Environnement, structures sociales et régime démographique

The small province of Dombes, located some miles north from Lyon, was The small province of Dombes, located some miles north of Lyon, was covered by numerous artificial ponds. This humid area also suffered from very high mortality, and most of the writers of past centuries thought that these two facts were closely related, the ponds being responsible for high mortality.With the drainage of a large proportion of the ponds during the second half of the nineteenth century, and then with the impounding of some of them at the beginning of the twentieth century, the environment was modified. In this paper we propose to examine the environment, social structures and demographic regime simultaneously, in order to evaluate the relations and interactions between these parameters that have changed significantly over the three last centuries. Dombes, environment, mortality, mobility, rural society