tariffs, it took 8 months to distribute this grain throughout the country. By 1861, 13.5 million hectoliters were imported, but this time distribution was much faster because of the progress of the railway network. In 1879, 29.8 million hectoliters were imported following several years of poor harvests. Winemaking regions like the former province of Languedoc and the Côte-d'Or benefited greatly from the railways, with a “frenzy” of vine-planting taking place in the former region after 1850, and the productive output of the Côte-d'Or rising from 400,000 to 800,000 hectoliters of wine. Modernization of peasants France was a rural nation as late as 1940, but a major change took place after railways started arriving in the 1850s–60s. In his seminal book Peasants Into Frenchmen (1976), historian Eugen Weber traced the modernization of French villages and argued that rural France went from backward and isolated to modern and possessing a sense of French nationhood during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He emphasized the roles of railroads, republican schools, and universal military conscription. He based his findings on school records, migration patterns, military service documents and economic trends. Weber argued that until 1900 or so a sense of French nationhood was weak in the provinces. Weber then looked at how the policies of the Third Republic created a sense of French nationality in rural areas. The book was widely praised, but was criticized by some, such as Ted W. Margadant, who argued that a sense of Frenchness already existed in the provinces before 1870. French national policy was protectionist with regard to agricultural products, to protect the very large agricultural population, especially through the Méline tariff of 1892. France maintained two forms of agriculture, a modern, mechanized, capitalistic system in the Northeast, and in the rest of the country a reliance on subsistence agriculture on very small farms with low income levels. Modernization of the subsistence sector began in the 1940s, and resulted in a rapid depopulation of rural France, although protectionist measures remained national policy. Colonialism In the 1880s, increasing competition amongst the great European powers for territory overseas led France to acquire new colonies. By 1912, the French colonial empire constituted 3.4 million square miles and 55 million inhabitants. While some of these territories had little to no economic value (they were instead valuable for geopolitical/strategic reasons), others possessed lucrative raw materials and were exploited as markets for French