1. From the acknowledgement of fragility to the need for education

The foundations of the systems of thought that shaped mentalities during the interwar
period were built during the second half of the nineteenth century. Descriptions given first
by historians and geographers, then by psychologists and sociologists, durably established
stereotypes of the peasant and peasantry in social imaginations and representations. They
lost no time in finding their way into the discourse on education in scientific, pedagogical
and political milieus, with the rural world as their target.

The legacy of the nineteenth century

The peasant still brings to mind, in more places than one, those wild animals La Bruyere speaks
about, black, pale, burnt by the sun, attached to the soil they dig and turn over with invincible
obstinacy, who live on water, black bread, roots, withdraw into their den in the evening, and look
barely human.6

In his famous work analysing the collective mentality of peasants, French sociolo-
gist Maurice Halbwachs reiterates how far stereotypes affecting the rural environment
were anchored in all social categories, sparing neither politicians nor scientists. As
demonstrated by the ruralist historian Ronald Hubscher, the objectivity of these erudite
commentators was tainted by the negative faces of the rural world, largely preconstructed
by literary and artistic works which influenced the social imagination.7 In this process,
the nature-culture opposition, together with the stigmatisation of a supposed wild virility,
contributed to the construction of pejorative images. Thus, for the philosopher Hippolyte
Taine, the peasant represented the symbol of rural underdevelopment. Likened to a
primitive and instinctive character, he had neither the fortune nor the education of the
landowner. Third Republic historian Ernest Lavisse also described peasant nature as
tainted with savagery. According to Hubscher, these representations led to an established
psychologically-based conception of history in which the weakness of the cultural fabric
and the power of passion meant that animality and brutality could penetrate humanity at
any moment.
Like Albert Demangeon, known for his role in establishing geography in schools,
nineteenth-century geographers highlighted the importance of natural determinism in
the habits of peasant life.8 Along with Paul Vidal de la Blache, they were attentive to the
 Rural Masculinity and Physical Education in Early Twentieth-Century France 63

queries of anthropologists in their interpretation of the relationship between the rural

man and his environment.9 Their analysis was similar to characterisation essays on the
social group formed by peasants, put forward in the sociological studies first of Francois
Simiand and then of Maurice Halbwachs.10 The common feature of their work was the
acknowledgement that the gruelling and repetitive nature of the peasants natural way of
life and their professional activity combined to weaken them. Arguing along similar lines
to the reports of Taine or Lavisse, Halbwachs pointed out that:

The life led by peasants as a group is deeply and wholly embedded in nature. From here come a
particular flavour and bitterness, more spontaneity, primitive enthusiasm and even savagery. But it
is weighed down by the weight of the earth, it progresses according to the slow pace of rural work.
It is collective life that is both very strong and very simple, or simplified.11

Both Lavisse and Demangeon were involved in producing school history and geography
textbooks in France and participated in the Republican process of mass acculturation
implemented in schools across the Republic.12 When pupils became adults, they would
remain immersed in the images and discourse relating to the rural world conveyed by
their school teachers.

The peasant as seen by scientific experts in physical education

These preconstructed images influenced scientific, political and pedagogical milieus
through the use of vocabulary, behavioural typologies and descriptions of rural habits.
Doctor Fernand Lagrange, inspirer of the physiological reform in physical education at
the end of the nineteenth century and known for his research on overwork, turned his
attention to the peasant population in his studies of nervous fatigue.13 In his opinion,
people who did daily physical exercise were, in fact, vulnerable because of it:

The peasant, withered by his daily work and insufficient food, does not have the luxury of having
any of what we call body tissue reserves. For this reason, fatigue for him does not result in poisoning
of the body and infectious typhoid-like fevers, but in a state of exhaustion at different levels, in
which nervous forms play a large part.14

While scrupulously selecting the population groups he analysed, the scientist focused
on the circumstances in which overwork appeared in peasant women. For him, country
women are outstanding subjects for studying exhaustion. They too, like men, work,
sweat and are malnourished, yet they also showed characteristics liable to make them
vulnerable.15 Eleven years of medical practice in the countryside had, in fact, enabled
Lagrange to identify the factors most likely to cause excessive fatigue in peasant women
and allowed him to conclude that they had as many neurotic disorders in the country as in
the town. The author characterised the risks to which they were exposed when combining
agricultural work and housework, while looking after and feeding their children. He
demonstrated that, in spite of this continual exhaustion, it was not customary to moan
within the pastoral community. For Lagrange, abstaining from complaining was the best
cure and may differentiate women of the country from those of the city: The salutary fear
they have of epilepsy in the country is a powerful deterrent from the convulsive movements
64 Tony Froissart and Thierry Terret

and contortions of any fit of hysteria, in which morale plays a large part.16 The need for
physical work and daily effort accepted by rural women may therefore prevent them
from focusing excessively on their malaise. Yet this effective therapy for certain forms of
melancholic madness caused Lagrange to refute the idea of a physical education model
specific to peasant women. Such a stance differed somewhat from the observation made
by American historian Linda J. Borish concerning rural New England women in the
nineteenth century. In effect, combining housework and farm work damaged peasant
womens health, but, contrary to France, the recommended solution was to do voluntary
exercise.17
The approach adopted by French physical education specialists concerning men was
quite different. At a time when studies relating to the scientific organisation of work
suggested balancing work and rest time, the studies of Lagrange and subsequently
of Georges Demeny, two major theorists of physical education in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century, must be considered in their relationship to professional
utilitarianism.18 Demeny likened peasants to uncultivated and grasping beings, little
inclined to look after their bodies. He stated that the peasants love of lucre takes away
the field workers concern for his hygiene, and that if he was able to include moderation in
his work, he would remain vigorous and healthy.19 Yet he went further in his reasoning
when, as a scientist, he attempted to explain premature ageing of creatures lacking that
greatest stimulant, thought. In fact, for him, peasants did not know how to enjoy the
benefits of the healthy and natural milieu in which they lived, due to their lack of moral
culture and intellectual occupation. Their brains were drowsy and with this came reduced
body vitality.20 The anthropotechnical approach developed by this former gymnast,
colleague of Marey at the physiological station of Parc des Princes and professor at the
highly influential Military Academy of Joinville-le-Pont, could not escape the eugenic
considerations aimed at regenerating the French race.21 It was, however, clear that
Demeny was also aware of milieu oppressiveness which, when added to professional
fatigue, would contribute to heightening the fragility of rural populations:

