Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T17:25:16.025Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Protecting the Credit of the State - Speculation, Trust, and Sovereignty in Interwar France*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2017

Nicolas Delalande
Nicolas Delalande*
Affiliation:
Sciences Po, Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po (CHSP)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates the creation, in 1924, of a new offence in French law, aimed at punishing anyone found guilty of “breaching the credit of the state”—that is, of discourses or practices likely to damage the financial reputation of the French state. In the midst of a destabilizing budgetary and monetary crisis, surrounded by fierce political disputes, “the credit of the state” was legally defined as an essential attribute of sovereignty, to be defended against internal and external threats. However, the intellectual history of public credit and the analysis of archival material relating to this new offence show how difficult it was for courts to draw a line between the freedom of the market and the protection of public order. More broadly, this research emphasizes the interconnected role of material and immaterial elements in promoting public trust in the value of the papers (bonds and currency) issued by the state.

Type
Credit and Sovereignty
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 119 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l'EHESS 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article was translated from the French by Darla Gervais and edited by Nicolas Barreyre and Chloe Morgan.

*

I would like to thank Quentin Deluermoz, Marc Flandreau, Paul-André Rosental, Rebecca Spang, Stéphane Van Damme, and the Annales peer-reviewers for their advice and comments on earlier versions of this article.

References

† The rente was a life annuity paid by the state to the rentier, the annuitant, in exchange for a loan at a given interest rate.—Trans.

1. Ferguson, Niall, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700–2000 (London: Penguin Books, 2002)Google Scholar; Hont, Istvan, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Dincecco, Mark, Political Transformations and Public Finances: Europe, 1650–1913 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stasavage, David, States of Credit: Size, Power, and the Development of European Polities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yun-Casalilla, Bartolomé and O'Brien, Patrick K., eds., The Rise of Fiscal States: A Global History, 1500–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. On crises as times when the constructed dimension of systems of credit, whether public or private, is revealed, see Carruthers, Bruce G. and Babb, Sarah, “The Color of Money and the Nature of Value: Greenbacks and Gold in Postbellum America,” American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 6 (1996): 1556–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carruthers, Bruce G. and Ariovich, Laura, Money and Credit: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010)Google Scholar. For a historical contextualization of the crises of sovereign debt, see Marichal, Carlos, A Century of Debt Crises in Latin America: From Independence to the Great Depression, 1820–1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Eichengreen, Barry and Lindert, Peter H., eds., The International Debt Crisis in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Mit Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Reinhart, Carmen M. and Rogoff, Kenneth S., This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

3. Tomz, Michael, Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt across Three Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

4. On the economic and financial consequences of the First World War, see Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Tooze, Adam, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916–1931 (London: Allen Lane, 2014).Google Scholar

5. On France in the 1920s, see Schuker, Stephen A., The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Blancheton, Bertrand, Le pape et l'empereur. La Banque de France, la direction du Trésor et la politique monétaire de la France, 1914–1928 (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001)Google Scholar; Mouré, Kenneth, The Gold Standard Illusion: France, the Bank of France, and the International Gold Standard, 1914–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Roth, François, Raymond Poincaré, un homme d’État républicain (Paris: Fayard, 2000)Google Scholar; Baubeau, Patrice, “Parole d'argent et emprunt or. Antoine Pinay face au ‘mythe’ Poincaré,” Vingtième siècle. Revue d'histoire 108, no. 4 (2010): 127–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For German “hyperinflation,” see Holtfrerich, Carl-Ludwig, The German Inflation: Causes and Effects in International Perspective, trans. Theo Balderston (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986)Google Scholar; Feldman, Gerald D., The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. For the Russian repudiation, see Hassan Malik, “Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution, 1892–1922” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2013). For comparative and international approaches, see Maier, Charles S., Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Pauly, Louis W., The League of Nations and the Foreshadowing of the International Monetary Fund (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

6. Kindleberger, Charles P., Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (New York: Basic Books, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eichengreen, Barry, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Marc Flandreau, Norbert Gaillard, and Ugo Panizza, “Conflicts of Interest, Reputation, and the Interwar Debt Crisis: Banksters or Bad Luck?” Cepr Discussion Paper no. 7705, 2010.

