Economic history of France
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This is a history of the economy of France. For more information on historical, cultural, demographic and sociological developments in France, see the chronological era articles in the template to the right. For more information on specific political and governmental regimes in France, see the dynasty and regime articles.
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[edit] Ancient France
[edit] Medieval France
The collapse of the Roman Empire devastated the French economy.[citation needed] Town life and trade declined and society became based on the self-sufficient manor. What limited international trade existed in the Merovingian age — primarily in goods such as silk, papyrus, and silver — was carried out by foreign merchants such as Syrians.
Agricultural output began to increase in the Carolingian age as a result of the arrival of new crops, improvements in agricultural production, and good weather conditions. However, this did not lead to the revival of urban life; in fact, urban activity further declined in the Carolingian era as a result of civil war, Arab raids, and Viking invasions.
The High Middle Ages saw a continuation of the agricultural boom of the Carolingian age. In addition, urban life grew during this period; towns such as Paris expanded dramatically. However, in the fourteenth century, bad weather, the Hundred Years War, and the Black Death, led to the temporary collapse of the French economy.
[edit] Ancien Régime France
- (For information on the administrative and taxation structure of Ancien Régime France, see Ancien Régime in France.)
(Figures cited in the following section are given in livre tournois, the standard "money of account" used in the period. Comparisons with modern figures are extremely difficult; food items were comparatively cheap, but luxury goods and fabrics were very expensive. In the 15th century, an artisan could earn perhaps 30 livres a year; a great noble could have land revenues from 6000 to 30,000 livres or more.[1] A late seventeenth-century unskilled worker in Paris earned around 250 livres a year [2], while a revenue of 4000 livres a year maintained a relatively successful writer in modest comfort [3]. At the end of the 18th century, a well-off family could earn 100,000 livres by year, although the most prestigious families could gain twice or three times that much, while, for provincial nobility, yearly earnings of 10,000 livres permitted a minimum of provincial luxury.)
[edit] Renaissance
The economy of Renaissance France was, for the first half-century, marked by a dynamic demographic growth and by developments in agriculture and industry. Until 1795, France was the most populated country in Europe and the third most populous country in the world, behind only China and India. With an estimated population of 17 million in 1400, 20 million in the 1600s, and 28 million in 1789, its population exceeded even Russia and was twice the size of Britain and Holland. In France, the Renaissance was marked by a massive increase in urban populations, although on the whole, France remained a profoundly rural country, with less than 10% of the population located in urban areas. Paris was one of the most populated cities in Europe, with an estimated population of 650,000 by the end of the 18th century.
Agricultural production of a variety of food items expanded: olives, wine, cider, woad (Fr. "pastel", a source of blue dye), and safron. From southern Europe came artichokes, melons, romaine lettuce, eggplants, salsifys, celery, fennel, parsley, and alfalfa; and from the New World came common beans, corn (maize), squash, tomatoes, potatoes, and bell peppers. These changes notwithstanding, France's agriculture remained attached to medieval techniques which produced low yields, and due to the rapidly expanding population, additional land suitable for farming became scarce. The situation was made worse by repeated disastrous harvests in the 1550s.
Industrial developments greatly affected printing (introduced in 1470 in Paris, 1473 in Lyon) and metallurgy. The introduction of the high-temperature forge in northeast France and an increase in mineral mining were important developments, although it was still necessary for France to import many metals, including (copper, bronze, tin, and lead). Mines and glasswork benefitted greatly from royal tax exemptions for period of about twenty years. Silk production (introduced in Tours in 1470 and in Lyon in 1536) enabled the French to join a thriving market, but French products remained of lesser quality than Italian silks. Wool production was widespread, as was the production of linen and of hemp (both major export products).
After Paris, Rouen was the second largest city in France (70,000 inhabitants in 1550), in large part because of its port. Marseille (French since 1481) was France's second major port: it benefited greatly from France's trading agreements signed in 1536 with Suleiman the Magnificent. To increase maritime activity, François I founded the port city of Le Havre in 1517. Other significant ports included Toulon, Saint Malo and La Rochelle.
