Abstract EN:

The central fore-pyrenees and their tectonic fore are a geographical zone with numerous populations who had few resources at their disposal in the xviith century. By 1720 the population increased whereas the landed property concentration went on. As the peasant's lot was becoming more and more precarious, a part of the century folk looked for complementary means of support in the seasonal activity of cloth manufacturing. So they took part in the protoindustrial growth which developed according to divergent chronologies in accordance with the concerned places (early in "comminges" and "nebouzan", late in "volvestre", non existent in the "pays de foix", the poorest and most over populated part of that area). That growth stopped during the first decenniums of the xixth century. The moderate growth of agriculture, of industrial activities and of the production of local handicrafts could not supply the resources required for the mainten ance of a population who had become plethoric. In the second half of the xixth century, the rural world lost its populat then, country-folk lived better since they could take advantage of the improvement of medicine and sanitation as well as of the moderate growth of agriculture which went on. At the end of the xixth century, the upper part of the drainage basin of the garonne river seemed to be asleep. It only had a moderate growth whereas the north and east of france were full in the middle of industrial development. That apathy is mostly due to the wish of the social elites to perpetuate a pattern of legitimation of the elites founded on t he possession of landed property. However this deliberate choice does not exclude adjustments in the constitution of the patrimony, and in the partial redeployment of the activities of the middle-classes of the "midi toulousain" which show t hat they have not stood stock-still but have relied on another type of growth which was not the one of capitalist indust