The Economy of France in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Market Opportunity and Labour Productivity in Languedoc

Abstract

AbstractRecent scholarship makes the case that from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, French peasants were just as effective as the large farmers of England in raising agricultural productivity when they had access to urban markets. This article shows that the peasants of the old regime province of Languedoc had access to urban demand and market opportunities, and brought about economic growth, but only by dint of massive increases of labour inputs. The results were paltry increases in labour productivity and the standard of living. The case of Languedoc demonstrates that the study of the social context helps scholars evaluate a society's potential for economic development far more than does the study of its markets.