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
|
LSN: |
0-367-55300-7 |
Barcode: |
9780367553005 |
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