7. Keynes, John Maynard, A Tract on Monetary Reform (London: Macmillan, 1923)Google Scholar; Orléan, André, The Empire of Value: A New Foundation for Economics, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Cambridge: Mit Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. On the economic and political context in 1924, see Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe; Jean-Noël Jeanneney, Leçon d'histoire pour une gauche au pouvoir. La faillite du Cartel, 1924–1926 (1977; repr. Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2003).

9. According to figures provided by Villa, Pierre, Une analyse macroéconomique de la France au xx e siècle (Paris: Cnrs Éditions, 1993)Google Scholar, the French state's debt was around 180 percent of GDP in 1921, compared to 60 percent in 1913.

10. Lemoine, Benjamin, L'ordre de la dette. Enquête sur les infortunes de l’État et la prospérité du marché (Paris: La Découverte, 2016)Google Scholar.

11. Carruthers, Bruce G. and Cohen, Barry, “Noter le crédit. Classification et cognition aux États-Unis,” Genèses 79, no. 2 (2010): 48–73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gaillard, Norbert, Les agences de notation (Paris: La Découverte, 2010)Google Scholar. The credit rating agency Moody's began rating sovereign debt at the end of the First World War.

12. Principally police and judicial archives kept in the Archives nationales at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, along with documents from the archives of the Banque de France in Paris.

13. Despite their evident importance, in this article I deliberately and temporarily set aside the international and transnational scales in order to give priority to a more longue-durée approach and to pay attention to local practices.

14. On the use of this kind of judicial source in thinking about the history and sociology of economics, see Stanziani, Alessandro, Histoire de la qualité alimentaire, xix e–xx e siècle (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2005)Google Scholar.

15. Lemercier, Claire and Zalc, Claire, “For a New Approach to Credit Relations in Modern History,” Annales HSS (English Edition) 67, no. 4 (2012): 663–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Broadberry, Stephen and Harrison, Mark, eds., The Economics of World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 186 and 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. O'Rourke, Kevin H. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy (Cambridge: Mit Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Flandreau, Marc and Zumer, Frédéric, The Making of Global Finance, 1880–1913 (Paris: Ocde, 2004)Google Scholar; Hautcœur, Pierre-Cyrille, ed., Le marché financier français au xix e siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2007)Google Scholar.

18. Oosterlinck, Kim, Hope Springs Eternal: French Bondholders and the Repudiation of Russian Sovereign Debt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buchheit, Lee C., Gulati, Mitu, and Thompson, Robert B., “The Dilemma of Odious Debts,” Duke Law Journal 56 (2007): 1201–62Google Scholar; Sack, Alexander N., Les effets des transformations des États sur leurs dettes publiques et autres obligations financières (Paris: Sirey, 1927)Google Scholar.

19. The amount of paper money in circulation at the world level multiplied by around four between 1914 and 1919: Archives de la Banque de France, Paris (hereafter “ABDF”), 1370200008/71, “La circulation fiduciaire mondiale de 1914 à 1919,” Cote Vidal, February 19, 1920.

20. Cassis, Youssef, Capitals of Capital: A History of International Financial Centres, 1780–2005, trans. Jacqueline Collier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ott, Julia C., When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investor's Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lagneau-Ymonet, Paul and Riva, Angelo, Histoire de la Bourse (Paris: La Découverte, 2011), 71–74 Google Scholar.

21. Economic, ethical, and political debates about speculation go back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See Levratto, Nadine and Stanziani, Alessandro, eds., Le capitalisme au futur antérieur. Crédit et spéculation en France, fin xviii e–début xx e siècles (Brussels: Bruylant, 2011)Google Scholar.

