Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-kw2vx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-09T22:54:53.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Redistribution and Long-Term Private Debt in Paris, 1660–1726

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Philip T. Hoffman ,
Gilles Postel-Vinay  and
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
Philip T. Hoffman
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History and of Social Science at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125;
Gilles Postel-Vinay
Affiliation:
Directeur de recherche at Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, 94205 Ivry-sur-Seine CEDEX, France;
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Based on a large sample from Parisian notarial records, this article examines the long-term private credit market in Paris in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and analyzes how it was affected by government-caused redistribution. It estimates the level of private indebtedness from 1662 to 1789, explains the problems the credit market faced, and determines who profited and who lost when government defaults, banking reforms, and currency manipulations struck private borrowers and lenders. It concludes by accounting for the expansion of the credit market in the last half of the eighteenth century.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 256 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1995

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Antonetti, G., “Colbert et le crédit public,” in Mousnier, Roland, ed., Un nouveau Colbert (Paris, 1985), pp. 189–99.Google Scholar
Benedict, Philip, “Was the Eighteenth Century an Era of Urbanization in France?” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 21 (Autumn 1990), pp. 179–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bien, David, “Les offices, les corps et le crédit d’état: L’utilisation des privilèges sous l’ancien régime,” Annales: E.S.C, 43 (03.-04. 1988), pp. 379–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonney, Richard, The King’s Debts (Oxford, 1981).Google Scholar
Bosher, J. F., “‘Chambres de Justice’ in the French Monarchy,” in Bosher, J. F., ed., French Government and Society 1500–1850: Essays in Memory of Alfred Cobban (London, 1973), pp. 19–40.Google Scholar
Bouvier, Jean, “Vers le capitalisme bancaire,” in Braudel, Fernand and Labrousse, Ernest, eds., Histoire économique et sociale de la France (Paris, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 301–24.Google Scholar
Chariot, E., and Dupâquier, J., “Mouvement annuel de la population de la ville de Paris de 1670 à 1821,” Annales de démographie historique, (1967), pp. 511–19.Google Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “The Cost of Capital and Medieval Agricultural Technique,” Explorations in Economic History, 25 (1988), pp. 265–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierre, Clément, ed., Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert (Paris, 1861–1882), vol. 2.Google Scholar
D’aguesseau, Henri-François, Oeuvres (Paris, 1759–1789), vol. 13.Google Scholar
Dessert, Daniel, Argent, pouvoir et société au grand siècle (Paris, 1984).Google Scholar
De Vries, Jan, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600–1750 (Cambridge, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewald, Jonathon, The Formation of a Provincial Nobility: The Magistrates of the Parlement of Rouen, 1499–1610 (Princeton, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eaton, Jonathon, Gersovitz, Mark, and Stiglitz, Joseph E., “The Pure Theory of Country Risk,” European Economic Review, 30 (1986), pp. 481–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehrenberg, Richard, Das Zeitalter der Fugger: Geldkapital und Creditverkehr im 16. Jahrhundert (3rd edn., Jena, 1922).Google Scholar
France, Archives Départementales de la Côte d’Or, Dijon, Series C.Google Scholar
France, Archives Nationales, Minutier Central (AN MC), Paris.Google Scholar
Glassman, Debra, and Redish, Angela, “New Estimates of the Money Stock in France, 1493–1680,” this Journal, 45 (03. 1985), pp. 31–46.Google Scholar
