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Cliometrica (2012) 6:7988
DOI 10.1007/s11698-011-0071-6
ORIGINAL PAPER
Paul R. Sharp Jacob L. Weisdorf
Received: 4 February 2011 / Accepted: 27 August 2011 / Published online: 23 September 2011 The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract At the end of the eighteenth century, England and France both underwent revolutions: France the French Revolution, England the industrial revolution. This note sheds new light on these contrasting experiences in the histories of England and France by looking at the evolution of real consumer prices in London and Paris in the centuries leading up to 1800. Whilst in London, building workers were facing low and stable consumer prices over the period, leaving plenty of scope for a demand-driven consumer revolution (in particular after 1650), their Parisian counterparts had to engage in a year-long grind to maintain a decent living, and often had to cut consumption to make ends meet. The exercise conducted in the present paper gives a quantitative and economic underpinning to the notion that the French revolution did not arise out of nowhere, but rather had its roots in centuries of hardship amongst working class people as they struggled to make a living.
Keywords Consumer revolution French revolution Great divergence
Industrious revolution Industrial revolution Labour input
JEL Classication J2 N1 O1
This paper was presented at the International Comparison of Output and Productivity in History session at the XV World Economic History Congress in Utrecht in 2009.
P. R. Sharp
Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]
J. L. Weisdorf (&)
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]
J. L. Weisdorf
Department of Economic and Social History, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
French revolution or industrial revolution? A noteon the contrasting experiences of England and France up to 1800
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1 Introduction
One of the perennial themes in economic history is why the Industrial Revolution rst occurred in England rather than France. The traditional view of England as a beacon of progress whilst France was mired in backwardness seemed strange in the light of empirical work showing respectable growth rates in France for most of the eighteenth century (Marczewski 1961) and was brought...