22. Archives nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (hereafter “AN”), BB18 6724, memorandum from the Ministry of Justice to the prosecutors general, October, 1923.

23. AN, BB18 6858, report of the prosecutor general of Paris, November 14, 1922.

24. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe, 89–123; Jeanneney, Leçon d'histoire pour une gauche au pouvoir, 30–31; Blancheton, Le pape et l'empereur, 252–61; Mouré, The Gold Standard Illusion, 70–76.

25. Priouret, Roger, La Caisse des dépôts. Cent cinquante ans d'histoire financière (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1966)Google Scholar; Aglan, Alya, Margairaz, Michel, and Verheyde, Philippe, eds., Crises financières, crises politiques en Europe dans le second xix e siècle. La Caisse des dépôts et consignations de 1848 à 1918 (Geneva: Droz, 2011)Google Scholar.

26. Speech by Léon Bourgeois to the Senate, February 3, 1893, cited in AN, BB18 6724, preparatory note relating to the law of February 12, 1924, undated.

27. AN, BB18 6858, report in the name of the civil and criminal legislation commission of the Senate, January 17, 1924.

28. AN, BB18 6724, file 86BL470/30, the Georges Anquetil case, February 1922.

29. AN, BB18 6724, file 86BL470/30, letter from the public prosecutor of Nîmes, February 23, 1924.

30. Grenier, Jean-Yves, introduction to Andreau, Jean, Béaur, Gérard, and Grenier, Jean-Yves, eds., La dette publique dans l'histoire (Paris: Cheff, 2006), 1–19 Google Scholar; Adams, Henry C., Public Debts: An Essay in the Science of Finance (London: Longmans, 1888)Google Scholar.

31. North, Douglass C. and Weingast, Barry R., “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” Journal of Economic History 49, no. 4 (1989): 803–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; North, Douglass C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Brewer, John, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stasavage, David, Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain, 1688–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Istvan Hont, “The Rhapsody of Public Debt: David Hume and Voluntary State Bankruptcy,” in Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 325–53; Sonenscher, Michael, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A., Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012)Google Scholar; Coffman, D'Maris, Leonard, Adrien, and Neal, Larry, eds., Questioning Credible Commitment: Perspectives on the Rise of Financial Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Jean-Christophe Gaven, “Le crime de lèse-nation. Histoire d'une brève incrimination politique, 1789–1791” (PhD diss., Université de Toulouse 1, 2003).

33. État, finances et économie pendant la Révolution française (Paris: Comité pour l'histoire économique et financière de la France, 1991); Spang, Rebecca L., Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Hissung-Convert, Nelly, La spéculation boursière face au droit, 1799–1914 (Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 2009), 51 Google Scholar.

35. Ibid., 36.

36. For an overview of the transformation of public and private credit in the nineteenth century, see Hautcœur, Pierre-Cyrille, “Les transformations du crédit au xix e siècle,” Romantisme 151, no. 1 (2011): 23–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. White, Eugene Nelson, “Was there a Solution to the Ancien Régime's Financial Dilemma?” Journal of Economic History 49, no. 3 (1989): 545–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Legay, Marie-Laure, La banqueroute de l’État royal. La gestion des finances de Colbert à la Révolution française (Paris: Éd. de l'Ehess, 2011)Google Scholar.

38. Aglan, Alya, Margairaz, Michel, and Verheyde, Philippe, eds., 1816 ou la genèse de la foi publique. La fondation de la Caisse des dépôts et consignations (Geneva: Droz, 2006)Google Scholar. The still extant Caisse des dépôts et consignations is a public bank for state deposits and consignments, under the control of the Parliament.—Trans.

39. Paul Lagneau-Ymonet and Angelo Riva, “Les opérations à terme à la Bourse de Paris au xix e siècle,” in Levratto and Stanziani, Le capitalisme au futur antérieur, 107–42.