The man of the field makes movements and produces work, but this work tires him, it is often
excessive, concentrates on the same body areas and does not relax in the same way as varied and
extensive movements. With skincare totally unknown to him, uncleanliness completes these very
strong habits, and his house, bed, yard and manure hill all create a most unhealthy milieu in which
he wallows.22

The peasant in official texts on physical education

The Reglement General dEducation Physique [General Rules for Physical Education],
was published in 1925 although a previous and provisional 1919 version had been used
as a reference for physical education by the 1923 Leon Berard Directives defining the
new primary school curriculum. The Reglement dealt only briefly with the case of the
rural population yet managed, in a mere few lines, to stigmatise the people. Notably,
the text regretted that by being so focused on progress in agricultural machinery, rural
people failed to enjoy the beneficial effects of having contact and working with nature and
thus sacrificed the most basic hygiene.23 This vilification of the rural population was still
 Rural Masculinity and Physical Education in Early Twentieth-Century France 65

present in 1936 and 1937, when physical education and leisure became the pillars of a new
health and cultural policy thanks to the Popular Front.24 The issue of peasant hygiene was
revived with the idea uppermost in lawmakers minds that country people neglected body
care, loathed washing and knew nothing about keeping clean. In 1937, examination of
the law proposal intended to organise compulsory physical education thus reiterated the
need to involve rural children in regular physical exercise.25 During the ensuing debate in
the Senate, advocates of the proposal based their arguments on mortality statistics, which
proved to be much more worrying in the country than the town.
The Popular Fronts plan to give physical education a more universal scope by address-
ing a whole generation quickly reached its limits. The sporting trend gained ground with
the introduction of the new Brevet sportif populaire [popular sports certificate], but the
necessary equipment was lacking. As the social and geopolitical situation deteriorated to
the extent that peace was threatened, physical education for young people in the rural
environment became a less pressing concern.
During the Second World War, the desired National Revolution of the Vichy Govern-
ment was intended to restore the countrys traditional values. A new plan for schools and
civilian life, entitled Education Generale et Sportive [general and sport education], put
forward a versatile programme, of which Heberts natural method of physical education
was the backbone owing to its supposedly more authentic links with nature.26 Education
for the rural young was one of its main themes. In reference to country peoples work
in the fields and daily activity, it was to enable rural youth to rediscover the benefits
of rusticity, the need for productivity and solidarity and gain a taste for effort and
rough life. As reiterated by Roger Vuillemin, a staunch Hebert follower, The peasant
has little leisure! . . . Work is in command. Activities are subject to the inexorable
beat of nature, while being influenced also by uncertainties attributable to atmospheric
conditions or concerning livestock.27 After praising its rustic qualities, however, the
author acknowledged that the young country person frequently faced further difficulties:
Lack of entertainment and contact makes him awkward and gloomy. He often feels
embarrassed in the presence of other young people from outside his milieu.28 In the
same way as late nineteenth-century intellectuals and scientists before him, Vuillemin
thus portrayed peasants as bent-over beings, with tensed muscles. He recalled that
country work required static muscle contraction, that it produced slow movements and
lack of inspiration. Such working conditions can hardly achieve the full and harmonious
physical development of those engaging in it.29 In accordance with official directives, it
was, therefore, advised to apply a physical education method based on the natural method
to rural youth. The trail lesson, at the centre of the method, places the performer in
nature in order to overcome real difficulties and conquer real obstacles. According to
the author, this lesson made it particularly possible to develop virility and rusticity. It
encourages mental escape by creating a sort of animal joy that is particularly healthy and
invigorating.30
The physical education plan for rural youth served the objectives of the National
Revolution. If it first addressed the young of the country, it was with the aim of hardening
their characters, not of making up deficiencies in their genetic constitution. For all
that, peasant vulnerability was acknowledged in a fairly similar way in both intellectual
66 Tony Froissart and Thierry Terret

milieus and the realms of physical education and sport. Faced with acknowledgement of
the physical, moral and economic destitution of rural people exposed to difficult living
conditions, all agreed on the need to educate them, often with analogous arguments using
stereotypes of bestiality and brutality.

2. The implementation of adapted physical education and the

promotion of virility
From the 1920s to the 1940s, educational programmes in physical education and intro-
duction to sport emerged, influenced by particularly resistant stereotypes of rurality.
Sheepdog trials, while known to take place in Great Britain and Germany, remained
mainly undeveloped in the programmes.31 On the other hand, agricultural athletics in its
different forms, rural athletic trail runs and rural horse events spread fairly widely, with
particular emphasis on their role in building virility. Although covering a large part of
French territory, their development remained precarious however, undoubtedly because
they were based on negative representations of the population concerned.