Lyon was the center of France's banking and international trade markets. Market fairs occurred four times a year and facilitated the exportation of French goods, such as cloth and fabrics, and importation of Italian, German, Dutch, English goods. It also allowed the importation of exotic goods such as silks, alum, glass, wools, spices, dyes. Lyon also contained houses of most of Europe's banking families, including Fugger and Medici. Regional markets and trade routes linked Lyon, Paris and Rouen to the rest of the country. Under François I and Henri II, the relationships between French imports and the exports to England and to Spain were in France's favor. Trade was roughly balanced with the Netherlands, but France continually ran a large trade deficit with Italy due to the latter's silks and exotic goods. In subsequent decades, English, Dutch and Flemish maritime activity would create competition with French trade, which would eventually displace the major markets to the northwest, leading to the decline of Lyon.
Although France, being initially more interested in the Italian wars, arrived late to the exploration and colonization of the Americas, private initiative and piracy brought Bretons, Normans and Basques early to American waters. Starting in 1524, François I began to sponsor exploration of the New World. Significant explorers sailing under the French flag included Giovanni da Verrazzano and Jacques Cartier. Later, Henri II sponsored the explorations of Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon who established a largely Calvinist colony in Rio de Janeiro, 1555-1560. Later, René Goulaine de Laudonnière and Jean Ribault established a Protestant colony in Florida (1562-1565). (see French colonisation of the Americas).
By the middle of the 16th century, France's demographic growth, its increased demand for consumer goods, and its rapid influx of gold and silver from Africa and the Americas led to inflation (grain became five times as expensive from 1520 to 1600), and wage stagnation. Although many land-owning peasants and enterprising merchants had been able to grow rich during the boom, the standard of living fell greatly for rural peasants, who were forced to deal with bad harvests at the same time. This led to reduced purchasing power and a decline in manufacturing. The monetary crisis would lead to France abandoning (in 1577) the livre as its money of account, in favor of the écu in circulation, and banning most foreign currencies.
Meanwhile, France's military ventures in Italy and (later) disastrous civil wars demanded huge sums of cash, which were raised with through the taille and other taxes. The taille, which was levied mainly on the peasantry, increased from 2.5 million livres in 1515 to 6 million after 1551, and by 1589 the taille had reached a record 21 million livres. Financial crises hit the royal household repeatedly, and so in 1523, François I established a government bond system in Paris, the "rentes sur l'Hôtel de Ville".
The French Wars of Religion were concurrent with crop failures and epidemics. The belligerents also practiced massive "torched earth" strategies to rob their enemies of foodstuffs. Brigands and leagues of self-defense flourished; transport of goods ceased; villagers fled to the woods and abandoned their lands; towns were set on fire. The south was particularly affected: Auvergne, Lyon, Burgundy, Languedoc -- agricultural production in those areas fell roughly 40%. The great banking houses left Lyon: from 75 Italian houses in 1568, there remained only 21 in 1597 [4].
[edit] Seventeenth century
After 1597, France's economic situation improved and agricultural production was aided by milder weather. Henri IV, with his minister Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, adopted monetary reforms. These included better coinage, a return to the livre tournois as account money, reduction of the debt, which was 200 million livres in 1596, and a reduction of the tax burden on peasants. Henry IV attacked abuses, embarked on a comprehensive administrative reform, increased charges for official offices, the "paulette", repurchased of alienated royal lands, improved roads and the funded the construction of canals, and planted the seed of a state-supervised mercantile philosophy. Under Henry IV, agricultural reforms, largely started by Olivier de Serres were instituted. These agricultural and economic reforms, and mercantilism, would also be the policies of Louis XIII's minister Cardinal Richelieu. In an effort to counteract foreign imports and exploration, Richelieu sought alliances with Morocco and Persia, and encouraged exploration of New France, the Antilles, Sénégal, Gambia and Madagascar, though only the first two were immediate successes. These reforms would establish the groundwork for the Louis XIV's policies.
Louis XIV's glory was irrevocably linked to two great projects, military conquest and the building of Versailles -- both of which required enormous sums of money. To finance these projects, Louis created several additional tax systems, including the "capitation" (begun in 1695) which taxed every person including nobles and the clergy, though exemption could be bought for a large one-time sum, and the "dixième" (1710-1717, restarted in 1733), which was a true tax on income and on property value and was meant to support the military.
