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Retardative Factors in French Economic Development in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Shepard B. Clough
Shepard B. Clough
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

All scientific research requires at its initial stage as precise a formulation of the problem under investigation as is possible to the human mind. In a study of retardative factors in French economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the need for clarifying the implications of the subject and of removing possible ambiguities is particularly urgent. By economic development is meant here an increasing amount of goods and services which are customarily exchanged for money. I am eliminating from consideration many of the intangibles of life, which are important and which the French may have in abundance, like joie de vivre.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 6 , supplement S1 , 1946 , pp. 91 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1946

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References

1 Statistics of foreign trade in the eighteenth century have to be used with caution. , Arnould, La Balance du commerce (1791)Google Scholar, is the main French source. Customs prices were arbitrarily set and might, have but little relation to actual market rates. Similarly, the English customs used up to 1854 prices established in 1696; although real or declared values were introduced as an addendum. Furthermore, smuggling was important and of course escaped customs' statisticians. Finally, extreme caution must be exercised in extrapolating generalizations from global trade figures in making international comparisons of economic potential. Allowances have to be made for entrepot trade and for imports that are put through simple stages of processing before being exported. Thus, although Arnould's figures show an increase in French foreign trade over the eighteenth century, the increase after about 1766 is to be accounted for principally by sugar and coffee. See Labrousse, C. E., La Crise de l'économie française à la fin de I'ancien règime et au début de la Révolution (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1944), I, xxxvi–xxxviiGoogle Scholar.

2 According to the international classification of manufactured articles, adopted in 1913. Transit trade is excluded. These statistics are from Industrialization and Foreign Trade (League of Nations, 1945), p. 160.

3 Industrialization and Foreign T'ade, p. 13.

4 Clark, Colin, Conditions of Economic Progress (London: Macmillan and Company, 1940)Google Scholar. The rationalization for giving income per capita of the working force rather than of the total population is that there is a difference among nations of proportions of the population of working age. Thus, for example, where the average age is low, the proportion of dependent children is high. Income per capita of the total population would accordingly distort the picture of output per operative.

5 This confirms the judgment of Henri Sée, Französische Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Jena: Fischer, 1936), I, 465Google Scholar. Allowance for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine must be made in interpreting the national figures for 1870-1918.

6 , Clark, Conditions of Economic Progress, p. 342Google Scholar.

7 From Pupin, R., La Richesse privée française avant la guerre (1916)Google Scholar. Subsequent years from calculations by Bernonville, Dugé de in the Revue d'économie politique (1935)Google Scholar.

8 From Industrialization and Foreign Trade, pp. 133-34. Mining is included for 1870 and 1880. See Dessirier, Jean, “Indices comparés de la production industrielle et de la production agricole en divers pays de 1870 à 1928,” Bulletin de la statistique générale de la France, 10 1928Google Scholar. The Bulletin has published since 1928 an annual index of industrial production.

9 Industrialization and Foreign Trade, p. 84.

10 SirPetty, William in his Political Anatomy of Ireland, published posthumously in 1691Google Scholar, stated: “There is much more to be gained by Manufacture than Husbandry; and by Merchandise than Manufactures” This has been referred to as “Petty's Law.”

11 Industrialization and Foreign Trade, p. 26.

12 , Clark, Conditions of Economic Progress, p. 179Google Scholar.

13 International Institute of Agriculture Yearbooks, 1930-1931 (Rome: International Institute of Agriculture, 1932), p. 42Google Scholar; Ibid., 1934-1935 (1936), p. 183. A better comparison would be on the basis of costs per unit, but data are not available for it.

14 SirStamp, Josiah, “The Wealth and Income of the Chief Powers,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXXXII (1919), 470–78Google Scholar.

15 Golob, Eugene O., The Mitine Tariff: French Agriculture and Nationalist Economic Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), PassimGoogle Scholar.

16 , Clark, Conditions of Economic Progress, p. 353Google Scholar.

17 Rostas, R. L., “Industrial Production, Productivity, and Distribution in Britain, Germany, and the United States,” Economic Journal, LIII (1943), 48Google Scholar, states that the physical output per operative in factory trades in the United States in 1937 was twice that of the factory operative in Germany in 1936, and two and a half times that of the British in 1935.

18 Industrialization and Foreign Trade, p. 160. Manufactured articles according to the international classification of 1913. Values at 1913 prices.

19 Ibid., p. 84.

20 The term “exploitable natural resource” is employed in the sense of products of nature for the utilization of which man has developed a need and techniques. Thus pitchblende was not an exploitable natural resource until there was a need and known methods for the use of uranium.

21 Paris: ComitS des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 1923.

22 Doukas, Kimon A., The French Railroads and the State (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), passimGoogle Scholar.

23 White, Harry D., The French International Accounts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), p. 315Google Scholar; See, Franzb'sische Wirtschaftsgeschichte, II, 564 ff.; Feis, Herbert, Europe, the World's Banker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), p. 23Google Scholar.

24 Sée, Französische Wirtschoftsgeschichte, II, 566; , White, French International Accounts, p. 315Google Scholar.

25 , Clark, Conditions of Economic Progress, p. 406Google Scholar.

26 Family Expenditures in the United States (National Resources Planning Board, 1941), passimGoogle ScholarPubMed.

27 See also Beik, Paul, “Distribution of Wealth in France,” Political Science Quarterly, LVK (1941), 361–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Industrialization and Foreign Trade, p. 56.

29 Notestein, Frank W. and Others, The Future Population of Europe and the Soviet Union (Geneva: League of Nations, 1944), p. 45Google Scholar. See also Spengler, Joseph J., France Faces Depopulation (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1938), passimGoogle Scholar.

30 Clough, Shepard B., France, 1789-1939: A History of National Economics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939), passimGoogle Scholar.