The 30 years after 1945 were the longest and most stable period of growth in measured French history bringing to an end years of economic decline. Immortalized by the French economist Jean Fourastié as the “30 glorious years” (trente glorieuses), they were also a time of rapid structural change and economic development. Millions of people moved out of low-productivity jobs in agriculture to work in the industrial and ser-vice sectors. The protective walls of tariffs and quantitative restrictions that had long shielded producers from international competition were gradually dismantled as France participated in the European Economic Community (EEC) and in the trade liberalizing rounds of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and of its successor the World Trade Organization (WTO). The direction and economic importance of trade also changed, shifting away from the former slowly growing colonial markets and towards the expanding markets of the EEC. What was traded also changed, with France for the first time running a surplus in some agricultural products and foodstuffs as well as in transport equipment and some manufactured goods. Much of this altered after the mid-1970s, when the postwar boom came to an end at the same time as the developed economies moved into recession. In the 40 or so years since the mid-1970s, growth in France, as in other developed economies, has slowed down and employment in industry and agriculture has shrunk, but the service sector has expanded rapidly. With a return of women to the labour market on a scale not seen since before the First World War, the service sector was unable to absorb the millions of men left unemployed as a result of the contraction of industry and agriculture. At the same time, the cost of redistributing income to offset some of the growing inequalities in society led to a tax burden that was higher than anywhere else in the developed world.

Such momentous changes over a lifetime have stimulated considerable debate among historians but little consensus over the causes. What is undisputed is that what happened after 1945 reversed the long period of economic decline that contributed to the shocking surrender of France in 1940.