Louis XIV's minister of finances, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Colbert started a mercantile system which used protectionism and state-sponsored manufacturing to promote the production of luxury goods over the rest of the economy. The state established new industries (the royal tapestry works at Beauvais, French quarries for marble), took over established industries (the Gobelins tapestry works), protected inventors, invited workmen from foreign countries (Venetian glass and Flemish cloth manufacturing), and prohibited French workmen from emigrating. To maintain the character of French goods in foreign markets, Colbert had the quality and measure of each article fixed by law, and severely punished breaches of the regulations. This massive investment in (and preoccupation with) luxury goods and court life (fashion, decoration, cuisine, urban improvements, etc.), and the mediatization (through such gazettes as the Mercure galant) of these products, elevated France to a role of arbiter of European taste. [5]
Unable to abolish the duties on the passage of goods from province to province, Colbert did what he could to induce the provinces to equalize them. His régime improved roads and canals. To encourage companies like the important French East India Company (founded in 1664), Colbert granted special privileges to trade with the Levant, Senegal, Guinea and other places, for the importing of coffee, cotton, dyewoods, fur, pepper, and sugar, but none of these ventures proved successful. Colbert achieved a lasting legacy in his establishment of the French royal navy; he reconstructed the works and arsenal of Toulon, founded the port and arsenal of Rochefort, and the naval schools of Rochefort, Dieppe and Saint-Malo. He fortified, with some assistance from Vauban, many ports including those of Calais, Dunkirk, Brest and Le Havre.
Colbert's economic policies were a key element in Louis XIV's creation of a centralized and fortified state and in the promotion of government glory, including the construction of Versailles. However, they had many economic failures: they were overly-restrictive on workers, they discouraged inventiveness, and had to be supported by unreasonably-high tariffs.
The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 created additional economic problems: of the more than 200,000 Huguenot refugees who fled France for Prussia, Switzerland, England, Ireland, United Provinces, Denmark, and eventually America, many were highly-educated skilled artisans and business-owners who took their skills, businesses, and occasionally even their Catholic workers, with them. Both the expansion of French as a European lingua franca in the 18th century, and the modernization of the Prussian army have been credited to the Huguenots.
The wars and the weather at the end of the century brought the economy to the brink: by 1715, the trade deficit had reached 1.1 trillion livres. To increase tax revenues, the taille was augmented, as too were the prices of official posts in the administration and judicial system. With the borders guarded due to war, international trade was severely hindered. The economic plight of the vast majority of the French population -- predominantly simple farmers -- was extremely precarious, and the "Itty Bitty Ice Age" resulted in further crop failures. Unwilling to sell or transport their much-needed grain to the army, many peasants rebelled or attacked grain convoys, but they were repressed by the state. Meanwhile, wealthy families with stocks of grains survived relatively unscathed; in 1689 and again in 1709, in a gesture of solidarity with his suffering people, Louis XIV had his royal dinnerware and other objects of gold and silver melted down.
[edit] Eighteenth century
France experienced a slow economic and demographic recovery in the first decades following the death of Louis XIV, although monetary confidence was briefly eroded by the disastrous paper money "System" introduced by John Law from 1716-1720. In 1726, under Louis XV's minister Cardinal Fleury, a system of monetary stability was put in place, leading to a strict conversion rate between gold and silver, and set values for the coins in circulation in France.
Starting in the late 1730s and early 1740s, and continuing for the next 30 years, France's population and economy underwent an important expansion. Rising prices, particularly for agricultural products, were extremely profitable for large landholders. Artisans and tenant farmers also saw wage increases, but on the whole, they benefited less from the growing economy. Pivotal developments in agriculture, such as modern techniques of crop rotation, the use of fertilizers which were modelled on successes in Britain and Italy, began to be introduced in parts of France. It would, however, take generations for these reforms to spread throughout all of France. Farming of recent New World crops, including maize, potatoes continued to expand, and provided an important supplement to the diet.
