The second hundred years war: Some reflections

French History

Volumn 10, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 432-450

  Crouzet, François ^a  

^a SORBONNE UNIVERSITÉ   (France)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0007205814     PISSN: 02691191     EISSN: 14774542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fh/10.4.432     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. J. Meyer and J. Bromley, 'The Second Hundred Years' War', Britain and France: ten centuries, ed. D. Johnson, F. Bédarida and F. Crouzet (Folkestone, 1980), pp. 168-71
2. J. Meyer, Béveziers (1690) (1993), pp. 3-4
3. e siècle (1993), pp. 16-17
4. J. B. Duroselle, L'idée d'Europe dans l'histoire (1965), pp. 99-100
5. M. Antoine, Louis XV (1989), pp. 400-2
6. Quotation from a document of 1765 cited by Bérenger and Meyer, La France, p. 240
7. J. Black, Natural and necessary enemies: Anglo-French relations in the eighteenth century (1986), pp. 73-4
8. Bérenger and Meyer, La France, pp. 269, 323, 325
9. Hence the title of Black's book: Black, Natural and necessary enemies, p. 204
10. E. Dziembowski, 'Les Français face à la puissance anglaise, 1750-1770', doctoral thesis (Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1993)
11. e siècle', Rev Nord, 66 (1984), 787-803. Nordmann considers Anglophobia as more important before 1755 than does the present author
12. F. Acomb, Anglophobia in France, 1763-1789 (Durham, N.C., 1950)
13. Black, Natural and necessary enemies, pp. 123, 125-6
14. P. Langford, A polite and commercial people: England, 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 51, 627, mentions 'the hysteria of 1738-9' and the 'almost hysterical' anti-French fervour of 1778-9
15. L. Colley, Britons: forging the nation, 1707-1837 (1992), pp. 3, 22, 53
16. e siècle', Rev Nord, 59 (1977), 343-64
17. F. Crouzet, 'The Huguenots and the English Financial Revolution', Favorites of fortune, ed. P. Higonnet, D. Landes and H. Rosovsky (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), pp. 236-8
18. E. E. Rich and C. H. Wilson, The Cambridge economic history of Europe. IV. The economy of expanding Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 536-7
19. J. Black, Pitt the Elder (Cambridge, 1992), p. 203
20. However, Patrick O'Brien considers that, even though governments and Parliament allocated for military purposes a very large share of the taxes they raised, their policies were not derived from a 'Mercantilist vision' for empire and the domination of world commerce. But they were obsessed with national security and, one might add, for most of the political elite there was no security as long as France was not destroyed as a naval and commercial power. O'Brien, 'Power with profit: the state and the economy, 1688-1815', inaugural lecture delivered in the University of London (7 March 1991), pp. 1-3
21. P. Le Treguilly, 'Les Français en Inde au temps de la guerre d'indépendance américaine (1778-1788)', doctoral thesis (Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1992), gives a good account of this French fiasco
22. J. Meyer and A. Corvisier, La Révolution française (1991), i. 470
23. Also Langford, A polite and commercial people, pp. 351-2
24. It is well known that Choiseul was also proud to have persuaded the British to give back Guadeloupe rather than Canada. This seems preposterous today, but was perfectly rational in the economic circumstances of the eighteenth century. The quotation is from the French edition of Johnson et al., Britain: de Guillaume le Conquérant au Marché commun. Dix siècles d'histoire franco-britannique (1979), p. 167
25. P. Muret, La prépondérance anglaise, 1715-1763 (1937: vol. xi of Peuples et civilisations)
26. Its main successes were during the 1690s; later on it was far less effective. In most wars, the balance of losses and prizes of merchant ships was in favour of Britain: O'Brien, 'Power with profit', p. 21
27. Meyer, Béveziers, p. 64
28. Inter alia: J. Brewer, The sinews of power: war, money and the English state, 1688-1783 (1989)
29. O'Brien, 'Power with profit', pp. 2-3, 12, 24, 28-9
30. O'Brien and P. Hunt. 'The rise of a fiscal state in England, 1485-1815', Hist Research, 66 (1993), 129-76, at pp. 163, 175
31. P. Mathias and P. K. O'Brien, 'Taxation in Britain and France, 1715-1810', J Eur Econ Hist, 5 (1976), 601-50
