Abstract
This chapter demonstrates that capitalism did not emerge endogenously in France but rather as a state-led process in response to geopolitical pressures originating from capitalist Britain. Sectors of French elites envisaged emulating the British model already from the mid-century but concrete attempts to do so largely failed. The great upheaval of 1789 did not fundamentally alter this situation and in fact reproduced non-capitalist social property relations: it consolidated small peasant property, while also allowing artisans and industrial workers to make substantial gains and to preserve the customary regulations of their trades. A non-capitalist economy remained in place over the half-century that followed the revolutionary period. Industrial development did occur but at a relatively slow pace since it was fuelled by market opportunities as opposed to market compulsion. The capitalist restructuring of France’s industrial sector was finally initiated under the Second Empire and the Third Republic. In order to maintain the country’s geopolitical standing, these regimes stimulated industrial development by building a competitive national market, exposing the country to foreign capitalist competition and decisively acting to eliminate customary regulations of labor relations and industrial production.
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Notes
- 1.
Jean Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française (Paris: Les Édition sociales, 2014–2015 [1901–1908]).
- 2.
George Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015 [1947]); Albert Mathiez, La Révolution française (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964); Albert Soboul, La Révolution Française (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1975).
- 3.
Alfred Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964); François Furet, Penser la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1978).
- 4.
See, for instance, Henry Heller, The Bourgeois Revolution in France 1789–1815 (New York: Berghahn, 2006).
- 5.
See, for instance, Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012).
- 6.
See, for instance, William H. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
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Crouzet, “The Historiography of French Economic Growth,” 215.
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Developed in George C. Comninel, Rethinking the French Revolution: Marxism and the Revisionist Challenge (London, Verso, 1987); and Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism: A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States (London and New York: Verso, 1991) and Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Renaissance to Enlightment (New York: Verso, 2012).
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On the notion of proprietary wealth and its form in Old Regime France, see George V. Taylor, “Noncapitalist Wealth and the Origins of the French Revolution,” The American Historical Review 72, no. 2 (1967): 469–496.
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Robert Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe 1985” and “Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism,” in The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, ed. T.H. Aston and C.H.E. Philpin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
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François Crouzet, De la supériorité de l’Angleterre sur la France: l’économique et l’imaginaire, XVIIe–XXe siècles (Paris: Librairie académique Perrin, 1985), 112.
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David McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism: A Reinterpretation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 90–131.
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For a presentation of the reform attempts of Gournay and his supporters, see Pierre Deyon and Philippe Guignet, “The royal manufactures and economic and technological progress in France before the industrial revolution,” Journal of European Economic History 9 (1980): 611–632; P.M. Jones, Reform and Revolution in France. The Politics of Transition, 1774–1791 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
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Philippe Minard, La fortune du colbertisme: État et industrie dans la France des Lumières (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 318.
- 20.
Jones, Reform and Revolution in France, 111.
- 21.
This very important point is made by Minard, La fortune du colbertisme, 117. See also Deyon and Guignet, “The royal manufactures,” 626.
- 22.
William M. Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture: The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) 22.
- 23.
François Crouzet, “Angleterre et France au XVIIIe siècle: essai d’analyse comparée de deux croissances économiques,” Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 21, no. 2 (1966): 271–272, my translation.
- 24.
Jean-Charles Asselain, Histoire économique de la France du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, tome 1: De l’Ancien Régime à la Première Guerre mondiale (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1984), 98; Francis Démier, La France du XIXe siècle, 1814–1914 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000), 40; David Parker, Class and State in Early Modern France: The Road to Modernity? (New York: Routledge, 1996), 214; Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture, 53.
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Asselain, Histoire économique, 107.
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Guy Lemarchand, L’économie en France de 1770 à 1830. De la crise de l’Ancien Régime à la Révolution industrielle (Paris: Armand Collin, 2008), 112.
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Sewell, Work and Revolution, 1980; see also, for instance, Christopher H. Johnson, “The Revolution of 1830 in French Economic History,” in 1830 in France, ed. John M. Merriman (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975); Robert J. Bezucha, “The French Revolution of 1848 and the Social History of Work,” Theory and Society 12, no. 4 (1983): 469–484.
- 28.