Agricultural athletics: a male sport

In the mid 1920s, an original experiment concerning rural athletics was launched, sup-
ported by the newspapers lEcho de Paris and lAction agricole. Three types of events
were initially scheduled: ploughing, horse and cart driving and bag porterage. They were
held as local competitions, then regional ones before a final national competition between
the best contestants. It was therefore a standardised competition with, according to the
organisers, the attributes of a real sport:
Yes the most productive and noble of all sports! And also the one which is practised with the
greatest perseverance during the long days of agricultural work. The one with the most followers
since we can count hundreds of thousands of them, the one which develops the most male virtues
as could be seen during the Great War where, in the trenches, the sons of the earth died obscurely
as heroes for the salvation of the world.32

This speech, delivered in 1925 by A. Monmirel, President of the Agricultural Syndicate

of the Paris region at one round of the agricultural contest, left no room for ambiguity.
The athletic qualities of country people appeared here as the result of long and hard
training in daily activity. Their main effect was reportedly to increase virility. The call
for masculine virtues developed through the tradition of rural labour was reinforced as a
result of their association with sporting performance whose contribution to masculinity
was, at the time, deeply rooted in the imagination.33 In the different agricultural athletics
events, rural people proved, moreover, to be formidable performers: There is not one
part of their body that has not played its part, there is not one of their mental qualities that
has not been stimulated.34 Daily toil, habitual deprivation and climatic hazards harden
up men, develop their strength and endurance, and are finally expressed in newfound
bodily excellence.
Despite wide coverage in both the regional and national press, as well as in the specialist
agricultural press, the experiment met with limited success. The initial enthusiasm faded
within a few years, and attendance at the events decreased. The rough features of uncouth
 Rural Masculinity and Physical Education in Early Twentieth-Century France 67

country people raised a smile, causing gibes in the Parisian press. For example, in an article
with a particularly stigmatising title, Decadence in the Country: A Rural Orgy, the
newspaper LAuto of 31st January 1926 compared depraved rural life with the civilised
behaviour of city dwellers, proclaiming that bedlam, chronic and ritual drunkenness
constituted the favourite sports of the majority of our contemporary young rural adults.35
The words reinforced the comparison of the country person to an uncultivated lout,
interested in debauchery. Yet, by circulating stereotypes about natural strength, physical
excellence and depravity which were markers of popular masculinity often present in
sport, they simultaneously portrayed rural people as exemplary.36 In this sense, the
descriptions of their character, way of life, physical behaviour and appearance represented
a combination of rurality, bestiality and masculinity.37

Rural horse events

At the beginning of the 1930s, agricultural leaders took action to revive equestrian activity,
which was being threatened by the progress of mechanisation. The issue was addressed on
3rd May 1934 at the French Agriculture Congress, where delegates agreed in principle to
set up a rural horse society to bring together the horse societies established locally.38 Rural
horse events, which were already familiar following a number of pioneering experiments
in Brittany, were held in a more regulated way, instigated by Louis Miquel, Director
of the Angers national stud farms. The organisers sought to popularise rural cavalry
and strengthen faith in the horse which, just like his companion worker in the field
hides, under a not very flattering appearance, energy reserves which not even the hardest
work can exhaust.39 While remaining focused on professional movements, the events
included horse games to provide light relief from the dull and boring livestock displays.
For this reason, contestants in the Chateau-Gontier competition were encouraged to show
imagination and enthusiasm in order to reduce the repetitive impression of the displays.
Games including the rose game and rings, chair, bowl and wheelbarrow games were
organised continuously.40
Utilitarian concerns remained central, however, since the essential purpose of the
rural horse is to serve the farm, and the quest for sporting pleasure must not result in
reducing its worth as a working tool.41 Furthermore, the National Committee wished
to strengthen the complicity between man and his mount. Yet the objective, by its very
nature, was established on disrepute. The events proposed were based on a negative
image of the countryman who was, in a context of crisis, suspected of rejecting the
horse for progress and an easier life, of letting himself go, disliking animals or even
showing brutality. Last but not least, events that were intended to valorise breeders
work and horsemens skill paradoxically became a place for denigrating peasant people.
By denouncing their shortcomings and seeking to make them a spectacle to amuse the
audience, the events projected a caricature. There were, for example, wheelbarrow races
in which a work accident was simulated. In this event, two teams of two rural men in their
work clothes competed against each other on a two-way track. In the first leg, mounts
raced at full gallop to a point where wheelbarrows were waiting and where the simulated
accident would take place. Here, one of the riders rushed to the rescue of his team mate,
68 Tony Froissart and Thierry Terret

supposedly injured. He then had to bring him back in the wheelbarrow, along with the two
horses he was holding by the bridle. The amusing nature of the event was unquestionably
to the detriment of the countrymans image.
Even La Bretagne hippique agricole et economique, the official organ of the Syndicate
of Breton Horse Breeders and the Federation of Breton Horse Societies and thus hardly
expected to have an anti-rural bias, gave way to caricature of country horsemen at times.
For example, when reporting on the proceedings of a meeting held in Landerneau on
7th June 1938, the columnist could not resist the temptation to describe the indomitable
character of Breton horsemen: it would appear that training Breton horses is relatively
easy; but it is of the utmost necessity to first train the horsemen.42 Similarly, in several
of his speeches quoted in the columns of La Bretagne hippique et agricole, the editor Y.
Duigou spoke highly of rural horse societies, yet also considered them to be a perfect
opportunity to try to rid the Breton breeder of his harmful individualism, obstacle to
sustainably improving his lot.43 In addition, despite the organisers intention to stimulate
cooperation among partners and build the team spirit that is found at the heart of all
sports associations, the columnists reported on the difficulties encountered in getting
isolated and fundamentally particularistic people44 to accept the principles of organised
grouping and collective discipline.