Glassman, Debra, and Redish, Angela, “Currency Depreciation in Early Modern England and France,” Explorations in Economic History, 25 (1988), pp. 75–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyot, [Pierre-Jean], Répertoire universel et raisonné de jurisprudence civile, criminelle, canonique et bénéficiale (Paris, 1784–1785), 17 vols.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Philip T., “Taxes and Agrarian Life in Early Modern France: Land Sales, 1550–1730,” this Journal, 46 (03. 1986), pp. 37–55.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Philip T., “Land Rents and Agricultural Productivity: The Paris Basin, 1450–1789,” this Journal, 51 (12. 1991), pp. 771–805.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Philip T., “Early Modern France,” in Hoffman, Philip T. and Norberg, Kathryn, eds., Fiscal Crises, Liberty, and Representative Government, 1450–1789 (Stanford, 1994), pp. 226–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, Philip T., Postel-Vinay, Gilles, and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, “Private Credit Markets in Paris, 1690–1840,” this Journal, 52 (06. 1992), pp. 293–306.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Philip T., Postel-Vinay, Gilles, and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, “Economie et politique: les marchés du crédit à Paris, 1750–1840,” Annates HSS, 49 (01.-02. 1994), pp. 65–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, Philip T., Postel-Vinay, Gilles, and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, “What do Notaries do? Overcoming Asymmetric Information in Financial Markets: The Case of Paris; 1751” (UCLA Economics Working Paper, 10. 1994).Google Scholar
Isambert, François-André et al. , Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises depuis l’an 420jusqu’à la Révolution de 1789 (Paris, 1822–1833), vols. 15 and 19.Google Scholar
Kaiser, Thomas E., “Money, Despotism, and Public Opinion in Early Eighteenth Century France: John Law and the Debate on Royal Credit,” Journal of Modern History, 63 (03. 1991), pp. 691–722.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavoisier, André, “Résultats extraits d’un ouvrage intitulé ‘De la richesse territoriale du royaume de France’,” in Oeuvres de Lavoisier (Paris, 1864–1893), vol. 6, pp. 403–513.Google Scholar
Le Roy, Ladurie Emmanuel, Les paysans de Languedoc (Paris, 1966), vol. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Roy, Ladurie Emmanuel, and Couperie, Pierre, “Le mouvement des loyers parisiens de la fin du Moyen Age au XVIIIe siècle,” Annates E.S.C, 25 (07.-08., 1970), pp. 1002–23.Google Scholar
Loyseau, Charles, Traicté de la garantie des rentes (3rd edn., Paris, 1606).Google Scholar
Lüithy, Herbert, La banque protestante en France de la révocation de I’edit de Nantes à la Révolution (Paris, 1959–1961), vol. 1.Google Scholar
Martin, Germain and Bezançon, Marcel, L’histoire du crédit en France sous le règne de Louis XIV (Paris, 1913).Google Scholar
Mercier, Louis-Sebastien, Tableau de Paris (new edition, Amsterdam, 1783–1788), vol. 2.Google Scholar
Morineau, Michel, “D’amsterdam à Séville: De quelle réalité l’histoire des prix est-elle le miroir,” in Morineau, Michel, Pour une histoire économique vraie (Lille, 1985), pp. 49–74.Google Scholar
Morineau, Michel, Incrovables gazettes et fabuleux métaux: les retours des trésors amiricains d’après les gazettes hollandaises (XVIe-XVIHe siècles) (Cambridge, 1985).Google Scholar
Neal, Larry, The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, 1990).Google Scholar
Norberg, Kathryn, “The French Fiscal Crises of 1788 and the Financial Origins of the Revolution of 1789,” in Hoffman, Philip T. and Norberg, Kathryn, eds., Fiscal Crises, Liberty, and Representative Government, 1450–1789 (Stanford, 1994), pp. 253–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass C., and Weingast, Barry, “Constitutions and Commitment: Evolution of the Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” this Journal, 49 (12. 1989), pp. 803–32.Google Scholar
Potter, Mark, and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, “The Evolution of Old-Regime Public Finance: Evidence from the States of Burgundy, 1660–1790” (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Quinn, Stephen, “The Economy of London’s Goldsmith-Bankers, 1660–1696: England’s Free Banking Era Prior to the Bank of England” (manuscript, University of Illinois).Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, “Credit Markets and Economic Change in Southeastern France 1630–1788, ” Explorations in Economic History, 30 (1993), pp. 129–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schnapper, Bernard, Les rentes au XVIe Siècle: Histoire d’un instrument de crédit (Paris, 1957).Google Scholar
Shakespeare, Howard J., France, the Royal Loans: Les emprunts royaux, 1689–1789 (Shrewsbury, 1986).Google Scholar
Tracy, James D., A Financial Revolution in the Habsburg Netherlands (Berkeley, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Wee, Hermann, “Money, Credit, and Banking Systems,” in Rich, E. E. and Wilson, C. H., eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge, 1977), vol. 5, pp. 290–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velde, Francois, and Weir, David, “The Financial Market and Government Debt Policy in France, 1746–1793,” this Journal, 52 (03. 1992), pp. 1–40.Google Scholar
Vilar-Berrogain, Gabrielle, Guide des recherches dans les fonds d’enregistrement sous I’ancien régime (Paris, 1958).Google Scholar