More Gradual Transformation Of The French Economy example essay topic

Has The Retardation Theis Been Overthrown By Recent, Mainly Cliometric Historians The retardation thesis postulates that, during the 18th and 19th centuries, France failed to take advantage of the economic opportunities available to it. Traditionally historians looked to the English industrial revolution and compared its features, as well as the preceding political, social and economic conditions, with those of France. By looking at the differences historians highlighted features in the French economy and social institutions that were different to those of England. These factors were then converted into causal factors for the slower development of the French economy. The retardation thesis is very much a comparative theory. The word retardation implies some form of norm or comparative rate of growth.

The French economy was retarded because it did not grow as quickly, or as dramatically as the British economy. In this essay I will briefly outline some of the fundamental features of the retardation thesis, before reviewing a selection of the revisionist literature that downplays and even disputes the validity of the traditional arguments. The empirical evidence for the retardation thesis is well documented. Perhaps the most important statistic is that of per capita national income and, according to Crafts and others, France was considerably and consistently below England from 1830 to 1910. The comparative structural make-up of the two countries has been used to explain the more general, GNP, based differences.

One of the fundamentals of the retardation thesis is that the French economy was encumbered with an overly large and unproductive agricultural sector. The comparative lack of agricultural labour productivity in France meant that little surplus was generated. A a consequence capital formation was slowed and few rural workers left the countryside to work in urban and industrial contexts. The difference is agricultural sectoral share and productivity with Britain was marked. By 1840 the percentage of agricultural income as a share of national income in Britain was the same as the percentage of the workforce in agriculture. In 1870 53.7% of the French workforce still worked in agriculture, whilst producing only 33.5% of income.

The reasons for this agricultural backwardness are seemingly engrained in the historiographical tradition; small inefficient farms, peasant immobility, open-field systems, failure to innovate and a distinct lack of capitalist farming. The importance of agricultural productivity forms the backbone of the retardation thesis. Structural change is directly linked to economic growth. Where were the iron, cotton and coal industries that powered English economic development Other major differences in the two economies have also been interpreted as causes for Frances supposed economic stagnation. Kemp argues that Frances failure to adopt modern industrial forms of organization hampered economic development. Most visibly the sparsity of factories in France has been used to signify backwardness.

Landes sees this failure as a result of the inability of French entrepreneurs to adopt British industrial practices. He argued that technology diffused too slowly. Others have cited the mentality of French society as a reason for the slower process of industrialization. Historians like Kemp and Landes suggest that the French bourgeoisie were more interested in bureaucratic status and land holdings than the more risky and less prestigious paths of business and entrepreneurship. The social and economic milieu of pre and post-revolutionary France retarded economic development. The comparative dearth of inventions and innovations in France is also cited as a factor behind the differing levels of growth.

Hargreaves, Arkwright and Darby were English and it was their innovations that revolutionized English industry. Scholars and students alike have seen the English industrial revolution the normal path to modern economic development. Historians have looked to at other economies to find reasons for their comparative lack of development. The retardation thesis is based on the question Why was France second rather than the question Why was England first.

In recent years a strong revisionist tendency amongst economic historians of the 18th and 19th century has developed. Obrien and Keyders work is just one example of this new revisionist literature. They refute the principle of the retardation theory by suggesting that labeling the French economy as retarded in relation to the English economy is too narrow an assessment. They suggest that the English path to development was not necessarily the optimal path to development and that the more gradual transformation of the French economy was more suited to the social structures of the 19th century. OBrien and Keyder agree that a quicker structural transformation from agriculture to industry would have aided economic development by generating surpluses and urban labour. But the more gradual transformation form agriculture to industry can only be seen as retarded if it was in some way economically irrational.

OBrien and Keyder quite rightly tell us that the rate of structural transformation is not exogenous and cannot be changed by fiat. Traditionalists would argue for cultural and institutional reasons behind this slow transformation, whereas Grantham and OBrien and Keyder also highlight natural resources, location, climate and other geographical disadvantages that precluded a more rapid transformation. OBrien and Keyder refute the extent of the productivity gap. Their analysis points to natural endowments (soil, relief, climate, quantity of land per worker) as providing the majority of the gap in agricultural productivity. Conversely they see the gap in yields per acre as very small with France producing yields of up to 75% of those of Britain. French farmers were relatively quick to innovate and increase yields given the context in which they operated.

It was the context of a differing system of tenure, the revolution, the small size of farms and natural endowments that held French agriculture back. Given this context it is worthy of praise that French agriculturalists progressed as far as they did. Whilst OBrien and Keyder accept French agricultural backwardness hampered economic development, Grantham states that no cliometric evidence exists for agricultural having hampered industrial development. Indeed studies by Postal et al. suggest that the real agricultural wage in France was often higher than the industrial wage, thus making the retention of labour in rural areas economically rational. Grantham also argues for a higher agricultural labour productivity that OBrien and Keyder.

