Make Cheese Not War

Make Cheese Not War transports readers to the rustic landscape of the Larzac plateau in France, where a local struggle became a global movement. In 1970, the government announced plans to expand a military base, threatening to seize the land of 103 farmers, who united in defiance. What grew from rooted rural resistance soon blossomed into an international cause célèbre, drawing on the power of regional identity, memories of the Algerian War, and renewed religious conscience after Vatican II.

In this story of successful struggle, farmers chose wheat over guns, and sheep over tanks, turning the symbols of their pastoral landscape into markers of peaceful protest. Tractor convoys rumbled across France towards Paris, and flocks of sheep grazed beneath the Eiffel Tower, capturing the media's attention and the public's imagination.

After a decade of non-violent resistance, these farmers won a hard-fought victory against the French state, but their impact was felt far beyond their homeland. They forged bonds with a global cast of radicals, from migrant workers to Native American activists, Japanese fishermen, Irish Republicans, and Kanak autonomists. Through gritty determination and inventive protest, they built networks of rough-handed solidarity that transcended borders. Make Cheese Not War shows how, in their non-violent resistance to state power and militarism, a small group of farmers pioneered new visions of political, economic, and spiritual renewal. This book will appeal to historians of Modern Europe, as well those interested in the Politics and Sociology of resistance across borders.

Andrew Smith is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Glamorgan