Rural athletic trail runs

Unlike the pioneering experiments of the interwar period that combined professional
know-how and sporting competition, Hebertist contests were aimed primarily at phys-
ical education. The agricultural athletics championship was transformed into a rural
athletic trail run. In September 1945, the Federation of the Seine-et-Oise Agricultural
Syndicates updated a 1925 plan to honour field workers by praising country values such as
strength and endurance during a professional athletics championship. The report of the
Federation Francaise dEducation Physique [French Federation for Physical Education],
an organisation set up in 1937 to widen dissemination of the natural method, described
this variant as a trail run inspired by pure Hebertism.45 Moreover the Federation
implemented a larger programme of events for rural people in 1948, including a range of
exercises based on the ten motor skill categories theorised by Georges Hebert. The rural
athletic trail therefore began sliding towards a more educational form, while preserving
a professional and masculine dimension. The utilitarian movements selected were those
of the fields and the farm. Events such as driving a horse on foot with a snaffle bit;
knocking in stakes; wheelbarrow rolling; climbing an espalier, wall or obstacle; bag
porterage; loading then unloading; sheaf throwing to a height of three metres; jumping
over bundles of firewood and intermediary races, all corresponded to the rural mans
habitual activities. This is confirmed by iconography illustrating the contests, which
showed the countrymen in field clothes, with hats on their heads and wooden shoes on their
feet.46
For Hebertists, professional skills may only be the basis of such instructional contests
because country people did not actually have any. The series of articles that Commander
Stephani dedicated to the issue in the Hebertist press organ LEducation physique included
 Rural Masculinity and Physical Education in Early Twentieth-Century France 69

endless observations concerning rural peoples shortcomings. The articles bluntly painted
a depreciatory picture which highlighted the physical mediocrity of a large part of
the rural population.47 They forged a gap between nature and those who lived in it,
when they stated that country people live in fresh clean air, (but) they do not all
know how to take advantage of it.48 Similarly, while advocates of the natural method
claimed to feel undisguised admiration for the uncivilised and strove to illustrate
rural peoples rusticity by likening them to primitives, they nonetheless presented
them in a negative light.49 Their limitations were represented as prevailing over their
resourcefulness:

Country people too often have joints which more or less seize up, sometimes completely stiff through
lack of exercise. More than anyone else, they should take care to mobilise them daily. [ . . . ] The
countryman is a man of nature, yet it would appear he is too often overwhelmed by it. Hence, the
tenseness and withdrawing into himself that are so characteristic and affect his nerves, the muscles
on his skeleton . . . and also his morale.50

These remarks confirm how difficult it was for rural physical education, designed by
pedagogues from outside the milieu, to free itself from the power of the cliches discrediting
rural people. Presented as lacking awareness of sanitary issues and impervious to any
educational approach, their entwinement with nature and deep-rooted attachment to
the earth rendered them brutal and shady. Such examples demonstrate the extent to
which agricultural athletics championships, rural athletic trail runs and rural horse events
brought to light the image of the rebel, resistant, unsophisticated and gruff countryman
that was held by those who developed the desire to provide the rural poor with physical
education. It was only because primitive and virile beings, modelled by nature, were
in need of being guided that Hebertists offered them rural runs, and the Rural Horse
Society planned to instil in them a love of horses.

3. Physical activities and agricultural policy

While all experiments in physical education and rural sport were clearly based on
assumptions about the moral and physical shortcomings of the peasantry, they could
also serve different political and economic aims.

Vulnerability as an ulterior motive for the development of an agricultural policy

At the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly following the First World
War, transformations in society led to the demographic, social and political decline of
the rural population and the weakening of their traditional values. Rural inhabitants
soon represented barely half of the economically active population.51 Recognition of
both the fragility and the economic and moral instability of a rural population faced
with modernisation stimulated the vague concerns of educators and state intervention,
which was particularly visible at agricultural athletics championships and rural horse
events. As early as the very first events, moreover, the contribution of agricultural
athletics championships to Republican acculturation was clear. It was shaped by a subtle
70 Tony Froissart and Thierry Terret

