The century and a half from 1756 to 1906 was an era of profound change in France. It spanned the Seven Years’ War, the end of the ancien régime, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, and the nineteenth-century development of France into a dominant industrial power. These periods have been the subject of intense “top-down” histories, almost from their inception. According to some scholars, however, the flaw in the “top-down” approach is that it takes little account of how ordinary people are affected by historical forces. Carlo Ginzburg, for example, in a series of articles in Quaderni Storici and Critical Inquiry in the 1970s, argued that accounts based on the experiences of individuals and groups can offer important perspectives in illuminating the past.

The economic historian Emma Rothschild tells us how in her student days in the early 1980s she happened upon one of Ginzburg’s articles in a Florence bookstore. Judging from two of her books, she took Ginzburg’s approach to heart. Her Inner Life of Empires (2011) described the fortunes of a prominent Scottish family during the British Empire’s formative years and showed how their ambitions and methods reflected the spirit of the times. In her new book, An Infinite History, Rothschild shifts her gaze to France. Based on extensive research in the parish and municipal records of the southwest town of Angoulême, An Infinite History tells the stories of Marie Aymard, a seamstress living during the reign of Louis XV,