Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-5mhkq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-07T13:50:55.744Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Statistical Study of French Crises

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

David S. Landes
David S. Landes
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Two major themes have been developed by Ernest Labrousse in his well-known works on prices and income. One, a reinterpretation of the origins of the French Revolution, does not concern us here. The other, a theory of an agriculturally determined business cycle, has recently been confirmed for the early nineteenth century by a young historian and student of Labrousse, M. A. Chabert, and forms the subject of this paper. Chabert's first work offered time series of French prices from 1798 to 1820, a hitherto neglected interval falling between the monetary anarchy of the assignats and the period covered by the tables of the Bureau de la Statistique Générale. He has followed this with a more ambitious effort, a general study of the social and economic development of France during the same years, as reflected in the price series already presented and other data assembled since.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , November 1950 , pp. 195 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1950

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Labrousse, C. E., Esquisse du mouvement des prix et des revenus en France au XVIII siècle (Paris: Dalloz, 1932)Google Scholar; La Crise de l'économie française à la fin de l'Ancien Régime et au début de la Révolution (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1944)Google Scholar.

2 The present article does not purport to be a review of Labrousse's works, one of which, the Crise, is already well known to the readers of The Journal through Professor Clough's article on ‘The Crisis in French Economy at the Beginning of the Revolution,” The Journal of Economic History, VI (1946), pp. 191–96Google Scholar. The recent publication of Chabert's studies, however, provides a worth-while occasion to reconsider the whole thesis and method of the two authors.

3 Chabert, M. A., Essai sur les mouvements des prix et des revenus en France de 1798 à 1820, preface by Labrousse, C. E. (Paris: Médicis, 1945)Google Scholar.

4 Essai sur les mouvements des revenus et de l'activité économique en France de 1798 à 1820, preface by Lefebvre, G. (Paris: Médicis, 1949)Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Innis, Harold A., “On the Economic Significance of Culture,” The Tasks of Economic History (Supplemental Issue of The Tasks of Economic History), IV (1944), 82Google Scholar.

6 Paris: Les Presses modernes, 1936. With regard to this controversy over sources and methods in the narrow sense, see Labrousse, Crise, p. 11, n. 1, which lists all the pertinent references.

7 Labrousse, Crise, p. 173. Chabert's theoretical formulation follows that of Labrousse to the letter: “The analysis … has been done for the eighteenth century in a manner as illuminating as it is complete by C. E. Labrousse. To add anything would be superfluous …” L'Activité économique, p. 200.

8 Labrousse, Esquisse, pp. 582–95. Labrousse studies the case of a “typical” farm laborer, married and a father of three. The examples given show this to be a modest estimate of the percentage involved. Note in this connection, the phenomenon known as Giffen's Paradox, which points out that in the case of inferior goods such as bread, a rise in prices may actually increase demand. Marshall, Cf. A., Principles of Economics (8th ed.; London: The Macmillan Co., 1920), p. 132Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., pp. 417–42, 513–41.

10 In the Esquisse, the body of the analysis bears on the situation created by harvests at their lowest and grain prices at their highest extreme, as exemplified by the crises of 1770 and 1789. But the treatment of industrial activity (ibid., pp. 543–67) and such explicit statements as: “The crisis is, as we know, of agricultural origin and proportional to the fall in productivity and the rise in prices” (p. 528), make the author's position clear.

11 Among such complicating factors, note especially the frequent payment of wages in kind and the poor correlation between the price of bread, which was often fixed, and that of grain. The latter consideration, which is of prime importance for the urban proletariat, is not discussed in either the Esquisse or the Crise. Cf. Lefebvre, G., “Le mouvement des prix et les origines de la Révolution françhise,” Anndes d'histoire économique et sociale, IX (1937). 160fGoogle Scholar.

12 Cf. Loutchisky, J., La petite propriété en France avant la Révolution et la vente des bient nationaux (Paris: Champion, 1897)Google Scholar; L'Etat des classes agricoles en trance à la veille de la Révolution (Paris: Champion, 1911)Google Scholar.

