Jacques Le Roy Ladurie

Jacques Jules Marie Joseph Le Roy Ladurie (28 March 1902 – 6 June 1988) was a French agriculturalist and politician.

Jacques Jules Marie Joseph Le Roy Ladurie was born on 28 March 1902 in Saint-Mihiel, Meuse.

He played a leading role in agricultural syndicates in the 1920s and 1930s.

He graduated in 1924.

His father, Captain Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, was stationed there with the 25th battalion of chasseurs.

In the summer of that year his father was dismissed from the army for refusing to execute the government's decrees directed against religious congregations, and retired to farm his family's land in Normandy.

When aged 17 and about to graduate from secondary school Jacques Le Roy Ladurie became seriously ill and was bed-ridden for several months.

His doctors told him he must live an outdoor life, so after his recovery he joined the school of agriculture in Angers.

In 1925 Le Roy Ladurie settled in an 18th-century château surrounded by a farm of 140 ha owned by his maternal family at Les Moutiers-en-Cinglais.

The property was located on the edge of the Caen plain and the Norman bocage, and was mostly used for wheat and cattle.

It was worked by hired hands, and he had free time, particularly in winter.

Soon after, he married the daughter of Viscount Dauger.

Léontine Dauger was from a Catholic and royalist background.

They had four children, including the future historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, who was born on 19 July 1929.

His brother, Gabriel Le Roy Ladurie, became a senior officer of the Banque Worms.

Le Roy Ladurie soon became known as an authority on "modern" agriculture.

He was noticed by Henri Chéron, a former Minister of Agriculture, and at the age of 23 was made secretary of the Calvados agricultural syndicate.

He was active and innovative, and changed the organization into a union of syndicates along a model proven in Lyon.

He combined the services of a syndicate, a cooperative and the credit union in a "Maison de Paysan" (Peasant House).

In 1929 Le Roy Ladurie was elected to the municipal council of Les Moutiers-en-Cinglais, and was chosen as mayor.

By 1931 the Calvados Union had 8,600 members in 211 municipal unions.

In December 1931 the syndicates were dealt a blow by the failure of the Caisse centrale de Crédit agricole (Central Bank of Agricultural Credit).

In the confusion that followed Le Roy Ladurie was made secretary-treasurer of the Union centrale des syndicats agricoles (UCSA, Central Union of Agricultural Syndicates).

He managed to arrange support from the Banque Worms through his brother Gabriel.

Le Roy Ladurie supported Henry Dorgères and his quasi-fascist Greenshirts in 1933–35.

He published an article that violently attacked the government for lowering production targets at a time when there were 300,000 foreigners in France, many working "stolen" French soil and refusing to be assimilated.

In 1934 he became secretary-general of the UCSA, which was renamed the Union nationale des syndicats agricoles (UNSA, National Union of Agricultural Syndicates).

In 1935 Le Roy Ladurie was elected president of the Calvados Chamber of Agriculture.

Le Roy Ladurie addressed 8,000–10,000 participants at the first annual conference of the Greenshirts on 11 December 1935 in Bannalec, Finistère.

Later he drew away from the Greenshirts.

Where Dorgères was against the government's policy of employer-paid social welfare for peasant families, and wanted a welfare regime fully subsidized by the state, Le Roy Ladurie saw the weakness of the government plan as an opportunity for the UNSA to take over peasant welfare using a tax on the purchase of agricultural products.

Dorgères was not invited to the Peasant Congress at Caen on 5–7 May 1937 where Le Roy Ladurie, influenced by Rémy Goussault and Louis Salleron, invited the leading conservative agrarians to declare their support for corporatism.

The weekly Syndicats paysans, co-edited by Salleron and Le Roy Ladurie, first appeared on 1 July 1937.

During World War II (1939–45) he was Minister of Agriculture in Vichy France for several months in 1942.

He later participated in the French Resistance.

After the war he was a deputy for the Calvados from 1951 to 1955, and again from 1958 to 1962.

He held this position until 1983, with only a short interruption in 1945–47.

Le Roy Ladurie believed in the "union shop" to provide fertilizer, small equipment, insurance and groceries, but also believed peasants would always be deeply independent.

He insisted that the Calvados Union should be completely neutral in politics and religious matters.

He was called a revolutionary for demanding review of tenancy leases and a reactionary for opposing the extension of social insurance to agriculture.