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

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

Jeff Horn (Author)

9781108407052, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 May 2017

327 pages
23 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

'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

Privilege has long been understood as the constitutional basis of Ancien Régime France, legalizing the provision of a variety of rights, powers and exemptions to some, whilst denying them to others. In this fascinating new study however, Jeff Horn reveals that Bourbon officials utilized privilege as an instrument of economic development, freeing some sectors of the economy from pre-existing privileges and regulations, while protecting others. He explores both government policies and the innovations of entrepreneurs, workers, inventors and customers to uncover the lived experience of economic development from the Fronde to the Restoration. He shows how, influenced by Enlightenment thought, the regime increasingly resorted to concepts of liberty to defend privilege as a policy tool. The book offers important new insights into debates about the impact of privilege on early industrialization, comparative economic development and the outbreak of the French Revolution.

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.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], European history [HBJD]