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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

STEPHEN J. MILLER
STEPHEN J. MILLER*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama 35294, USA
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , April 2009 , pp. 1 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

Notes

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18. The argument developed in the preceding paragraphs is an application of the theoretical model developed by Robert Brenner for continental Europe, particularly France (Brenner, , ‘The Low Countries in the Transition to Capitalism’, in Hoppenbrouwers, P. and van Zanden, J. L., eds, Peasants into Farmers? The Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages-19th Century) in Light of the Brenner Debate (Turnhout, 2001), pp. 287–8, 301–2Google Scholar) and the one developed by Brenner, Christopher Isett, and Philip Huang for China during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) (Brenner and Isett, ‘England's Divergence’, pp. 609–62 and Huang, Philip, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350–1988 (Stanford, 1990), pp. 11–13Google Scholar).

19. Brenner, ‘Property Relations and the Growth of Agricultural Productivity’, p. 11.

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21. Colin Jones argues that the provincial administration of Languedoc promoted ‘the economic development of what was becoming by the eve of the Revolution one of France's most heavily industrialized provinces’. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (London, 2003), p. 256. For population figures compare Jacques Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française, volume 2, De la Renaissance à 1789 (Paris, 1988), pp. 55, 76; Lepetit, Bernard, Les villes dans la France moderne (1740–1840) (Paris, 1988), pp. 450–2Google Scholar. For infrastructure: Petot, Jean, Histoire de l'administration des ponts et chaussées, 1599–1815 (Paris, 1958), pp. 313–5Google Scholar. The renowned English traveller Arthur Young noted that Languedoc had the best thoroughfares in France: Young, Arthur, Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789 (Garden City, 1969), pp. 29, 37Google Scholar. For taxation levels compare Archives Nationales (hereafter AN) H1/1588/47; Necker, Jacques, De l'administration des finances de la France (Paris, 1784)Google Scholar, volume 1, p. 226. James Riley argues that taxation actually declined in France as a whole over the course of the eighteenth century, because fiscal increases did not keep pace with inflation and economic growth. The Seven Years War and the Old Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll (Princeton, 1986), pp. 35–6, 50, 60–1.

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51. Brunet, Les campagnes toulousaines, pp. 152–6; Frêche, Toulouse et la région Midi-Pyrénées, pp. 45, 59, 63–4; Péronnet, Michel and Fournier, Georges, La révolution dans le département de l'Aude, 1789–1799 (Le Coteau, 1989), p. 85Google Scholar; Bonnet, J. L. and Marquié, C., ‘L'ancien régime (vers 1500–1789)’, in Histoire des pays d'Aude (Carcassonne, 1980), p. 65Google Scholar.

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57. Les inspecteurs, Département de l'Aude, pp. 139–41, 193–4; les inspecteurs, Département de la Haute-Garonne, pp. 110–11, les inspecteurs, Département du Tarn, pp. 155, 245, 248, 316.

58. Frêche, Toulouse et la région Midi-Pyrénées, pp. 561–2.

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60. ADG IV E 22.

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