The Transition to Capitalism in Modern France - Primitive Accumulation and Markets from the Old Regime to the post-WWII Era

Historians, since the 1960s, argue that the French economy performed as well as did any economy in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thanks to the opportunities for profit available on the market, especially the large consumer market in Paris. Whatever economic weaknesses existed did not stem from the social structure but from exogenous forces such as wars, the lack of natural resources, or slow demographic growth. This book challenges the foregoing consensus by showing that the French economy performed poorly relative to its rivals because of non-capitalist social relations. Specifically, peasants and artisans controlled the lands and workshops in autonomous communities and did not have to improve labor productivity to survive. Merchants and manufacturers cornered markets instead of being subject to the market’s competitive imperatives. These distinctive features of capitalism—primitive accumulation (the dispossession of peasants and artisans) and the competitive obligation faced by merchants and manufacturers to reinvest profits in order to keep the profits—did not prevail until the state imposed them in a process lasting for a century after the 1850s. For this reason, it was not until the 1960s that France caught up to (and in some cases surpassed) its economic rivals.

General

Imprint:	Routledge
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Routledge Studies in the Modern History of France
Release date:	October 2023
First published:	2024
Authors:	Xavier Lafrance • Stephen Miller
Dimensions:	234 x 156mm (L x W)
Pages:	280
ISBN-13:	978-0-367-55300-5
Categories:	Books Promotions
LSN:	0-367-55300-7
Barcode:	9780367553005

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