Farewell to the peasant republic: industrialisation and the economic transformation of mountain regions in Western Europe, 1815-1930

"Between 1850 and 1990, upland communities in Switzerland, France, Italy and Spain witnessed the demise of traditional peasant economies and the emergence of a new type of rural economy whose firm stucture and patterns of labour organization were more similar to those common in industrial societies. Evolution was the result of an institutional selection process activated by changes brought about by industrialization in the economic environment of upland communities. But, beyond these similarities, substantial differences can be found in the paths that led to evolution. The Alpine path was based on the early creation and consolidation of employment firms in industry and services, and entailed relatively low occupational gaps as compared to national averages. The path followed by Mediterranean uplands was much more dismal –considerable gaps in economic structure and living standards caused an acute demographic crisis during the second half of the twentieth century. A non-Kuznetsian pattern of structural change was then a by-product of depopulation."