13 The best summary of the question is to be found in the work of Lefebvre, G., “Les Recherches relatives à la répartition de la propriété et de l'exploitation foncières à la fin de l'Ancien Régime,” Revue d'histoire moderne III (1928), 103–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Les Etudes relatives à la vente des biens nationaux,” ibid., pp. 188–219; “La Révolution française et les paysans,” Cahiers de la Révolution française, I (1934), 7–49Google Scholar (the same article appeared in the Annales historiques de la Révolution française X (1933), 97–128)Google Scholar.

14 To illustrate the process, Labrousse offers three tables of the yields, costs, gross income, and net income of hypothetical parcels of poor and rich soil for the years 1774–1789. Unfortunately, the results do not, even in the case of poor land, show any uniform correlation among the variables. Esquitte, pp. 406, 409, 411. It is hard to say whether these tables are meant to be empirical or merely theoretical. Labrousse goes to considerable trouble to use figures based on reality, but then turns around and postulates identical yields for poor and rich soil.

15 Actually, in the strict mathematical sense, there is no such thing as a “rough” parabola, which is by definition symmetrical. But for purposes of description it seems the best way to designate a curve which rises at first and then turns and falls, without resorting to clumsy, if exact, circumlocutions.

16 Economic theorists have always been divided on the relationship of harvests to the business cycle, some arguing that good harvests promote industrial prosperity, others maintaining the contrary. The apparent contradiction is explained, at least in part, by the relative suitability of the two hypotheses to different types of economies. The former seems more applicable to a highly urbanized industrial nation—modern England is a good example; the latter seems to satisfy better the conditions of a rural society. In both cases, however, the harvest seems to exercise its effect on the economy as a whole through mixed, conflicting forces. On the difficulties and uncertainties of this problem and the precarious balance of the factors involved, see Haberler, G., Prosperity and Depression (3d ed.; New York: United Nations, 1946), pp. 151–64Google Scholar, esp. p. 164.

17 This was especially true in the past, when the respect for numbers and the standards of professional objectivity were not so highly developed as now. For one example of the use, or rather abuse, of official statistics for purposes of propaganda, see S. Charléty's critique of the records of the French customs under the Restoration. Charlety, , La Restauration, edited by Lavisse, E. in the Histoirc de Trance contemporaine series (Paris: Hachette, 1921), IV, 288fGoogle Scholar.

18 If the private archives I have examined are any indication, the French businessman has not only been an indefatigable fabricator so far as his government is concerned, but rarely can bring himself to set down the truth in his own personal records. The oft-repeated story of firms with two or three sets of books is no exaggeration. Whether the data are to be found in formal registers or oral deposition, the French entrepreneur has generally had three versions of his business, one for the state and other outsiders, one for the family, and one for himself. So far as the family is concerned, the old saw is to the point: “Bénéfices connus, enfants perdus.”

19 “It is thus evident that the responsibility of the prefects was engaged … and that they would hesitate to make inexact statements ….” Chabert, L'Activité économique, p. 334. See, for other examples of this naïveté, pp. 183f. and 206. On the “responsibility” of Napoleon's officials, it may help to recall the following passage from Chaptal: “He [Napoleon] sometimes ordered the impossible and wanted to be served on the spot. He asked for reports which would have required several weeks’ work to be exact, and he wanted them right away because his needs would not wait. If one restricted himself to offering him preliminary sketches, he was displeased. It was better to lie with audacity than to delay in order to give him the truth. I have seen him show a great predilection for Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angely because he boldly answered all his questions and would not have been embarrassed had he asked him how many millions of flies there were in Europe in the month of August. It is on such tainted bases that on several occasions were set up the factory report, that of agriculture, etc., and it is according to these that France was assigned several billions of francs of commerce and industry in the most calamitous times.” Chaptal, J. A., Mes souvenirs tur Napoléon (Paris, 1893), p. 354fGoogle Scholar.