The most dynamic industries of the period were mines, metallurgy and textiles (in particular printed fabrics, such as those made by Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf). The advancements in these areas were often due to foreigners. For example, it was John Kay's invention of the flying shuttle that revolutionized the textile industry, and it was James Watt's steam engine that changed industry as the French had known it. Capital remained difficult to raise for commercial ventures, however, and the state remained highly mercantilistic, protectionist, and interventionist in the domestic economy, often setting requirements for production quality and industrial standards, and limiting industries to certain cities.
The international commercial centers of the country were based in Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, and Bordeaux. Nantes and Bordeaux saw phenomenal growth due to an increase of trade with Spain and Portugal. Cadiz was the commercial hub for export of French printed fabrics to India), the Americas and the Antilles (coffee, sugar, tobacco, American cotton), and Africa (the slave trade, centered in Nantes.
In 1749, a new tax, modelled on the "dixième" and called the "vingtième" (or "one-twentieth"), was enacted to reduce the royal deficit. This tax continued throughout the ancien régime. It was based solely on revenues, requiring 5% of net earnings from land, property, commerce, industry and from official offices, and was meant to touch all citizens regardless of status. However, the clergy, the regions with "pays d'état" and the parlements protested; the clergy won exemption, the "pays d'état" won reduced rates, and the parlements halted new income statements, effectively making the "vingtième" a far less efficient tax than it was designed to be. The financial needs of the Seven Years' War led to a second (1756-1780), and then a third (1760-1763), "vingtième" being created. In 1754, the "vingtième" produced 11.7 million livres.
The later years of Louis XV's reign saw some economic setbacks. While the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763, led to an increase in the royal debt and the loss of nearly all of France's North American possessions, it was not until 1775 that the French economy began truly to enter a state of crisis in 1775. An extended reduction in agricultural prices over the previous twelve years, with dramatic crashes in 1777 and 1786, and further complicated by climatic events such as the disastrous winters of 1785-1789 contributed to the problem.
With the government deeply in debt, Louis XVI was forced to permit the radical reforms of Turgot and Malesherbes. However, the nobles' disaffection led to Turgot's dismissal and Malesherbes' resignation 1776. Jacques Necker replaced them. Louis supported the American Revolution in 1778, but the Treaty of Paris (1783) yielded the French little, excepting an addition to the country's enormous debt. The government was forced to increase taxes, including the "vingtième." Necker had resigned in 1781, to be replaced temporarily by Calonne and Brienne, but he was restored to power in 1788.
In these last decades of the century, French industries continued to develop. Mechanization was introduced, factories were created, and monopolies became more common. However, this growth was complicated by competition from England in the textiles and cotton industries. On the other hand, French commercial ventures continued to expand, both domestically and internationally. The American War of Independence had led to a reduction of trade (cotton and slaves), but by the 1780s American trade was stronger than before. Similarly, the Antilles represented the major source for European sugar and coffee, and it was a huge importer of slaves through Nantes. Paris became France's center of international banking and stock trades, in these last decades (like Amsterdam and London), and the Caisse d'Escompte was founded in 1776. Paper money was re-introduced, denominated in livres; these were issued until 1793.
The agricultural and climatic problems of the 1770s and 1780s led to an important increase in poverty: in some cities in the north, historians have estimated the poor as reaching upwards of 20% of the urban population. Displacement and criminality, mainly theft, also increased, and the growth of groups of mendicants and bandits became a problem. Although nobles, bourgeois, and wealthy landholders saw their revenues affected by the depression, the hardest-hit in this period were the working class and the peasants. While their tax burden to the state had generally decreased in this period, feudal and seigneurial dues had increased.
The French Revolution would put an end to France's industrial development, leaving France greatly behind Britain for the next half a century.
[edit] Modern France
French economic history since its end-18th century Revolution was tied to three major events and trends: the Napoleonic Era, the "industrialization" competition with Britain and its other neighbors, and the "total wars" of the late-19th and early 20th centuries. The post-war period, since 1950, saw significant new departures in both economic development and the policies designed to affect it.