40. Lisle, René, “Crédit public,” in Say, Léon and Chailley, Joseph, eds., Nouveau dictionnaire d’économie politique (Paris: Guillaumin, 1890), 634 and 637Google Scholar.

41. This had already begun to be the case before 1914, but the war accelerated the process even further: Ferguson, Niall, “Political Risk and the International Bond Market between the 1848 Revolution and the Outbreak of the First World War,” Economic History Review 59, no. 1 (2006): 70–112 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Macdonald, James, A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

42. Vatin, Philippe, “Publicité et politique : la propagande pour l'emprunt en France de 1915 à 1920,” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 27, no. 2 (1980): 208–36Google Scholar; Irene Di Jorio, Kim Oosterlinck, and Véronique Pouillard, “Advertising, Propaganda, and War Finance: The French Case during World War I” (ongoing research project). For the United States, see Sparrow, James T., “‘Buying Our Boys Back’: The Mass Foundations of Fiscal Citizenship in World War II,” Journal of Policy History 20, no. 2 (2008): 263–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. The figures must be taken with a grain of salt: the number of certificates issued is usually known, but does not necessarily reflect the exact number of subscribers, since a single individual could subscribe several times. According to the numbers proposed by James Macdonald (which at least give an order of magnitude), there were seven million subscribers in Germany in 1918, eight million in the United Kingdom (including holders of War Saving Certificates), seven million in France and twenty-three million in the United States: Macdonald, A Free Nation Deep in Debt, 407. See also the brochure entitled Internal War Loans of Belligerent Countries, also Consolidation Loan of Spain and Mobilization Loans of Switzerland and Holland (New York: The National City Company, 1918).

44. Proposal for a law aimed at limiting speculation on currency exchange, presented by Jules Jaeger, no. 5447, January 18, 1923, p. 10.

45. “Credit is essentially precarious. He who today is trusted by an entire population may tomorrow be forever discredited. It is the same with states as it is with individuals,” wrote Aydalot, Maurice in Le délit d'atteinte au crédit de l’État. Étude critique de la loi du 12 février 1924 (Paris: Jouve, 1929), 7 Google Scholar. See also Bordeaux, Albert, La loi du 12 février 1924 et la répression pénale actuelle des atteintes au crédit de l’État (Lyon: Bosc frères, M. et L. Riou, 1936)Google Scholar.

46. Tarde, Gabriel, Psychologie économique, 2 vols. (Paris: F. Alcan, 1902)Google Scholar; Latour, Bruno and Lépinay, Vincent Antonin, L’économie, science des intérêts passionnés. Introduction à l'anthropologie économique de Gabriel Tarde (Paris: La Découverte, 2008)Google Scholar; “ Tarde, Gabriel,” special issue, Economy and Society 36, no. 4 (2007): 509–643 Google Scholar.

47. Tarde, Psychologie économique, vol. 1, chap. 3, “Rôle économique de la croyance,” 193–94.

48. Ibid., chap. 6, “La monnaie,” 329.

49. “Everything is credit, that is, everything is thought, everything is idea. Credit is based on knowledge and a reasoned study of the present. It assumes a continual anticipation of the future. It is an ever-renewed speculation on the future.” Mireaux, Émile, Les miracles du crédit (Paris: Éd. du Portique, 1930), 251 Google Scholar.

50. Aftalion, Albert, “Théorie psychologique du change,” Revue d’économie politique 40 (1926): 945–86Google Scholar. See Dangel, Cécile and Rainelli, Michel, “Albert Aftalion, théoricien de la monnaie et des changes,” in Les traditions économiques françaises, 1848–1939, ed. Dockès, Pierre et al. (Paris: Cnrs Éditions, 2000), 247–58Google Scholar.