balance between the rights of the farmers and the duties of the State. The primary
duty of agricultural institutions, as conveyed by syndicates, specialist press (lAction
agricole) and generalist press (lEcho de Paris), was notably to recreate, with regard to
country people, this atmosphere of warm pleasantness that society owes the one who
provides its daily foodstuff.52 Political plans were aimed at curbing the rural exodus
and desertion of the countryside. Although ideas abounded for this purpose, it is useful
to focus on the social aspiration of rural youth for sports competitions.53 Agricultural
athletics championships contributed to highlighting the farmers professional worth and
promoting them indirectly helped to prevent youth emigration and maintain a pool of
potential agricultural workers in each region.
The objectives were clearly expressed in the columns of the syndicate review of lAction
agricole. The latter defended farmers by reminding readers, on several occasions, of the
citizenship aims of the events, while deploring the scorn of the generalist press for the
sporting performances: Alas ; it [agricultural athletics] does not fill newspaper columns
with accounts of the performances achieved by its participants. They only just manage to
escape opprobrium and mockery. Agricultural workers! What a thought!54 Belief in the
social utility of rural people took precedence over all other considerations and justified
the recourse to sport: And yet, if driving and cycling champions work towards progress
in industry, which is no mean feat, horse cart drivers, cowherds and farm labourers
work together to feed men, which is likewise no mean feat.55 It would even seem that
rural people were all the more justified in practising sport since their daily professional
activity had the same characteristics, with utility as a bonus: The agricultural worker
who engages in working the earth, drives the horse and cart he is given, albeit not
without difficulty or skill, who tramples the soil and remains ready to produce rich
harvests, practises sport and athletics.56 The discourse relayed and constantly reiterated
in the syndicates official organ powerfully demonstrated how the plan proved to be
more political than for sport. The presence of five former agriculture ministers, eight
confederation or agricultural academy presidents and three professors of agricultural
engineering, as well as two syndicate leaders, two deputies and an academician among
the twenty-three Central Committee members of the championship provided additional
proof of this.57
In the case of rural horse events, similar objectives for the revival of agricultural
activities were to be found, as confirmed by Louis Miquel when he declared that the
Rural Horse Society was above all a professional economically-oriented group.58 For
the Agriculture Minister, it was notably a question of creating an opinion trend in
favour of the horse, of developing its use in all forms and rekindling rural peoples
faith in their work companion, which had been profoundly weakened by propaganda
judged to be sometimes devious, sometimes violent, but at all times unfair.59 The
aim, which led to the institutionalisation of the Rural Horse Society and increase in
the number of rural horse events, was definitely linked to agricultural policies. Farmers
and breeders were reminded of their duties. The sports process was chosen as a result of
the favour it enjoyed with them and, more broadly, in general opinion. From now on,
agricultural athletics and rural events fulfilled the dual roles of acculturation and livestock
promotion.
 Rural Masculinity and Physical Education in Early Twentieth-Century France 71

Fighting male peasant roughness: a challenge for rural economy

Promoting agricultural athletics was probably aimed less at improving countrymens
health than at increasing their productivity and yield within a wider process of tailoring
agriculture to the requirements of modern society. It was a question of:

Showing the common people, perhaps unaware of the fact, that their actions are the most noble of
all, that they are the most necessary since it is thanks to them that the earth is opened, dug and
turned over, giving the sun the means of making it fertile.60

One of the consequences of the economic challenges was to think in terms of a gendered
distribution of work in order to justify physical education in the rural environment: men
should do the daily work in the fields; women the tasks based within the farm itself. The
main part of agricultural work, or at least the visible part, was indeed predominantly
performed by men who thus appeared as central agents in rural economy. A 1930 study
led by Professor Max Ringelmann, member of the Agriculture Academy and Professor
of rural engineering at the Grignon National Institute of Agronomy, was particularly
illuminating on this point.61 Referring to statistics on the amount of work accomplished,
it highlighted the relative fragility of the men whereas, on the contrary, rural women
were, in certain limited circumstances, very efficient in the fields: Being more skilful and
energetic, albeit not as strong as male workers, women often contributed as much useful
effect as the latter.62 Scientists, however, immediately counterbalanced the statement
by reiterating that agricultural work for women was limited to haymaking, harvesting
and grape picking, and often occurred during a part of the day only.63 Consequently,
there were fewer problems with the repetitive nature of the work and it was less likely to
cause them chronic fatigue or wear them out. For Ringelmann, however, men proved to be
much more productive on average than women since, according to his calculations, about
10 women were needed to do the same work, each day, as 6 men, and if the number
of annual working days should be counted, a woman only produced the equivalent of
roughly 130 man days.
From his first observations, Ringelmann drew the conclusion that the priority was to
take care of those who toiled on a daily basis and represented the main power of agriculture,
i.e. peasant men. The arguments developed in his lesson on rural engineering, together
with the illustrations provided, demonstrated therefore that the strength produced was
primarily male. Men were shown to be bent over or heavily laden, while the only print
available of a woman showed her kneeling down and filling a sack with crops.64 Yet, by
aiming to develop the human engine, the plan made reference to a concept of masculinity
whereby the strong and resistant man found himself, on account of the intensity of work
required, in a vulnerable position.

Gender and rural vulnerability

Ringelmanns opinion was not the only one of its kind. Potential peasant vulnerability was
the main argument put forward to justify the proposals for educational sporting experi-
ences such as rural horse events and agricultural and rural athletics events proposed by
the agricultural organisations and physical education groups. Thus when the Hebertists
72 Tony Froissart and Thierry Terret