[edit] The Napoleonic Era
The constant "war-footing" of the Napoleonic Era, 1795-1815, stimulated production at the cost of investment and growth. Production of armaments and other military supplies, fortifications, and the general channeling of the society toward the establishment and maintenance of massed armies, temporarily increased economic activity after several years of revolution. The rampant inflation of the Revolutionary era was halted by not printing the new currency quite as fast. The maritime Continental Blockade, implemented by Napoleon's opponents and very effectively enforced by the Royal Navy, gradually cut into any economic arena in which the French economy was not self-sufficient. Final defeat of the French forces, in 1815, and consequent collapse of its war-footing industries, exposed these economic hardships.
[edit] Industrialization
Re-establishing the economy on a peacetime basis, after a quarter-century of nearly-continuous turmoil and warfare, proved difficult. Some industry and industrial technique developed for the wars was carried over, converted to peacetime purposes. France in 1815 largely still was a land of peasantry, however. Urbanization of the largest cities was well under way, and Paris was a leading world capital already. Smaller French towns and the country's many small villages, however, were impoverished and industrially-backward.
The 19th century development of French road and rail systems, and other social infrastructure, was greatly aided by the grandes écoles, inherited from the prior era: graduates of these high-standards schools became the engineers and policy-makers of French industrialization.
Industrial development in France was rapid, during the 19th century. Around the great cities, and in the north and in other areas which had natural resources readily available, large industries formed. Capital was available through banking services largely located, since the Revolution, in Paris. The large French population of the time supplied an available workforce.
Education was made a high priority of successive French governments. Various educational reforms, implemented from the central government at Paris and applied nationally, were designed to raise the general level of the children of French rural and smalltown families to a high national level. At the same time, education spread new and often radical ideas, fueling repeated resistance to and even revolt against the deplorable living conditions of many workers in the new industries and factory towns.
By the end of the 19th century, France had joined the industrial era. But it had joined late, and comparatively it had lost in the competition with its war-footing neighbor Germany, and with its trade-based chief rival across the Channel, Great Britain. France had great industry and infrastructure and factories, by 1900; but compared to Germany and Britain was "behind", so that people spoke of and French politicians complained of "the French backwardness (le retard français)".
[edit] Total War
In 1870 the first signs of French industrial and general economic decline started to appear, compared to their new neighbor in Bismarck's newly-united Germany, appeared during the Franco-Prussian War. The total defeat of France, in this conflict, was less a demonstration of French weakness than it was of German militarism and industrial strength. This in contrast to France's occupation of Germany during the Napoleonic wars. A huge sum had to be paid to Germany to end the war which provided the latter with even more capital.
By 1914, however, German armament and general industrialization had out-distanced not only France but all of its neighbors. Just before 1914, France was producing about one-sixth as much Coal as Germany, made less than a third as much Pig iron and a quarter as much Steel. [6] In a scenario recounted best in Barbara Tuchman's book The Guns of August[7], France together with Germany's other competitors had entered a "war-footing" rearmament race which, once again, temporarily stimulated spending while reducing saving and investment.
The First World War — the "Great War" — however produced an economic outcome disastrous for all parties (except the US), not just for the German losers. As predicted by Keynes in his bitter post-Versailles Conference book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace[8], the heavy war reparations imposed upon Germany not only were insufficient to fuel French economic recovery, they greatly damaged a Germany which might have become France's leading trade and industrial development partner, thereby seriously damaging France as well.
And their very heavy loss of life, in the "Great War", robbed France of a generation of its youth, and of some of the youthful imagination necessary for facing Germany again, only 25 years later, in the Second World War, when a by-then aged French general staff was ill-prepared and entirely-defensive up against an even more militant German economy and army. Damaged by the Great Depression, the older leaders left in France were reluctant to assume a "war-footing" economy yet again, and France was overrun and occupied by Nazi Germany, and its wartime economy turned entirely to supporting Germany and the German war effort.
[edit] Post-War to 2000
The great hardships of wartime, and of the immediate post-war period, were succeeded by a period of steady economic development, in France, now often fondly recalled there as The Thirty Glorious Years (Les Trente Glorieuses). Alternating policies of "interventionist" and "free market" ideas enabled the French to build a society in which both industrial and technological advances could be made but also worker security and privileges established and protected. By the end of the 20th century, France once again was among the leading economic powers of the world, although by the year 2000 there already was some fraying around the edges: people in France and elsewhere were asking whether France alone, without becoming even more an integral part of a pan-European economy, would have sufficient market presence to maintain its position, and that worker security and those privileges, in an increasingly "Globalized" and "transnational" economic world. Also, since 1990s, France has seen very slow economic growth, while its competitors, U.K. and Germany, have seen better economic growth.