Sewell, Work and Revolution, 114–115, 135, 139–140.
- 29.
Adeline Daumard, “Caractères de la société bourgeoise,” in Histoire économique et sociale de la France. Tome 3, ed. Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993), 832–833, 837.
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- 31.
Alain Thillay, Le faubourg Saint-Antoine et ses «faux ouvriers». La liberté du travail à Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2002).
- 32.
Vardi, quoted in Cissie Fairchilds, “Three Views on the Guilds,” French Historical Studies 15, no. 4 (1988): 691.
- 33.
Liana Vardi, “The Abolition of the Guilds during the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies 15, no. 4 (1988): 708, 712.
- 34.
Samuel Guicheteau, Les ouvriers en France 1700–1835 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2014), 62, 99–105.
- 35.
Ibid., 131.
- 36.
Vardi, “The Abolition of the Guilds,” 712.
- 37.
Alain Cottereau, “Sens du juste et usages du droit du travail: une évolution contrastée entre la France et la Grande-Bretagne au XIXe siècle,” Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, no. 33 (2006): 104, my translation.
- 38.
Alain Cottereau, “Droit et bon droit. Un droit des ouvriers instauré, puis évincé par le droit du travail (France, XIXe siècle),” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 57, no. 6 (2002): 1530, 1546; “Sens du juste,” 113–114.
- 39.
See Cottereau, “Droit et bon droit” and “Sens du juste”; and Sonenscher, Work and Wages, 367 for a longer discussion of the Civil Code and how it prevented unequal relationships between employers and employees.
- 40.
Quoted in Cottereau, “Droit et bon droit,” 1553, my translation.
- 41.
Cottereau, “Droit et bon droit,” 1553.
- 42.
Guicheteau, Les ouvriers en France, 173.
- 43.
Cottereau, “Droit et bon droit,” 1545.
- 44.
Cottereau, “Justice et injustice ordinaire sur les lieux de travail d’après les audiences prud’homales (1806–1866),” Le Mouvement social, no. 144 (1987): 25–59; Delsalle, 1987.
- 45.
Cottereau, “Droit et bon droit,” 1547–1549; 2011, p. 10; Paul Delsalle, “Tisserands et fabricants chez les prud’hommes dans la région de Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing (1810–1848),” Le Mouvement social, no. 141 (1987): 69.
- 46.
Cottereau, “Droit et bon droit,” 1549–1550.
- 47.
Pollard, The Genesis of Modern Management. A Study of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain (London: Edward Arnold, 1965).
- 48.
Philippe Lefebvre, L’invention de la grande entreprise: Travail, hiérarchie, marché (France, fin XVIIIe-Début XXe siècle) (Paris: Presses universitaires de Frances, 2003), 65.
- 49.
Lefebvre, L’invention de la grande entreprise, 16; François Jarrige and Cécile Chalmin, “L’émergence du contremaître. L’ambivalence d’une autorité en construction dans l’industrie textile française (1800–1860),” Le Mouvement social, no. 224 (2008): 47–60.
- 50.
Lefebvre, L’invention de la grande entreprise, 65, my translation.
- 51.
Michelle Perrot, Les ouvriers en grève, France 1871–1890 (Paris: Mouton, 1974), 275, my translation.
- 52.
Lefebvre, L’invention de la grande entreprise, 131, my translation.
- 53.
N.F.R. Crafts, “Economic Growth in France and Britain, 1830–1910: A Review of the Evidence,” The Journal of Economic History 44, no. 1 (1984): 64–66.
- 54.
Albert Broder, L’économie française au XIXe siècle (Paris: Ophrys, 1993), 67; Alain Beltran and Pascal Griset, La croissance économique de la France: 1815–1914 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994), 96.
- 55.
Richard L. Hills, Power from Steam: A History of the Stationary Steam Engine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 117.
- 56.
Lemarchand, L’économie en France, 256.
- 57.
Beltran and Griset, La croissance économique, 96; Broder, L’économie française, 67.
- 58.
Crafts, “Economic Growth in France and Britain,” 65.
- 59.
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 177.
- 60.
Ibid., p. 117.
- 61.
Asselain, Histoire économique, 135.
- 62.