32. R. J. Bonney (ed.), Economic systems and state finance (Oxford, 1995), ch. 11, pp. 315ff
33. E. N. White, 'Was there a solution to the ancien régime's financial dilemma?', J Econ Hist, 49 (1989), 545-68
34. F. Crouzet, La grande inflation. La monnaie en France de Louis XVI à Napoléon (1993), ch. 2, pp. 57ff
35. J. C. Riley, The Seven Years' War and the Old Regime in France: the economic and financial toll (Princeton, N.J., 1986), ch. 7, pp. 192ff
36. Dziembowski, 'Les Français', passim
37. P. J. Marshall, 'Empire and opportunity in Britain, 1765-75', T Roy Hist, ser. 6, 5 (1995), 119, 123, 127
38. J. R. Ward, 'The Industrial Revolution and British imperialism, 1750-1850', Econ Hist R, ser. 2, 47 (1994), 44-65, sees the Industrial Revolution as a factor of imperial expansion and also as helping Britain to make large military expenditures abroad during the wars from 1793 to 1815
39. O'Brien, 'The political economy of British taxation, 1660-1815', Econ Hist R, ser. 2, 41 (1988), 1-32
40. O'Brien, 'The impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, 1793-1815, on the long-run growth of the British economy', Rev Fernand Braudel Center, 12 (1989), 335-95
41. O'Brien and Hunt, 'The rise of a fiscal state in England'
42. O'Brien and S. L. Engerman, 'Exports and the growth of the British economy from the Glorious Revolution to the Peace of Amiens', Slavery and the rise of the Atlantic System, ed. B. L. Solow (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), pp. 177-209
43. This is a problem which has been much discussed since a pioneering article by Williamson. In this author's view, the idea that there was some crowding-out has to be accepted. Beckett and Turner admit that high taxation reduced domestic demand and thus slowed down industrialization, but stress that successful wars opened new markets and new sources of raw materials, so that the crowding-out in the short term was more than made good in the long run, as the Industrial Revolution was made more secure. J. V. Beckett and M. Turner, 'Taxation and economic growth in eighteenth-century England', Econ Hist R, ser. 2, 43 (1990), 377-403
44. J. G. Williamson, 'Why was British growth so slow during the Industrial Revolution?', J Econ Hist, 44 (1984), 687-712
45. Williamson, 'The impact of the French wars on accumulation in Britain: another look', Economic effects of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, ed. E. Aerts and F. Crouzet (Leuven, 1990), pp. 30-7
46. O'Brien and Engerman, 'Exports and the growth of the British economy', pp. 188, 208
47. The present author had previously maintained that it was mainly during the last twenty years of the eighteenth century that exports made a strong contribution to the growth of industrial output, but this view has been criticized by N. Crafts and is probably incorrect. Cf. F. Crouzet, Britain ascendant: comparative studies in Franco-British economic history (Cambridge and Paris, 1990), pp. 250-61 (reprinting an article of 1980)
48. N. F. R. Crafts, 'British economic growth, 1700-1831: a review of the evidence', Econ Hist R, ser. 2, 36 (1983), 197-9
49. also S. D. Smith, 'British exports to colonial North America and the Mercantilist fallacy', Bus History, 37 (1995), 45-63: without colonies, British exports and their incremental growth would have been reduced, while their increase stimulated productivity gains in the textile industries
50. Crouzet, Britain ascendant, pp. 234-8
51. The debate on the relationship between the growth of foreign trade and the Industrial Revolution goes on. In the most recent synthesis of British economic history, two contributors (D. McCloskey and C. K. Harley) play down the influence of overseas trade; S. Engerman is rather inconclusive, but P. K. O'Brien sticks to his guns: it is 'necessary to escape from the preoccupations of liberal economists . . . with the opportunity costs of taxes and the crowding out effects of loans'; the policies of Hanoverian governments 'contributed positively (even significantly) to the long-term progress of the economy'. R. Floud and D. McCloskey (eds.), The economic history of Britain since 1700. I. 1700-1860 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 241
52. and the whole of O'Brien's chapter, 'Central government and the economy, 1688-1815', pp. 205-41