[edit] The reconstruction and the Welfare State
The reconstruction began at the end of the war, in 1945, and confidence in the future brought back. With the « baby boom » (which had started as soon as 1942) the natality rate surged rapidly. It took several years to fix the damages caused by the war – battles and bombing had destroyed several cities, factories, bridges, railway infrastructures.[9] 1,200,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged.[10]
In 1945, the provisional government of the French Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle and made up of communists, socialists and gaullists, nationalized key economic sectors (energy, air transport, savings banks, assurances) and big companies (Renault…), creation of Social Security and of works councils.[9] A welfare is set up. Economic planiofication is set up with the Commissariat général du Plan in 1946, led by Jean Monnet; the first « Plan de modernisation et d’équipement », for the 1947-1952 period, focused on basic economic activities (energy, steel, cement, transports, agriculture equipements) ; the second Plan (1954-1957) had broader aims : housing construction, urban development, scientific research, manufacturing industries.[9][11]
[edit] Les Trente Glorieuses
Between 1947 and 1973, France went through a booming period (5% per year in average) dubbed by Jean Fourastié Trente Glorieuses, title of a book published in 1979. The economic growth is mainly due to productivity gains and to an increase in the number of working hours. Indeed, the working population was growing very slowly, the baby boom being offset by the extension of the time dedicated to studies. Productivity gains came from the catching up with the United States. In 1950, the average income in France is half as big as that of an American (0,55), and reach four fifth in 1973.
To insist that the period is not that of an economic miracle, but a mere catching up following an economic lag, the French historian Jacques Marseille noted that if the economy had constantly grown at the same rate as that of the « Belle Époque », the wealth would have been the same at the beginning of the 1970s as that actually reached after the Trente glorieuses.[12]
[edit] The economic crisis
Whereas the term "crisis" is often used by people to refer to the period following the 1973 oil crisis history does not confirm this belief. Facts show that the average income in France, after having been steady for a long time, has increased elevenfold between 1700 and 1975, impressive result, by which correspond to a 0.9% growth rate on a yearly basis, whereas the rate has almost be overstep every year since 1975.
If the economic growth has been less strong since 1973 than in previous years, the period remains one of the most prosperous in this History for France. Jacques Marseille noted that the growth of the living standard has been as significant between 1973 and 2003 as in the period of the Trente glorieuses, in absolute numbers, but below that period in relative numbers.
Often considered as a decisive event, the oil crisis in 1973 did not suddenly slow down the growth of the Trente glorieuses, for it had already decreasing since the end of the 1960s. The impact of the crisis on the cost of energy, and so on the cost of production, was an aggravating factor.
For information on France's current economy, see Economy of France.
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[edit] References
- ^ Kendall, Paul Murray. Louis XI: The Universal Spider (New York : Norton, 1971) ISBN 0-393-05380-6, p. 12.
- ^ DeJean, Joan. The Essence of Style: How the French Invented Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour (New York: Free Press, 2005) ISBN 0-7432-6413-4, ISBN 0-473-26413-7, p. 15.
- ^ Viala, Alain. Naissance de l'écrivain (Paris: Eds. de Minuit, 1985) ISBN 2-7073-1025-5, p.113, Collection: Le sens commun.
- ^ Jouanna, Arlette and Jacqueline Boucher, Dominique Biloghi, Guy Thiec. Histoire et dictionnaire des Guerres de religion. (Paris: Laffont, 1998) ISBN 2-221-07425-4, pp. 421-422, Collection: Bouquins.
- ^ Dejean, cit. supra.
- ^ Roberts, J: "History of the World.". Penguin, 1994.
