LES BALKANS ET LE CHÂTAIGNIER: UN RENDEZ-VOUS MANQUÉ
THE CHESTNUT IN THE BALKANS: A MISSED APPOINTMENT

Summary/Abstract: The French geographer Jean-Robert Pitte shows how poor rural regions of Southern Europe like Corsica could survive – and even be densely populated – having a chestnut as basis of their alimentation. This however did not happen in the Balkans, where this species of tree is autochthonous and geographical conditions, similar. Chestnuts are a wintertime snack, but they were never considered as “real” food, except for monks. If we turn to James Scott’s theory of The Art of Not Being Governed, the chestnut would have ideally fit in the Balkan setting. Yet this did not happen. To solve this contradiction, this article proposes some hypotheses.

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