relaunched the rural athletic trail runs, they took particular care to emphasise the impact of
rural milieu, living conditions and lack of education and professional activity on the health
and physical development of rural people. Yet their conviction was such that they did not
feel the need for any scientific basis. While the establishment of Hebertist rural athletic
runs was inspired by the pioneering experiment of the agricultural athletics championship,
the creators paid no attention to studies of the sporting efficiency of rural people, although
these were published on a regular basis and associated with the championships. Nor did
they mention Ringelmanns observations on the spade ploughing event held at the Creteil
contest on 25th October 1925, during an agricultural athletics championship. Yet the
eugenics engineer had cross referenced several criteria there to measure the practical
work that market gardeners are capable of doing in a given time unit.65 Depth of work,
time spent and number of digs per minute, together with the weight of competitors and
the tools used, made it possible to define a professional efficiency index. Results showed
that agricultural workers below the age of twenty dug, on average, 10.26 m2 per hour, and
those aged between twenty and thirty years old, 9.79 m2 , i.e. ninety-six per cent of the
younger workers output. As for men over the age of thirty, they were capable of spading,
on average, 8.24 m2 , i.e. eighty-one per cent of the younger workers output.
The theories of the educators were, in fact, based more on empirical morphological
observations than on available scientific assessment. By omitting all references to the
qualities of strength, physical power and endurance found in men of the fields, they
created an artificial need for bodily training and reinforced, by the same token, the
fact that rural people were defined as a vulnerable population. Peasant masculinity
was likewise depreciated, whereas peasant women were not targeted. Rural contests
were exclusively dedicated to men who were experienced and expert in agricultural
work, whether young or older, in which case skill would sometimes compensate for a
lack of strength. Competitions concerned male tasks only. As for the organisers, they
were likewise strictly only men. There was no place in rural sport for peasant women.
Moreover Hebertists remained sceptical about references coming from agronomy and
accepted only measurements established by the army Medical Board, a male institution
par excellence. This connection with a centre of gender based socialisation is hardly sur-
prising since the rural athletic trail runs and their predecessors, the agricultural athletics
championships and rural horse events, constituted variations of traditional concours de
majorations66 and popular games favoured in village fetes which were themselves for men
only.
Yet Ringelmann himself provided evidence concerning the occupations of country
women. Based on the work of agronomist Quetelet in Belgium and the Eugenicist
Galton in England, he defined an index of robusticity allowing comparisons between a
mans strength and a womans. He mentioned for instance that during a dynamometer
contraction exercise the average manual force produced by women represented only two-
thirds of that achieved by men. As for strength when straightening up, which measured
the effort required to straighten up from a bent-over position while pulling up a load (a
frequent action for rural people), the experiment showed that a young woman of twenty
could only manage to lift forty-nine per cent of the load a man could accomplish under the
same conditions. Yet, these results were ignored by Hebertists, as they sought to justify
 Rural Masculinity and Physical Education in Early Twentieth-Century France 73

the revival of rural athletic trail runs by demonstrating the physical shortcomings of the
population concerned.
The founder of the natural method, Georges Hebert, took an interest in womens
physical education and asserted that countrywomen lead an active life [ . . . ] which gave
them better health and more strength than their city counterparts.67 Here, the myth
of the rough and strong peasant woman replaced the myth of the fragile woman, which
generally dominated discourse on physical education.68 She was even declared to be
resistant to cultural progress and closed to modern forms of education. This change was
particularly marked when considering physical practices and hygiene. Hebert added that
their occupation did not enable them to achieve integral development since a peasant
woman never runs, nor jumps, neither does she climb, nor throw or swim, let alone
undress to expose her skin to air or light, or merely to bathe.69 Yet such comments
highlighted the consequences of a way of life and a rejection of modernity, albeit without
drawing any conclusion concerning the need for adapted rural physical education. Reports
published in the review lEducation physique, regional and national newspapers and the
syndicated press featured only masculine performances. For both Hebert and the creators
of rural athletic trail runs, womens absence from the educational plan and the focus on
the male population confirmed, more generally, that the physical education initiatives
and sporting events of the interwar period were intended to contribute to the agricultural
economy, while creating the outlines of a rural masculinity marked with the seal of
fragility.

Conclusion
Initiatives in the field of rural sport were exogenous in nature since they were developed
outside the peasant milieu by political leaders, such as Jean-Honore Ricard for agricultural
athletics and the Central Committee for the Rural Horse Society, and pedagogues such as
Georges Hebert. Nonetheless they benefited from the lack of specific rural sports organi-
sations, in spite of initiatives from the Jeunesse Agricole Catholique (Catholic agricultural
youth association).70 No doubt, as ruralist historians Michel Gervais, Marcel Jollivet
and Yves Tavernier have argued, their appearance constituted a form of resistance to
the decline of peasant folklore, which gained momentum after the First World War
as carnivals, profane gatherings and religious celebrations ceased to exist.71 Despite
their differences, proposals put forward for physical education and sporting contests
during the interwar period showed common ground. They all included the special
relationship between country people and nature, the myth of savagery and the rejection
of progress. They built a coarse portrait of a masculine and primitive peasantry. When
Stephani recalled the peasants attachment to the land, with the aim of caricaturing the
rural morphotype and referring to skeletal deformation resulting from agriculture, he
admittedly intended to justify the intervention of physical pedagogues, yet provided only
a very partial description of peasant habits.72 In effect, peasant people were attached to
customs and traditions which expressed and strengthened the stability of their social
group. This aspect was admittedly taken into account by rural horse societies and
agricultural athletics championships in order to fight moral and physical vulnerability, and
74 Tony Froissart and Thierry Terret

promote male sociability through professional-cum-festive activities. As for Hebertists,

they omitted it when endeavouring to impose a model of rural trail runs which replaced
traditional games with educational practices, while rejecting any development towards
an agricultural athletics championship and disregarding what constituted the daily life
of rural people. Comparison of the 1925 Agricultural Athletics Championship and the
Hebertist version of the rural athletics trail run proposed in 1948 thus highlighted how
peasant customs, habits and uses were neglected for the benefit of educational principles.
In the rules for the 1925 Championship, the link between the peasant and his land
permeated the ploughing or manure-mixing events, which required physical contact.
The final banquet was, in the same way as the gatherings of times past, an essential
constitutive element of the festival. The Hebertist version, on the other hand, barely
observed these customs and traditions. Even if the competitions featured professional
know-how, events were set up, in fine, so as to respect the ten constitutive motor skill
categories of the natural method, artificially attached in this case.
Whether it was to strengthen peasant male sociability in order to fight forms of degen-
eration or the decline of professional practices, or whether its purpose was to educate the
savages, the masculine model remained the sole reference for educators descriptions and
men the sole target of their proposals. Resurrecting various facets of peasant vulnerability,
even if it meant putting an end to traditional virile, rustic representations, made sense
when it came to gaining acceptance for rural physical activities and sports. Nonetheless,
hygienist and health arguments, as well as humanitarian ones, lived on in the political
aspirations for citizenship education and the revival of economic capacity, embodied in the
manly force of the peasant population. Reinforced by negative preconceptions of peasant
habits, sporting experiments were based on a model of masculinity that was peculiar to
the imagined rural world. Educating the oafs, civilising the savages, giving them back the
love of the horse and re-establishing direct contact with the land during agricultural work
were the most significant elements of the implementation. These bodily and professional
pedagogies were not equally applied to women who, often living as recluses on the farm,
did not enjoy the same forms of sociability as their husbands, and also because, unlike
their male counterparts, their work, being less routine and more intermittent, did not
result in any irreversible morphological deformities. Between concepts of a subordinated
masculinity, far from the dominant urban models, and the announcement of accusatory
vulnerability, sport and physical education practices designed for the rural world never
really met the expectations of the peasant population.73

