French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie is best known for his 1975 book Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Montaillou, an Occitan Village 1294-1324), which reconstructs the lives of the inhabitants of the small village of Montaillou in the French Pyrenees from 1294 to 1324.
Ladurie was able to do this by using the transcripts of the Inquisition trials of 50 residents of Montaillou, who were accused of heresy. The transcripts, which were over 1,000 pages long, provided Ladurie with a wealth of information about the villagers’ daily lives, their beliefs, and their relationships with each other.
Montaillou was a groundbreaking work of microhistory, and it helped to establish Ladurie as one of the leading historians of his generation. The book has been translated into many languages and is still widely read today.
In addition to Montaillou, Ladurie wrote a number of other important works of history, including The French Peasantry: From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (1976), The Carnival of Romans (1979), and The Time of Love (1987). He also wrote several essays on the history of climate change and environmental history.
Ladurie was a pioneer in the use of new methods and sources in historical research. He was one of the first historians to make use of computers to analyze historical data, and he was also one of the first to use oral history and ethnography to study the past.
Ladurie’s work has had a profound impact on the field of history. He has shown that it is possible to write a rich and detailed history of the lives of ordinary people, and he has demonstrated the importance of using a variety of sources and methods in historical research. He is a truly innovative and influential historian.