Ellen Meiksins Wood, “The Question of Market Dependence,” Journal of Agrarian Change 2, no. 1 (2002): 50–87.
- 63.
Tom Kemp, Economic Forces in French History. An Essay on the Development of the French Economy (London: Dobson, 1971), 118.
- 64.
Jean-Pierre Hirsch, Les deux rêves du commerce. Entreprise et institution dans la région lilloise (1780–1860) (Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1991), 392; my translation.
- 65.
Asselain, Histoire économique, 136.
- 66.
Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture, 74, 100.
- 67.
Ibid., 83.
- 68.
Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture, 74, my emphasis; see also Claude Fohlen, L’industrie textile au temps du second empire (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1956), 91.
- 69.
It is my contention that this is the conclusion that should be drawn from a close reading of the work of Reddy (The Rise of Market Culture, 77) and of Charles Engrand (“Les industries lilloises et la crise économique de 1826 à 1832,” Revue du Nord 63, no. 248 (1981): 233–251) on this issue—even though both authors come to a somewhat different conclusion.
- 70.
Frances Collier, The family economy of the working classes in the cotton industry, 1784–1833 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1964), 12.
- 71.
Kemp, Economic Forces in French History, 228.
- 72.
Alain Plessis, The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 1852–1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 15–18.
- 73.
Ibid., 62.
- 74.
Kemp, Economic Forces in French History, 168; Plessis, The Rise and Fall, 78, 82.
- 75.
Éric Anceau, Napoléon III (Paris: Tallandier, 2012), 352.
- 76.
Pierre Léon, “La conquête de l’espace national,” in Histoire économique et sociale de la France. Tome 3, ed. Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993), 264–265, 293–295.
- 77.
Anceau, Napoléon III, 351.
- 78.
Fohlen, L’industrie textile, 149–157; Léon, “Conquête,” 285–290.
- 79.
François Caron, Histoire économique de la France: XIXe–XXe siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1999) 120.
- 80.
Kemp, Economic Forces in French History, 174.
- 81.
Anceau, Napoléon III, 377.
- 82.
Anceau, Napoléon III, 379; Kemp, Economic Forces in French History, 175–176.
- 83.
Cottereau, “Droit et bon droit,” 1555.
- 84.
Cottereau, “Droit et bon droit,” 1521, 1524–1525; Philippe Lefebvre, “Subordination et « révolutions » du travail et du droit du travail (1776–2010),” Entreprises et histoire, no. 57 (2009): 45–78.
- 85.
Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture, 237, 241.
- 86.
Beltran and Griset, La croissance économique, 120–121; Lefebvre, L’invention de la grande entreprise.
- 87.
Lefebvre, L’invention de la grande entreprise, 160–161.
- 88.
Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture, 251.
- 89.
Jérôme Bourdieu and Bénédicte Reynaud, “Discipline d’atelier et externalités dans la réduction du travail au XIXe siècle,” in La France et le temps de travail (1814–2004), ed. Patrick Fridenson and Bénédicte Reynaud (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004); Perrot, Les ouvriers en grève.
- 90.
Caron, Histoire économique de la France, 121–122; Patrick Verley, Nouvelle histoire économique de la France contemporaine (Paris: La Découverte, 1993), 56.
- 91.
Asselain, 1984, p. 130.
- 92.
Caron, Histoire économique de la France, 115, 123, 129; Broder, L’économie française, 59.
- 93.
Asselain, 1988, p. 1232; Caron quoted in Broder, L’économie française, 216–217.
- 94.
Caron, Histoire économique de la France, 120, 123.
- 95.
Caron, Histoire économique de la France, 129–136.
- 96.
Louis Bergeron, Les capitalistes en France (1780–1914) (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 73–74; Bertrand Gille, La sidérurgie française au XIXe siècle (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1968), 69.
- 97.
Oliver Marchand and Claude Thélot, Deux siècles de travail en France (Paris: INSEE, 1991) 143–144.
- 98.
I will address the issue of the formation of the French working-class in a non-capitalist context in an upcoming book, to be published as part of Brill’s Historical Materialism Series, that will also present and develop the arguments presented in this chapter.
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Lafrance, X. (2019). The Transition to Industrial Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century France. In: Lafrance, X., Post, C. (eds) Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95657-2_5
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