Notes
1. Philippe Tissie, Allocution prononcee devant les eleves de lorphelinat de Saverdun, Sport
et sante, 93 (1936), 11.
2. Gilbert Andrieu, Linfluence de la gymnastique suedoise sur leducation physique en France
entre 1847 et 1914, Stadion, XIV, 12 (1988), 16380.
3. Andre Rauch, Le souci du corps (Paris, 1983).
4. Georges Rouhet, De lentrainement considere comme une maniere generale, La culture
physique, 121 (15th January 1910), p. 42. On Rouhet, see especially Sylvain Villaret,
 Rural Masculinity and Physical Education in Early Twentieth-Century France 75

Naturisme et education corporelle. Des projets reformistes aux prises en compte politiques et
educatives (XIXe milieu du XXe siecle) (Paris, 2005).
5. Georges Hebert was the leader of a physical education trend known as the natural method
which was extremely influential in France during the first half of the twentieth century. See
Jean-Michel Delaplace, Georges Hebert, sculpteur de corps (Paris, 2005). In this method the
lesson was held either in a natural environment or on a sports field. It was based on the
teaching of ten motor skills categories: walking; running; jumping; balance; quadrupedy;
throwing; lifting and carrying; climbing; attack and defence; and swimming. See Georges
Hebert, Leducation physique, virile et morale par la methode naturelle, Volume 1: Expose
doctrinal et principes directeurs de travail (Paris, 1936). Study sources are essentially taken
from the national and regional press (lEcho de Paris, LAbeille de Seine-et-Oise, Ouest eclair),
the specialist press (syndicate, sporting and physical education), Annals of the School of
Agronomy in Grignon and official texts concerning physical education, as well as a corpus
composed of manuals and books.
6. Quoted by Maurice Halbwachs, Esquisse dune psychologie des classes sociales (Paris, 1938), p.
29.
7. Ronald Hubscher, Reflexions sur lidentite paysanne au XIXe siecle : identite reelle ou
supposee?, Ruralia, 1 (1997), p. 3 online version.
8. Denis Wolff, Albert Demangeon: un geographe face au monde rural, Ruralia, 18/19 (2006).
9. Ronald Hubscher, Historiens, geographes et paysans, Ruralia, 4 (1999), p. 6 online version.
10. Francois Simiand, Methode historique et sciences sociales, Lannee sociologique, 11 (Paris,
19069), 72332; Halbwachs, Esquisse.
11. Halbwachs, Esquisse, p. 32.
12. Catherine Rhein, La geographie, discipline scolaire et/ou science sociale? (1860/1920), Revue
Francaise de Sociologie, XXIII (1982), 22351.
13. Pierre Arnaud, Les savoirs du corps (Lyon 1982); Francis Charpier, Aux origines de la
medecine du sport (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lyon, 2004).
14. Fernand Lagrange, Physiologie des exercices du corps (Paris, 1888), p. 148. The book was still
a basic reference in physical education during the interwar years.
15. Lagrange, Physiologie, p. 148.
16. Lagrange, Physiologie, p. 149.
17. Linda J. Borish, Farm Females, Fitness, and the Ideology of Physical Health in Antebellum
New England, Agricultural History, 64: 3 (1990), 17.
18. Laura Frader, From Muscles to Nerves: Gender, Race and the Body at Work in France
19191939, International Review of Social History, 44 (1999), 12347; Christian Pociello, La
science en mouvement. Etienne Marey et Georges Demeny (18701920) (Paris,
1999).
19. Georges Demeny, Leducation de leffort. Psychologie et physiologie (Paris, 1914), pp. 512.
20. Demeny, Leducation de leffort, p. 52.
21. Anne Carol, Histoire de leugenisme en France. Les medecins et la procreation. XIXe-XXe siecles
(Paris, 1995).
22. Demeny, Leducation de leffort, p. 53.
23. Ministere de la Guerre [Ministry of War], Reglement general deducation physique. Methode
francaise, volume 1 (Paris, 1925).
24. Pascal Ory, La Belle Illusion. Culture et politique sous le signe du Front populaire. 19351938
(Paris, 1994).
25. Proposition de loi tendant a rendre leducation physique obligatoire . . . [Law proposal
intended to make physical education compulsory . . . ], Documents parlementaires-Senat.
(Session ord. Session of 2 July 1937), Annex n 424.
26. Jean-Louis Gay-Lescot, Sport et education sous Vichy (19401944) (Lyon, 1991).
27. Roger Vuillemin, LEducation Physique et la jeunesse rurale (Paris, 1944), p. 24.
28. Ibid.
76 Tony Froissart and Thierry Terret

