Book Review: The Village of Cannibals, Rage and Murder in France
Corbin, Alain. The Village of Cannibals: Rage and Murder in France, 1870. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Introduction
Historian Alain Corbin explores the political and social significance of the killing of a young French nobleman in the remote village of Hautefaye in France. Corbin’s chronicle describes the gruesome event that happened in broad daylight involving the villagers accusing the young nobleman of shouting republican slogans that angered the villagers. What followed in the trail of events is the sparked indignation of the entire country. Rumors of cannibalism have circulated in the country and the author’s fascination of the subject had him to explore a more in-depth perspective of what transpired during the period being described. Furthermore, The Village of Cannibals demonstrates Corbin’s fascinating inquiry of the incidents involving public violence during and after the French Revolution. In addition, the book also explores the early episodes of the history of France by offering insights about the mob’s murderous intents, methods, and choice of victim. Most importantly, the book provides a detailed investigation of the political motivations behind the murder that engulfed the French society and challenged their sensibilities about the use of violence in expressing political perspectives.
Summary
Corbin’s work details the murder of Alain de Moneys who is a young Nobleman in Hautefaye in France. The murder of Moneys took place on August 16, 1870 in the remote village where he was subjected to torture and eventually being burned alive by the peasants. The subsequent events led to the imprisonment of several villagers and sentence to death of four other peasants who were found to have a direct involvement to the crime. The murder took place at the border of Hautefaye, which is a place described as a picture of poverty where a lack of cultivation of crops is apparent and the peasants still feeding their hogs with acorn. Furthermore, the villagers were illiterate, poor health, and were short of stature. It is appears that the peasants detest the nobility because of their social status and perceived arrogant attitude. Such belief was exaggerated by ruling middleclass in the rural areas who are manipulating the peasants to develop hatred against nobility.
The described social condition and the peasant’s perspective of the nobility have helped the staging of the events leading to the murder of Moneys. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon when Moneys turned up at the village to buy a heifer, drinking and other activities coincided with the celebration of the two holidays are already happening. Given the several issues occupying the minds of the people, such as the two-year drought, rumors of disaster blaming republicans, the priests, and the nobles, any political position voiced out during the fair is likely to cause a commotion. When the words “Vive la Republique” echoed in the air, an enraged mob headed toward Moneys’ direction. Although the priest attempted to intervene, the situation went out of hand that had him to retreat in his presbytery. One of the councilmen of Hautefaye named Chambort has incited with the mob to take a hand and take turns in torturing Moneys. With an estimated 200 people attacking the victim one by one, the latter has requested to be shot. Despite Moneys’ respite, the people continued on their attacks and the following events led him being dragged on the road and burned alive when they reached the sloping bank of a dry pond.
Analytical Review
The murder of Moneys in Hautefaye cannot be considered as the same occurrences of crime in history for a myriad of reasons. For one, the murder has nothing to do with conflicts regarding land or other commune resources nor it concerns revenge, and not to mention the crime was committed in broad daylight by people of various localities. It cannot be also regarded as a crime against the authorities because the culprits believe that they are doing the state a favor. It is apparent that the villagers were afraid for one reason and that is their homes will be burned if the emperor falls so instead they burned the Prussian. Rumor suggests that the priests, the nobles, and the republicans are plotting against the country while the emperor is working to defend the nation from invaders. Based on the accounts of the incident, which Corbin has captured with utmost sensibility, it appears that the mob was out to regain control of any situation that would put their sovereign in trouble by compressing the threat in one confrontation, which apparently had Moneys as the sacrificial lamb for such objective.
The murder, as remarkably described in the book does not only depict the amount of brutality that a mob could perpetrate, but also the timing of the incident during the late 19th century. In the early historical accounts of relative violence, most of the incidents had religious connotations, which involves ritualistic acts of violence directed against corpses. Usually the older traditions of violence observed relating to religion in some cultures involve disfigurement of the corpse and parading them as trophies while believing that the practice is sanctified to relieve of impure blood. However, in later centuries similar acts of violence was frowned upon and only reserved in the battlefield in which tortures were removed from the justice system; butchering animals were not allowed in plain view and executions by guillotine were made private because the horror that such violence resembles were regarded as out of fashion. In the case of the murder of Moneys, the book suggests that the crime was committed out of passion and the historical accounts was moved out of the cultural anthropological realm into relevant historical events.
Furthermore, The Village of Cannibals has moved the perception of the murder from an irrational microevent into a political interpretation of hostility towards those considered as enemies of the state. One can only understand the reason for the murder of Moneys by examining the circumstances, religious, economic, historical, and geographical factors that makes barbarous act seem rational from the perpetrators’ perspective. Corbin emphasized the political background of the region to insinuate awareness of the country’s state of politics during the period, which reinforces one of the underlying reasons of the murder. At the center of The Village of Cannibals plot is an echoing notion of fear as the cause of all the hostilities. Rumors and fear of the sovereign being defeated by political rivals come to life in the form of the mob that are not stopping to suppress the very object of their fear, which they found in Moneys. In addition, the bourgeoisie aided the spread of rumors in order to divert the people’s attention away from the issues of the large gap in terms of wealth between the rich and the poor and land ownership.
Conclusion
Much of the work presented in Corbin’s The Village of Cannibals constitutes a narrative depiction of murder and violence. However, the most important aspect of the book that makes it highly relevant to historical discourse is the underlying political views that triggered the incident. The book challenges the reader’s perspective on the horror and rationality of political violence in which a particular political ideology justifies brutality. Relevant insights were effectively interjected into the narratives of the murder providing a political framework to the text,
Bibliography
Burns, Michael. "Kill a Pig, roast a Prussian." London Review of Books 14, no. 22 (November 1992), 13. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n22/michael-burns/kill-a-pig-roast-a-prussian.
Corbin, Alain. The Village of Cannibals: Rage and Murder in France, 1870. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Stewart, Mary Lynn. "The Village of Cannibals: Rage and Murder in France, 1870." Canadian Journal of History, December 1993. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=14825333.
