No abstract

This article investigates the impact of industrial activities on primary instruction in early nineteenth-century France. To do so, I use a newly constituted database on the location and characteristics of primary schools at the level of municipalities. This database is extracted from the Guizot Survey conducted in 1833, before the implementation of the first national law making the opening of a school mandatory in any municipality more than 500 inhabitants. By using mineral deposits as an instrument, I first show that the presence of industrial activities in a given municipality was positively influencing the presence of primary schools. An increase in the supply of schools by municipalities explains this association. Additional resources transferred to them by manufactures favoured this increase trough an income effect. However, I find no significant link between industry and the accumulation of human capital. On the contrary, I provide indications that industrial activities were associated with lower enrolment rates. If they had a positive impact on the demand for schooling, it was only for a very restricted part of the population.

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In this article, I investigate the effect of landholding inequalities on the democratization process in nineteenth-century France. I focus on the 1849 election, which followed the establishment of the Second Republic (1848–1851), and on the first six elections of the Third Republic (1870–1940), which took place between 1876 and 1893. I find that stronger landholding inequalities were associated to a lower support for the Republicans, and therefore constituted a threat to the consolidation of democracy. I provide evidence that large landowners resisted the establishment of democracy by influencing the electoral behavior of economically dependent agricultural workers.