The historiography of French economic growth in the nineteenth century

Crouzet, François

doi:10.1046/j.1468-0289.2003.00248.x

Cited by 52 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…70 The issue taken up in this article is whether such improvements enhanced labour productivity, raised the standard of living, and modernised the economy. The French economy grew slowly, while the population grew even more slowly, and the per capita income increased.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Economy of France in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Market Opportunity and Labour Productivity in Languedoc

Miller

2009

Rural History

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Recent scholarship makes the case that from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, French peasants were just as effective as the large farmers of England in raising agricultural productivity when they had access to urban markets. This article shows that the peasants of the old regime province of Languedoc had access to urban demand and market opportunities, and brought about economic growth, but only by dint of massive increases of labour inputs. The results were paltry increases in labour productivity and the standard of living. The case of Languedoc demonstrates that the study of the social context helps scholars evaluate a society's potential for economic development far more than does the study of its markets. 2Stephen J. Miller from Paris. The market opportunity for trade with the towns is nowadays advanced as the basic explanation for gains in economic productivity. 2 Philip Hoffman, in particular, ascribes all of the distinctive traits of rural France to the influence of markets. Sharecropping, Hoffman argues, permitted landowners to gain value from poor peasants lacking the financial reserves to assume the costs of a fixed-term lease. It lent itself to more effective monitoring of the husbandry than did landlord/tenant relationships and became the logical form of rental agreement for proprietors residing near their holdings. When markets called for crops such as vines, which required meticulous husbandry, sharecropping helped the landowners to supervise the work closely. Farm sizes also responded to market stimuli, Hoffman maintains, as many proprietors had opportunities for profit in viticulture and established small plots to better focus on the careful husbandry it required. English proprietors had opportunities in livestock, which called for large farms and little labour. They extended their landholdings to reduce costs and obtain the full benefits of trade. 3 Hoffman developed original data to demonstrate the propensity of French farmers to increase productivity when they had access to markets. Prices for land, labour, leases, capital, and commodities permit a calculation of production minus the cost of its factors, or 'total factor productivity'. The data show that productivity rose 7.7 per cent between 1650 to 74 and 1750 to 1774, and another 6.5 per cent (.3 per cent a year) between 1750 to 1774 and 1775 to 1789 in the Paris basin. These rates are 'comparable or superior to those achieved across the English Channel'. 4 Overall, productivity rose in Bretteville in Normandy in the sixteenth century, the southeast and Paris basin in the seventeenth century, and the Albigeois, Beaujolais, and Paris basin after 1750. 'Such growth matched the performance of farmers in England, and it could approach the best that could be achieved in early modern Europe'. 5 Labour productivity in agriculture rose twenty-seven per cent for France as a whole between 1500 and 1800. 6 Hoffman argues that French farmers did not achieve these gains through a transformation of the social structure or technology, rad...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Economy of France in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Market Opportunity and Labour Productivity in Languedoc

Miller

2009

Rural History

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“…The share of labor employed in industrial production rose from 25% to 31% between 1841 and 1911. Around 1911 the share of labor employed in industry surpassed that of the share in agriculture (Crouzet, 2003). The share of total output accounted for by industrial output moved from 29% to 39% between 1841 and 1911.…”

Section: Global Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…France's textile exports included high quality products (silk trade from Lyon, print cotton from Alsace, articles from Paris…) destined for the luxury markets. Skilled labor was a relatively abundant factor of production (Crouzet, 2003). In the early 19th century, France exported textiles towards a great number of countries not only in Europe but also more distant areas such as Latin America the US etc.…”

Section: France: Relative Decline In the 19 Th Century?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compared to other European countries, the French "decline" appears to be unique (Lewis, 1981;Federico and Wolf, 2011;Dedinger, 2012;Huberman et al, 2015). Crouzet (2003) blames the apparent slow growth of French exports after 1860 on a rise in wages induced by a 'shortage of labor'. Indeed, France suffered recurrent trade deficits from the end of the 1870s.…”

Section: France: Relative Decline In the 19 Th Century?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stages of diversification: France, 1836–1938

Becuwe

Blancheton

Meissner

2018

European Review of Economic History

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The authors thank Karine Onfroy for helpful assistance concerning dataset building. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

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“…As Sargentson notes, "Paris became the international market for luxury goods." 13 Nineteenth-century Britain is well known for its industrial revolution, but France had two economic revolutions, although the second is often ignored. France's first economic revolution was similar to Britain's.…”

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confidence: 99%

Class Formation and Workers’ Attitudes toward Education:La Pensée Ouvrière(1948) by Georges Duveau

Hanagan

2016

Inter. Labor Working-Class Hist.

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La pensée ouvrièrere pendant la second république et le second empire, Georges Duveau's classic but largely-forgotten study of French artisanal workers, focuses on changing attitudes toward work and education between 1848 and 1870, years which Duveau himself lauded as exceptionally fertile and creative in French social thought. How to explain such extraordinary fecundity? Partly, it can be explained by intensified police repression after Napoleon III's coup, when the educational institutions of workers were repressed and they had to design new ones under the eyes of a suspicious state. Perhaps a more important factor, one suggested by the recent work of Thomas Piketty, is the ever-growing need to produce workers capable catering to the ever more sophisticated needs of the fabulously wealthy. The highly skilled artisanal production in Paris combined with the growth of factories created the distinctive conditions of French economic growth.

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The historiography of French economic growth in the nineteenth century

Cited by 52 publications

References 42 publications

The Economy of France in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Market Opportunity and Labour Productivity in Languedoc

The Economy of France in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Market Opportunity and Labour Productivity in Languedoc

Stages of diversification: France, 1836–1938

Class Formation and Workers’ Attitudes toward Education:La Pensée Ouvrière(1948) by Georges Duveau

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