The decline of rural France

I have just spent a few days with two old friends who are leaving a small French village in Normandy after living there for many years. There are all kinds of reasons for leaving, but one of the most important is the decline of the lovely village where they live. The bakery and the bar have both closed and not been replaced. To buy anything you have to drive to the nearest small town. The population is falling and many of their old friends are leaving or have left.

On the train home I happened to read a letter in The Times. It reads: “You report that only 21 per cent of rural French districts had a bar, bistro or café in 2010 (“Rural France loses its joie de vivre with decline of the village bistro,” Apr 22), a figure that is almost certainly lower today, but it is a sad fact that many of them no longer provide the cuisine admired by Elizabeth David in her masterpiece French Provincial Cooking. In Upper Normandy … the local restaurant offering was dire. … And don’t get me onto the loss of French bakers.”

Much of this decline is to do with demographic change. The ageing of rural France is a fact. The young prefer life in the big cities. This also has political consequences.

Three years ago, Politico reported that in a small town in southwest France, “the signs of decline and decay are everywhere. Youths hang around the main square, there are entire streets with boarded-up shops and, overlooking the river, an empty bandstand recalls better times. ‘It’s a sad town,’ said an elderly woman sitting on a bench with a couple of friends. ‘There used to be a butcher, a baker, a grocery store, there’s nothing left now,’ chimed in another. ‘There’s nothing for the youngsters, mine have all left for big cities, Strasbourg, Paris, Lille…’ added a third.

“Tonneins is like thousands of provincial towns across France, once rural gems that are falling into disrepair, sore reminders of a waning France. And they have become easy prey for Le Pen, who in Sunday’s election made big gains across the country.”

This decline is not altogether new. More than ten years ago, Reuters published an article called, “Far from idyll, rural France feels left in the past”, which began: “The first thing a visitor to this rural French village sees upon entering town are road signs pointing the way out. The sprawling parking lot that is Sousceyrac’s main square is mostly empty on a weekday afternoon. The tourist information office, post office and bull semen cooperative are closed, and the rumble of hay and lumber trucks passing through town without stopping adds to the air of isolation.”

The world of Jean de Florette and Clochemerle is fast disappearing. This is hardly surprising. Marcel Pagnol was born in 1895 and died half a century ago. Gabriel Chevallier, who wrote Clochemerle, was born in the same year and died just before De Gaulle. Lupiac, where D’Artagnan was born, now has a population of barely three hundred. The small town that inspired Clochemerle, Vaux-en-Beaujolais in the heart of France, has a population today of barely a thousand.

The larger trends are even more dramatic. In 1960 the French rural population was almost eighteen million, 38% of the total French population. By 2023, it was fewer than twelve and a half million, a loss of one third, making up only 18% of the total French population. The French rural population is now a significantly smaller proportion than in Germany or Italy.

This sense of decline is not just about demographic data. It is crucial to France’s image of itself. Think of all those great novels which take place in rural France — most famously, Madame Bovary — or begin in rural France, such as Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, or the great artists who immortalised the French countryside between Napoleon and the First World War: Jean-Francois Millet, Corot and Courbet, Pissarro and Cézanne, Van Gogh and Monet.

But, above all, there is France’s sense of itself. “La France profonde” is best translated as “deep France” or “the heartlands of France”. It refers to the rural areas and provincial towns of France, the essence of French culture that exists outside the capital, including village life, agricultural traditions, and the “true” French identity, as opposed to Paris. This is where the greatest modern French presidents came from. De Gaulle grew up in Lille, Pompidou in Cantal, in south-western France, Mitterrand in Charente in the south-west. Even Macron’s family can be traced back to a small village in Picardy.

It is not, however, the likes of Macron, but the populist Right that expresses and exploits the grievances of rural France, from the gilets jaunes to today’s National Rally. Their mix of nationalism, populism and anti-immigration sentiment feeds off the anger at the sense of decline of rural France. This will surely only grow more intense as la France profonde, still a place of small villages, farmers and bars, bakers and cafés, continues to age and decline in relation to the big cities.

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