29. Vuillemin. LEducation Physique, p. 26.

30. Vuillemin. LEducation Physique. p. 45.
31. Albion M. Urdank, The Rationalisation of Rural Sport: British Sheepdog Trials, 1873
1946, Rural History, 17: 1 (2006), 65-82; Annette Hofmann, Sheep, Shepherds and the
Stubble Field: Traditions and Transformations at the Markroninger Schaferlauf, in Gertrud
Pfister, ed., Games of the Past - Sports for the Future? Globalisation, Diversification (Sankt
Augustin, 2004), pp. 96102.
32. A. Monmirel [no title], LAction Agricole, 2 (13th January 1926).
33. Eric Dunning, Sport as a Male Preserve: Notes on the Social Sources of Masculinity and
its Transformations, in Norbert Elias, Eric Dunning, eds, Quest for Excitement: Sport and
Leisure in the Civilizing Process (Oxford, 1986), 26783.
34. LAction Agricole, 2 (13th January 1926).
35. La decadence des campagnes: lorgie rurale, lAuto (31st January 1926).
36. Thierry Terret, Sport et masculinite: une revue de questions, STAPS 25, 66 (2004), 20925.
37. Jacqueline Candau, Jacques Remy, Sociabilites rurales. Les agriculteurs et les autres, Etudes
rurales, 183: 1 (2009), 83100; Patrick Champagne, Les paysans a la plage, Actes de la
Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 2 (1975), 4367.
38. Marcel Mavre, Attelages et attelees. Un siecle dutilisation du cheval de trait (Paris, 2004), p.
145.
39. See the series of papers by Louis Miquel entitled La cavalerie rurale en France in La Bretagne
hippique agricole et economique, from 9th November 1935; Louis Miquel, La cavalerie rurale en
France-2, La Bretagne hippique agricole et economique (21st November 1935); Louis Miquel,
Les societes hippiques rurales, La Bretagne hippique agricole et economique (12th December
1936).
40. For a description of these games, see Tony Froissart, LImpasse du sport rural (Besancon,
2007), pp. 1646.
41. Statement of D. de Broglie, Secretary of the Societe Hippique Rurale of the Lion dAngers,
quoted in LEducation Physique, 51 (1939), p. 172.
42. Lavenir des societes hippiques rurales, La Bretagne hippique agricole et economique (20th
June).
43. Y. Duigou, La Bretagne hippique agricole et economique (8th June 1935).
44. Louis Miquel, Les societes hippiques rurales, La Bretagne hippique agricole et economique
(14th November 1936)
45. Thierry Terret, Le Groupement hebertiste (19371945) ou linstitutionnalisation dun ideal,
in Pierre Arnaud, Thierry Terret, Pierre Gros, Jean Saint-Martin, eds, Le sport et les Francais
pendant lOccupation (Paris, 2002), 13350; Un parcours rural dathletisme, LEducation
physique, 7 (1948), 106.
46. Froissart, LImpasse, p. 157.
47. Ct Stephani, Leducation physique du paysan, LEducation physique, 40 (1936), 273.
48. Ibid.
49. Hebert, LEducation physique.
50. Ct Stephani, Leducation physique du paysan (suite), LEducation physique, 41 (1937), 32.
51. Francois Cardi, Durkheim, les paysans, lecole, Revue francaise de pedagogie, 158 (janvier
fevrier mars 2007), p. 22.
52. Championnat national dathletisme agricole, LAction agricole. Journal regional agricole de
lIle de France 25 (24th June 1925).
53. Ibid.
54. Le Championnat dathletisme agricole, LAction agricole. Journal regional agricole de lIle
de France 21 (27th mai 1925).
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
 Rural Masculinity and Physical Education in Early Twentieth-Century France 77

57. The status of the last two members was not given.
58. Louis Miquel, La Bretagne hippique, agricole et economique (20th November 1937).
59. Ibid.
60. LAction agricole 39 (30th September 1925). The article deals with a ploughing event which
was part of the agricultural athletics competitions.
61. Max Ringelmann, Lhomme considere comme moteur, Annales de lInstitut national
agronomique (ecole normale superieure de lagriculture), 33 (1930), 1036.
62. Ringelmann, Lhomme considere comme moteur, p. 15.
63. Ibid.
64. Max Ringelmann, Rapport sur les machines agricoles, Exposition internationale de Chicago
en 1893, in C. Krantz, Rapports Ministere du Commerce, de lIndustrie, des postes et des
telegraphes (Paris, 1894), p. 11 (figure 2), p. 13 (figures 5 and 6), p. 14 (figure7).
65. LAction agricole, 39 (30th September 1925).
66. These concours de majorations consisted of horse riding performances in front of a special
jury, in order to measure the value of the horses before their sale.
67. Georges Hebert, LEducation physique feminine. Muscle et beaute plastique (Paris, 1919), p.
66.
68. Jean-Philippe Saint-Martin, Thierry Terret, eds, Sport et genre, volume 3: Apprentissage du
genre et institutions educatives (Paris, 2005).
69. Ibid.
70. Francois Leprieur (ed.), JAC/MRJC, origines et mutation. Un mouvement de jeunesse au cur
de la societe francaise (Lyon, 1996).
71. Michel Gervais, Marc Jollivet, Yves Tavernier, La fin de la France paysanne depuis 1914
(Paris, 1977), pp. 3545.
72. Ct Stephani, Leducation physique du paysan (suite), LEducation physique, 41 (1937).
73. Robert W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley and Los Angeles: CA, 1995).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.