An innovative history of deep social and economic changes in
France, told through the story of a single extended family across
five generations Marie Aymard was an illiterate widow who lived in
the provincial town of Angouleme in southwestern France, a place
where seemingly nothing ever happened. Yet, in 1764, she made her
fleeting mark on the historical record through two documents: a
power of attorney in connection with the property of her late
husband, a carpenter on the island of Grenada, and a prenuptial
contract for her daughter, signed by eighty-three people in
Angouleme. Who was Marie Aymard? Who were all these people? And why
were they together on a dark afternoon in December 1764? Beginning
with these questions, An Infinite History offers a panoramic look
at an extended family over five generations. Through ninety-eight
connected stories about inquisitive, sociable individuals, ending
with Marie Aymard's great-great granddaughter in 1906, Emma
Rothschild unfurls an innovative modern history of social and
family networks, emigration, immobility, the French Revolution, and
the transformation of nineteenth-century economic life. Rothschild
spins a vast narrative resembling a period novel, one that looks at
a large, obscure family, of whom almost no private letters survive,
whose members traveled to Syria, Mexico, and Tahiti, and whose
destinies were profoundly unequal, from a seamstress living in
poverty in Paris to her third cousin, the cardinal of Algiers.
Rothschild not only draws on discoveries in local archives but also
uses new technologies, including the visualization of social
networks, large-scale searches, and groundbreaking methods of
genealogical research. An Infinite History demonstrates how the
ordinary lives of one family over three centuries can constitute a
remarkable record of deep social and economic changes.
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