Economic Development in Early Modern France: The Privilege of Liberty, 1650-1820

ISBN-13: 9781108407052 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 327 str.

Jeff Horn

Opis

This book explores how the institution of privilege and liberty shaped early modern economic development in France between 1650 and 1820.

Recenzje

'Economic Development in Early Modern France is an intrepid and thought-provoking intervention into scholarly debates about European economic history from the era of Louis XIV through the French Revolution. Today, most scholars agree that France's economy grew significantly, if unevenly, during the eighteenth century. Debates focus largely on questions of how economic development took place, in which sectors, and why. During this heyday of mercantilism, the royal government's intensive oversight of manufacturing and trade has often been represented as hindering innovation, discouraging entrepreneurialism, and undermining competitiveness. This study by Jeff Horn turns this conventional wisdom on its head by casting the state as the engine behind French economic development through its strategic application of privilege.' Lauren R. Clay, Enterprise and Society

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; 1. Introduction: profits and economic development during the Old Régime; 2. Privileged enclaves and the guilds: liberty and regulation; 3. The privilege of liberty put to the test: industrial development in Normandy; 4. Companies, colonies, and contraband: commercial privileges under the Old Régime; 5. Privilege, liberty, and managing the market: trading with the Levant; 6. Outside the body politic, essential to the body economic: the privileges of Jews, Protestants and foreign residents; 7. Privilege, innovation, and the state: entrepreneurialism and the lessons of the Old Régime; 8. The reign of liberty? Privilege after 1789; Bibliography; Index.