Commerce and prosperity: France in the XVIIth century

Abstract

Over the past several decades, economic historians have shown that in the century prior to the great Revolution the French economy was not stagnant. Although the economy may not have been as buoyant as that of Britain, it was not economic catastrophe that prompted the Old Regime’s political demise. The rehabilitation of the Old Regime’s economy has largely been the work of historians and economists working on particular sectors or particular problems. In their efforts, they have relied upon a cornucopia of archival material and the tools of microeconomics. But there has been no effort to take advantage of advances in macroeconomics to rethink how the French economy changed over the eighteenth century. Guillaume Daudin makes just such an attempt in Commerce et prospérité.