The extra productivity is accounted for by Grantham use of part time workers in his statistics. Grantham, in his survey of cliometrics and the French economy, disputes other traditional causes and symptoms of retardation. He uses evidence from Mathias and OBrien to show that the disruptive influence of the state was less than traditionalists would believe. Indeed he provides us with statistics that show Englands rate of output taxation to be double that of Frances, and that the average tariff in England was higher than that of France. Grantham disputes, with empirical evidence, a variety of factors that followers of the retardation thesis used as symptoms and causes of economic stagnation in France. More controversially OBrien and Keyder argue for higher for a high industrial labour productivity than followers of the retardation theory have suggested.

The implication being that industry was far from retarded and that labour productivity was growing at a comparable rate to that of Britain. However there are certain controversies about their use of statistics. Kindle berger believes the British sources of their statistics to be more reliable than the patchwork of French sources, whilst Crafts highlights other key problems. He believes the discounting of services places an unduly heavy bias toward French industry as Britain was much stronger in this sector. He disputes the notion that measuring services would represent a double counting phenomenon. Crafts also combines research from Carre, Dubois, Main vaud, Markovitich, Feinstein and Hoffman to show that OBrien and Keyders labour input figures are too low.

Thus we see OBrien and Keyder over estimating labour productivity in industry, as well as capital labour ratios. Crafts asks whether French labour was really 42% more effective than the European norm or simply 42% under reported. Other revisionists go further than OBrien and Keyder in promoting the virtues of the French economy. Roehl uses an inverted Gerschenkronian model to show that far from being retarded France was actually an early industrialiser. Gerschenkrons produced a series of features that characterized late developers. Roehl inverted these features in an attempt to show that France was in fact an early industrialiser.

Roehl sees the gradual growth of France, the reliance on her own technology and capital, the lack of virulent industrializing ideologies, the growth in agricultural productivity and the lack of a noticeable growth spurt as evidence for this inverted theory. Roehl also remarks that French industrialization developed along proto-industrial lines in contrast to Mantouxs English definition of an industrial revolution which included large and visible signs of growing iron, cotton and textile sectors. Roehls Gerschenkronian interpretation is not without its detractors. Crafts disputes Gerschenkrons theory itself, and more worryingly for Roehl, Grantham, an arch cliometrician, describes Gerschenkrons theory as an impressionistic generalization which empirical contradiction has thoroughly discredited.

As Crafts put it, does Roehls paper text Gerschenkrons taxonomy in relation to France or the taxonomy itself Crafts own work also sheds new light on the retardation thesis. He questions the ability and advisability of describing French retardation in terms of Britains primacy. How can one isolate and test potential causes of French retardation, or differences with Britains primacy, when the experiment can only be run once Thus he dismisses the views of Kemp at al. as unfounded. He doubts that historians can isolate a single factor or a variety of factors that led to Englands primacy. Without the chance to run further empirical tests this approach is extremely unreliable. Crafts uses the example of innovation to further his point.

Crafts sees the process of invention and innovation as stochastic. France may have had a more responsive social milieu and the economic environment to innovation, but English inventors got lucky. England may have been first, but this does not mean that the factors that aided its development were necessarily more pronounced than those in France. As Crafts himself says it could be the case that the country with lowest ex ante likelihood of achieving decisive innovations may be observed as the winner! Crafts concludes by stating that many of the features of the English economy have not been proven to be superior, although he tempers this by reaffirming his belief that, empirically at least, Englands economy was generally superior to that of France throughout the period. It would be wrong to state that the revisionist interpretation of French economic development had overthrown all parts of the retardation thesis.

Whilst many now agree that gaps in productivity and income per capita were less than first thought, there can is no doubt that France lagged behind England in terms of income per capita and productivity. Crafts would argue that it is almost impossible to prove individual facets of the retardation thesis due to the non-repeatable nature of the industrial revolution experiment. However there seems to be a consensus that the relatively gradual structural transformation of France slowed the growth of industry in France. But the word retardation is inappropriate. French farmers were not inefficient and economically stagnant. The cliometricians are useful in providing micro evidence for their economic rationality.

The word retardation seems outdated. A comparison with the English industrial revolution is unfair. The differing natural endowments, legal, cultural and political heritages provided different opportunities in different countries. It would appear more appropriate to judge an economies development, if doing so over a given period of time, by considering its pre-existing features. The retardation thesis necessarily examines the French economy in terms of the successes of the English economy.

As Crafts and others show the Britain was the first industrialiser, but the English path was by no means standardized. The retardation thesis, by concentrating on the English path, is too narrow a concept. A true economic historian would surely study the development of the French economy in a fashion that concentrated more on French than English experiences.