- ^ Tuchman, Barbara W.. The Guns of August (New York : Ballantine, 1994) ISBN 0-345-38623-X
- ^ Keynes, John Maynard. The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London : Macmillan, 1919)
- ^ a b c site France-Diplomatie
- ^ Asselain, Jean-Charles. Histoire économique de la France du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, p. 108
- ^ J.-C. Asselain, op. cit., p. 112
- ^ Jacques Marseille, « Le miracle des « trente glorieuses » ? », Enjeux, Les Échos, janvier 2006
[edit] Selected Bibliography
(English language only; in order by era, then by date, most recent first)
[edit] General
- Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and capitalism, 15th-18th century (Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme) (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1992) ISBN 0-520-08114-5 (v. 1), ISBN 0-520-08115-3 (v. 2), ISBN 0-520-08116-1 (v. 3).
- Braudel, Fernand. The wheels of commerce (Jeux de l'Echange) translation from the French by Siân Reynolds (London : Fontana Press, 1985) ISBN 0-00-686078-8.
- Pirenne, Henri. Economic and social history of medieval Europe (New York : Harcourt, Brace & World, [1966]).
[edit] Medieval
- Farmer, Sharon A.. Surviving poverty in medieval Paris : gender, ideology, and the daily lives of the poor (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 2002) ISBN 0-8014-3836-5.
- Bouchard, Constance Brittain. Holy entrepreneurs : Cistercians, knights, and economic exchange in twelfth-century Burgundy (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1991) ISBN 0-8014-2527-1.
- Shatzmiller, Joseph. Shylock reconsidered : Jews, moneylending, and medieval society (Berkeley : University of California Press, c1990) ISBN 0-520-06635-9.
- Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. The peasants of Languedoc (Paysans de Languedoc) translated with an introd. by John Day (Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [1974]) ISBN 0-252-00411-6.
- Bloch, Marc Léopold Benjamin. Feudal society (Société féodale) translated from the French by L. A. Manyon ; with a new foreword by T. S. Brown (London ; New York : Routledge, 1989, c1961) ISBN 0-415-03917-7 (hbk.), ISBN 0-415-03916-9 (pbk. v.1), ISBN 0-415-03918-5 (pbk. v.2).
[edit] Early Modern
- Lewis, Gwynne. France, 1715-1804 : power and the people (Harlow, England ; New York : Pearson/Longman, 2005) ISBN 0-582-23925-7.
- Winks, Robin W., and Thomas E. Kaiser. Europe, 1648-1815 : from the old regime to the age of revolution (New York : Oxford University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-19-515445-2, ISBN 0-19-515446-0.
- Ellis, Geoffrey James. The Napoleonic empire 2nd. ed. (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) ISBN 0-333-99005-6.
- Heller, Henry. Labour, science and technology in France, 1500-1620 (Cambridge, [UK] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996) ISBN 0-521-55031-9.
- Hoffman, Philip T.. Growth in a traditional society : the French countryside, 1450-1815 (Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1996) ISBN 0-691-02983-0.
- Szostak, Rick. The role of transportation in the Industrial Revolution : a comparison of England and France (Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, c1991) ISBN 0-7735-0840-6.
- Aftalion, Florin. The French Revolution, an economic interpretation (Economie de la Révolution française) translated by Martin Thom (Cambridge [UK] ; New York : Cambridge University Press ; Paris : Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1990) ISBN 0-521-36241-5, ISBN 0-521-36810-3.
[edit] Modern
- Asselain, Jean-Charles. Histoire économique de la France du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours (in French, 2 volumes, Seuil, coll. Points Histoire, 1984)
- Lebovics, Herman. Bringing the Empire back home : France in the global age (Durham : Duke University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-8223-3260-4.
- Hancké, Bob. Large firms and institutional change : industrial renewal and economic restructuring in France (Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2002) ISBN 0-19-925205-X.
- Johnson, H. Clark. Gold, France, and the Great Depression, 1919-1932 (New Haven [Conn.] ; London : Yale University Press, c1997) ISBN 0-300-06986-3.
- Price, Roger. An economic history of modern France, 1730-1914 (London : Macmillan, 1981) ISBN 0-333-30545-0, ISBN 0-333-29321-5 ; revised edition of Price, Roger. The economic modernisation of France, 1730-1880 (New York : Wiley, 1975) ISBN 0-470-69722-9.
- Clapham, Sir John H, The Economic Development of France and Germany - Official Historian of Bank of England, 1944.
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