51. Aftalion, “Théorie psychologique du change,” 969–70.

52. Jérôme Blanc, “Questions sur la nature de la monnaie : Charles Rist and Bertrand Nogaro, 1904–1951,” in Dockès et al., Les traditions économiques françaises, 259–70; Knapp, Georg Friedrich, The State Theory of Money (London: Macmillan, 1924)Google Scholar; Nogaro, Bertrand, La monnaie et les phénomènes monétaires contemporains (Paris: M. Giard, 1924)Google Scholar; Keynes, John Maynard, A Treatise on Money (London: Macmillan, 1930)Google Scholar.

53. Neymarck, Alfred, Les cours et la capitalisation des fonds d’État. La légende de la dette “par tête d'habitant” (Paris: Guillaumin, 1904), 37–39 Google Scholar.

54. Monier, Frédéric, Le complot dans la République. Stratégies du secret, de Boulanger à la Cagoule (Paris: La Découverte, 1998)Google Scholar.

55. Alesina, Alberto and Drazen, Allan, “Why Are Stabilizations Delayed?” American Economic Review 81, no. 5 (1991): 1170–88Google Scholar. For an older account, see Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe.

56. On wartime “fake news,” information control, and the circulation of rumors, see Bloch, Marc, “Réflexions d'un historien sur les fausses nouvelles de la guerre,” Revue de synthèse historique 33, no. 7 (1921): 13–35 Google Scholar; Prochasson, Christophe and Rasmussen, Anne, eds., Vrai et faux dans la Grande Guerre (Paris: La Découverte, 2004)Google Scholar; Horne, John and Kramer, Alan, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

57. Aydalot, Le délit d'atteinte au crédit de l’État, 98.

58. Bignon, Vincent and Flandreau, Marc, “The Economics of Badmouthing: Libel Law and the Underworld of the Financial Press in France before World War I,” Journal of Economic History 71, no. 3 (2011): 616–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bignon, and Flandreau, “The Price of Media Capture and the Debasement of the French Newspaper Industry during the Interwar,” Journal of Economic History 74, no. 3 (2014): 799–830 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. AN, BB18 6724, draft memorandum from the minister of justice to the prosecutors general, March 1924.

60. Valois, Georges, Le mystère de la rue de Rivoli. Grandeur et décadence du franc sous le ministère de M. de Lasteyrie (Paris: Nouvelle librairie nationale, 1924), 7 Google Scholar.

61. AN, F7 14681, file 804, November 1925; AN, BB18 6725, file 86BL470/51, October–November 1925.

62. AN, BB18 6725, file 86BL470/51, text of an Action française poster reproduced in the report of the public prosecutor of the Seine to the minister of justice, November 4, 1925.

63. AN, BB18 6724, file 86BL470/30, “L’État escroc : le truc des bons du Trésor et de la Défense nationale,” L'Humanité, February 21, 1924; Ruhlmann, Jean, Ni bourgeois, ni prolétaires. La défense des classes moyennes en France au xx e siècle (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2001)Google Scholar; Charle, Christophe, “Les ‘classes moyennes’ en France. Discours pluriel et histoire singulière (1870–2000),” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 50, no. 4 (2003): 108–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crossick, Geoffrey, The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe, 1780–1914 (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar.

64. AN, BB18 6724, 86BL470/30, February 16, 1922.

65. AN, BB18 6725, file 86BL470/63, January 1925.

66. AN, F7 14875, memorandum of January 4, 1934.

67. AN, BB18 6725, file 86BL470/82, letter from the finance minister to the justice minister, July 28, 1925.

68. On the many movements of Catholic opposition to the Clémentel loan in November 1924, see Jeanneney, Leçon d'histoire pour une gauche au pouvoir, 64–65 and 72.

69. AN, BB18 6860, file 104BL86, October 1933.

70. AN, BB18 6860, file 104BL95, sentence pronounced by the Paris court of appeals, January 18, 1935.

71. AN, BB18 6863, memorandum from the justice minister, August 3, 1936; ABDF, 1069199702/8, file 2 on breaches of the credit of the nation, 1936–1938.

