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Reply To Mr. Danière and Some Reflections on the Significance of the Debate*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

David S. Landes
David S. Landes
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

We have reason to be grateful to Mr. Danière for bringing the thesis of Professor Labrousse to our attention once again. For this is not just an ordinary thesis. Since its statement in the thirties, it has become a staple of French historiography, shaping and informing the work of a whole generation of scholars. Such terms as “crise d'ancien type,” “crise de sous-production agricole,” and “économie des blés et des textiles” have become stock phrases, and few French historians would think of discussing any trade crisis before the middle of the nineteenth century without laying special stress on the causative role of inadequate harvests. Indeed, the fame of this thesis has so flourished with time and Professor Labrousse had become so closely identified with the problem of agriculture and the cycle, that any kind of link between harvests and farm income on the one hand and business conditions on the other–even where the relationship observed is the opposite of what the Labroussian model would lead one to expect–has been enough to make scholars cite his name in evidence.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 1958 , pp. 331 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1958

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References

1 In this regard the volumes of Alexandre Chabert, especially his Essai sur les mouvemenls des revenus et de I'activité économique en France de 1798 à 1820 (Paris: Medicis, 1949)Google Scholar, are only the most striking example of work deriving inspiration from the Labrousse model. See also Léon, P., La naissance de la grande Industrie en Dauphin á(2 vols.; Paris: Presses Universi-taires, 1954)Google Scholar; Schnerb, R., Le XIX siècle [“Histoire generate des civilisations,” Vol. VI] (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1955), pp. 11–12Google Scholar; the articles of Paul Leuilliot and Jean Meuvret in such periodicals as the Annales; as well as a large number of local studies in regional journals. For some of these, see , Leuilliot, “Les crises économiques du XIX siècle en France: de la disette de 1816–1817 à la famine du coton (1867),” Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations, XII (1957). 317–25Google Scholar.

2 Thus even so careful a historian as Paul Leuilliot, noting a report that low grain prices in Germany in the 1820's compelled farmers to cut down their purchases, concludes that “this judicious remark … confirms me agricultural origin of the economic crises of the Old Regime type, so well elucidated by the works of Mr. E. Labrousse.” “Les correspondances consulaires modernes (1815-1830),” Annales, V, (1950), 226. (The remark mentioned is taken from a report of the French consul in Dresden in October 1826.) And the same historian, describing business conditions in Normandy, speaks of “the crisis of low agricultural prices in 1850–1851 coming finally, in accordance with a theme dear to E. Labrousse, to suspend the purchases of the peasantry.” “Les crises économiques du XIXs siècle,” p. 321Google Scholar.

3 To choose only one example, cf. R. Baehrel and J. Meuvret in a debate over method; thus Baehrel: “But these views [of Labrousse] which ‘deserve,’ Jean Meuvret points out correctly, ‘to be considered a classic,’ do they not destroy his entire interpretation by confirming brilliantly what we were arguing: these prices of cloth falling to about 1655-1660, do they not prove that the general movement of grain prices was upward until that date?” “L'exemple d'un exemple: histoire statistique et prix italiens,” Annales, IX (1954), 224Google Scholar.

4 CCVII (1952), 161.

5 But note the independence of some, especially the younger, scholars: certain contributors to Aspects de le crise et de la dépression de I'économie francaise an milieu du XIX siècle, ed. Labrousse, E. [“Bibliothèque de la Révolution de 1848,” Vol. XIX] (La Roche-sur-Yon: Impr. Centrale de l'Ouest, 1956)Google Scholar; and to the special number of the Revue du Nord, XXXVIII (01–03 1956Google Scholar) dealing with the crisis of 1846–1851 in the , Nord; or Gille, B. in his yet unpublished thesis “Banque et crédit sous la Monarchic censitaire” (University of Paris, 1957)Google Scholar; or Pierre Dardel, “Crises et faillites à Rouen et dans la Haute-Normandie de 1740 à l'an V,” Revue d'histoire économique et sociale, XXVII (1948), 53–71, esp. 70–71Google Scholar; or, in a larger sense, Henri Calvet in his review article, “Sur I'histoire de la révolution française,” Revue d'histoire moderne, I (1954), 301–5Google Scholar, and Ch. Pouthas, in his review of Aspects de la Crise, ibid., IV (1957). 309–16.

6 See Labrousse's introduction to the Aspects de la crise cited above.

7 Mr. Danière is mistaken in taking the question of the accuracy of the data lightly (p. 319). On this point one should keep in mind the numerous cautions of Labrousse, who for all his desire to make the most of the statistics, never went so far as to try to calculate elasticities of demand. Thus, in the Esquisse, II, 396:Google Scholar “The curve of the value of output, obtained from the two national series of yields and prices, must therefore be read with precaution: it does not permit, both in view of the nature of the averages used and the make-up of the series drawn from the ‘Relevé du produit des récoltes,’ of any manipulation.” Cf. also, on the weaknesses of the prices, “Prix et structure régionale: le froment dans les régions françaises, 1782-1790,” Annales d'histoire sociale, I (1939), 385-86, 387Google Scholar.

8 Thus the figures corresponding to Mr. Danière's calculations for the eighteenth century (Table 1, above) would be as follows (number of observations in parentheses):

9 Mr. Danière cannot validly argue that owing to the assumed autonomy of supply, he is right in plotting value against quantity rather than price. For this would imply that the data on quantity are far more reliable than those on price, whereas here the opposite is true. Moreover, in general, no such arbitrary choice is justified where the correlation is so poor and the regression lines diverge so widely as here. (See the tables and figures in the Appendix.) On this problem, cf. Schultz, Henry, Theory and Measurement of Demand (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), pp. 146–48Google Scholar. It should also be noted that where there are serious errors in observation in the independent variable (which for Mr. Danière is quantity), the estimated slope of the regression will be significantly biased toward zero, in this case elasticity. This identification error is apparently not an uncommon one in analyses of agricultural demand. Cf. the new study of Bublot, Georges, La production agricole beige: étude économique séculaire, 1846-1955 (Louvain: E. Nauwelaerts; Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1957), pp. 174–75Google Scholar.

10 Mr. Danière's progress on the path to this misapprehension may be traced by a number of landmarks. On p. 324, after citing the wheat and rye data for the eighteenth century, he remarks: “This definitely adds to the evidence of more than unit price elasticity of total demand for grains.” On p. 325, he states that all the evidence is in: “If the demand for grains appears to be elastic…” And on p. 331, after examination of the post-1815 experience he assumes that elasticity is an indisputable fact and writes: “Let us wish further that, whatever misconstructions remain, they will not be so convincing as to be incorporated in the work of the critics.”

11 The Journal Of Economic History, X (1950), 199–201Google Scholar.

12 Cf. the sources cited in footnotes 1 and 5 above.