20 Labrousse, Esquisse, p. 19, n. 40.

21 Ibid., p. 19. “The reports of prices, which alone interest us here ….”

22 Labrousse, Crise, pp. 62–97. Labrousse discusses in detail the following shortcomings of these états de récoltes: (1) they are prepared not in absolute figures, however approximate, but in multiples of a so-called “ordinary year” for the district concerned; (2) the reports are submitted at different times in different districts, beginning in the middle of August until November; (3) even when prepared late, they are based at best on the appearances of the mowing and some of the early threshing; (4) the officials charged with making these reports are forced to depend on the usual unco-operative and mendacious sources; (5) the information so obtained is further distorted at the hands of the government bureaucracy.

23 Even if this were actually so, it would be no more than circular reasoning, for that is exactly what one might expect of estimates based on vague general opinion, itself derived from the trend of prices and other appearances. In point of fact, a comparison of harvest and grain prices during the fifteen years preceding 1789 shows a most unsatisfactory inverse correlation. Indeed, Labrousse makes it clear in his Esquisse, p. 392, that the correlation announced in his Crise, p. 88, is not to be expected.

24 Labrousse, Crise, p. 88. “Absolute,” of course, is not meant in the quantitative sense. Labrousse simply means that by using official estimates as index numbers, it would be possible to assign specific amplitudes to the movements so obtained, to say, for example, that in one year production rose 15 per cent and in another fell 25 per cent.

25 Labrousse, Esquisse, pp. 504f and 545.

26 Fourteen of building workers in Paris, six of domestics in the provinces, one, incomplete, of an agricultural laborer, one of the same value of a textile worker, and the rest nondescript and miscellaneous, so much so that the reader finds it impossible to make Chabert's description of his series accord with the figure of twenty-six given in the text. L'Activite economique, pp. 182–83.

27 Ibid., pp. 177–203, 227–28. The index of farm rents is not much stronger: ibid., pp. 60–70, 95–118. Sec also a remarkable comparison of French textile salaries in terms of daily wages and English salaries in terms of piece rates: ibid., pp. I94f., 249–51. On Chabert's earlier work, the Essai sur les mouvements des prix, see Lebrun, P., L'lndustrie de la laine ’ siicle (Liege: Faculte de philosophic et lettres, 1948), p. 294Google Scholar, n. 2; p. 313, n. 1; p. 315.

28 The following passage from an anonymous pamphlet of the Restoration, describing the situation in just such a year, is relevant despite the difference in time: “But there was no lack of wheat; the farmers left it on the stalk so that, in case of a survey, it would be impossible to say what they possessed.” Aperftt sur le commerce des blis par un citoyen, cited by Chabcrt, L'Activite tconomique, p. 79, n. 67.

29 See above, pp. 198–99.

30 Cf. Cilleuls, A. Des, Histoire et rigime de la grande Industrie en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siédes (Paris: Giard and Brierc, 1898), pp. 192Google Scholar, 20if., 204, 205, 206. Obviously, this practice has never been universal, and many of France's oldest firms are rightfully proud of an impeccable reputation for quality. Unfortunately, in times of crisis, the deviation of a few has generally been sufficient to make even those manufacturers with the best intentions follow suit.

31 Moreover, the relative quantity of industrial products presented for government inspection was, particularly after 1762, a function of the activity of rural industry, which paid little heed, if any, to regulations. On the one hand, merchants found it highly profitable to buy at lower prices in the country, especially in times of falling demand, provoking or accentuating the contraction of regulated urban industry. On the other hand, this competition compelled the latter to by-pass or violate regulations in an effort to cut costs, further reducing the articles presented for official approval. Cf. Tarlé, E., L'lndustrie dans let campagnes en France á la fin de l'Ancien Régime (Paris: E. Cornély, 1910), chap. iiiGoogle Scholar. The fact that Labrousse's data necessarily bear primarily on the regulated urban industries that produced in large part for the wealthier classes and shed little light on fluctuations in the rural manufactures that supplied much of the country population, creates an unfortunate gap in the cyclical sequence which can be filled only inferentially. See above, pp. 200–2.