72. AN, F7 14682, file 1139, August 1936.

73. AN, F7 14682, file 1139, letter addressed to the public by the receivers general of the Ministry of Finance, August 1936.

74. AN, F7 14875, radio speech reproduced in Le Temps, March 17, 1937.

75. AN, F7 14875, internal memorandum on the success of the loan, March 15, 1937.

76. AN, F7 14682, report by the prefect of police, September 18, 1936.

77. AN, BB18 6860, file 104BL84, November 1934.

78. Bonin, Hubert, L'argent en France depuis 1880. Banquiers, financiers, épargnants dans la vie économique et politique (Paris: Masson, 1989)Google Scholar; Tournié, Vincent, Épargne et crises politiques en France. Les mouvements de panique dans les caisses d’épargne au xx e siècle (Paris: Economica, 2011)Google Scholar.

79. AN, BB18 6860, file 104BL90, January 1934.

80. AN, F7 14875, prefectoral reports, September 1938.

81. Garon, Sheldon, Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends while the World Saves (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

82. This sociological approach to the daily relations of populations with the state and with its written documents has been influenced by Goody's, Jack The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Zelizer's, Viviana A. The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief and Other Currencies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

83. AN, BB18 6724, report by Jules Laurès (an examining magistrate in Marseille) on “Le problème du change et la baisse du franc” [1926].

84. AN, F7 14681, file 693, February 1924.

85. AN, BB18 6859, file 86BL707, letter from the finance minister to the justice minister, October 19, 1928.

86. AN, BB18 6724, report by the prosecutor general of Limoges, 1926.

87. AN, F7 14681, file 804, narrative reported by the tax-collector of Vallouise, June 14, 1926.

88. AN, BB18 6725, file 86BL470/37, letter from the prosecutor general of Montpellier, May 9, 1924.

89. AN, BB18 6860, file 104BL75, Orléans, 1932.

90. AN, BB18 6859, file 104BL66, Besançon, 1931.

91. AN, BB18 6724, memorandum, April 16, 1926. The Cour de cassation is the final court of appeal for civil and criminal justice in France. It judges on points of law and procedure only, and its interpretations thereof are authoritative.—Annales.

92. Tarde, Psychologie économique, vol. 1, chap. 6, “La monnaie,” 329.

93. AN, BB18 6863, bill to repress breaches of the credit of the nation, August 1936.

94. Aydalot, Le délit d'atteinte au crédit de l’État, 39.

95. AN, BB18 6863, bill to repress breaches of the credit of the nation, August 1936.

96. AN, F7 14682, memorandum from the finance minister to the préfets, September 2, 1936; BB18 6863, file 104BL129, letter from the finance minister to the justice minister, August 28, 1936.

97. AN, BB18 6724, 86BL470/24, letter from the prosecutor general of the Paris court of appeal to the justice minister, June 11, 1924.

98. AN, BB18 6724, “Les conspirations contre le franc” [1922].

99. AN, BB18 6724, Poitiers chamber of commerce, minutes of the January 11, 1924, meeting.

100. AN, BB18 6725, file 86BL470/32, April and May 1925.

101. AN, F7 14707, press release, March 1935.

102. AN, BB18 6725, file 86BL470/75, legal proceedings for financial defeatism, 1925.

103. Bordo, Michael D. and Hautcœur, Pierre-Cyrille, “Why Didn't France Follow the British Stabilisation after World War I?” European Review of Economic History 11, no. 1 (2007): 3–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104. Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1944)Google Scholar; Eichengreen, Golden Fetters; Harold James, The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

105. For this kind of analysis applied to the United States, see Sparrow, James T., Novak, William J., and Sawyer, Stephen W., eds., Boundaries of the State in US History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106. Joyce, Patrick, The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State since 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hay, Colin, “Neither Real nor Fictitious but ‘as if Real’? A Political Ontology of the State,” British Journal of Sociology 65, no. 3 (2014): 459–80CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.