32 Labrousse offers ten of these graphs, three comparing grain prices with the prices of manufactured goods, five with the output of such goods, one with the price of a raw material, wool, and one with the wage level.—Esquisse, pp. 316, 326, 351, 548, 557, 562, 566; Crise, PP. 177. 178, 179. Chabert gives seven, three comparing grain prices with grain output, two with output and employment, one with the volume of sales at the great fairs of Beaucaire, and one contrasting the Continental price index of cereals as established by Beveridge with French exports of textiles and manufactured products in general: L'Activité économique, pp. 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 211.

33 Chabert, L'Activité économique, graph 4, B, p. 205. The graph is headed: “Inverse relationship (contrariété tendancielle) between the movement of the price of wheat and industrial activity.”

34 Ibid., pp. 213, 220.

35 Ibid., that of 1817. As Chabert's own text makes dear, those of 1798, 1805, and 1810 were of political and business origin. Bk. VI, pp. 353ff.

36 Cf. especially the Esquisse, Bk. VIII, chap, iv, pp. 544ft.

37 Compare the period 1743–1750 on graph 39, Esquisse, p. 548, and 1763–1767 on graph 40, ibid., p. 557, with the years following 1767 on the latter graph. Labrousse's analysis accompanies the graphs.

38 Ibid., p. 548.

39 Ibid., p. 326.

40 Ibid., p. 351.

41 Ibid., p. 316.

42 See above, p. 199f.

43 See above, n. 23. Also Esquisse, pp. 398, n. 31; 399, 400.

44 Thus, even in the case of Labrousse's crisis, such considerations as the unrest and insecurity of famine years (see above, p. 197) and the voluntary abandonment of work by many peasant outworkers, unable to feed their families on normal wages, must not be underestimated. Cf. Lefebvre, G., La grande peur de 1789 (Paris: A. Colin, 1932), pp. I5ff.Google Scholar; also Labrousse, Esquisse, p. 536, and Chabert, L'Activite économique, p. 202.

45 It is interesting to note, however, that in one or two cases the graphs of the Esquisse would seem to lend some support to the hypothesis of a parabolic income-demand curve, artificially analytical as it is. Cf. graphs 39 and 40 (pp. 548, 557), where industrial activity seems to prosper or more than hold its own in the face of rising grain prices, only to fall when the increase becomes excessive. In view of the unreliability of the statistics, little more than a coincidental value attaches to such evidence.

46 Crise, pp. xvi-xxii. On Simiand, see Marjolin, R., “François Simiand's Theory of Economic Progress,” Review of Economic Studies, V (1938), 159–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Damalas, B. V., L'Oeuvre sdentifique de Francois Simiand (Paris: Presses Universitaircs, 1943)Google Scholar. For those interested in attempting the difficult style of Simiand himself, the latter's major work should be cited: Le Salaire, revolution sociale et la monnaie (3 vols.; Paris: Alcan, 1932)Google Scholar.

47 Chabert, L'Activité économique, pp. 11, 200

48 Let it suffice to refer on this score to the judgment of the late Schumpeter, Joseph, Business Cycles (2 Vols.; New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1939), II, 564Google Scholar, n. 1.

49 Labrousse specifically warns at one point (Esquisse, p. 554) “against the simple notion of a mechanical, immediate, and exclusive action of the price of grains on the activity of the textile industry.” He also attempts to indicate the complications created by the human factor, by the fact that grain prices are in themselves only a barometer, a warning that must be translated into action by the hesitant, vacillating decision of the average entrepreneur. But this personal element is conceived only as a cause of delay, the eventual reaction being fixed by the mechanism described above. Ibid., p. 552f

50 Crise, p. 180f.

51 For a careful and judicious analysis of the same problem of harvests and the business cycle, see Rostow, W. W., British Economy of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1948), p. 51fGoogle Scholar. In England, of course, the elements of the equation were quite different, but the passage—indeed the entire book—is relevant here as an example of sophisticated and yet moderate exploitation of economic theory and quantitative tools in historical analysis.

52 One master of the field has likened price series to records of pulse rates and temperatures. Hamilton, E. J., “Use and Misuse of Price History,” The Tasks of Economic History (Supplemental Issue of The Journal of Economic History), IV (1944), 60Google Scholar. The article as a whole is an excellent survey of the possibilities and limitations of this technique.