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Economic Growth in France and Britain, 1830–1910: A Review of the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

N. F. R. Crafts
N. F. R. Crafts
Affiliation:
Fellow and Praelector in Economics at University College, Oxford, OXI 4BH, England.
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Abstract

Recent revisionist treatments of nineteenth-century French economic growth are examined and reveal that the pattern of economic growth in France was indeed substantially different from the unusual pattern in Great Britain. Labor productivity in French industry was probably lower than in Britain, contrary to the claims of O'Brien and Keyder, and neither growth of per capita income nor the level of income in France in 1910 was remarkable. The article thus supports a position between that of early writers and that of the recent revisionists.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 49 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1984

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References

1 The literature is, of course, a large one but among the more notable contributions are Kemp, Tom, Industrialisation in Nineteenth Century Europe (London, 1969);Google ScholarKindleberger, Charles P., Economic Growth in France and Britain, 1851–1950 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1964);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Landes, David S., The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge, 1969).Google Scholar

2 Roehl, Richard, “French Industrialization: A Reconsideration,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (07 1976), 233–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 O'Brien, Patrick K. and Keyder, Caglar, Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914 (London, 1978), p. 21.Google Scholar

4 Cameron, Rondo E. and Freedeman, Charles G., “French Economic Growth: A Radical Revision” (paper presented to the Social Science History Meeting, Chicago, 1982), p. 2.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 7.

6 Kindleberger, Charles P., Review of “O'Brien and Keyder,” Economic History Review, 32 (05 1979), 295–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 O'Brien and Keyder, Economic Growth, p. 61.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 90.

9 Ibid., p. 148.

10 Ibid., p. 138.

11 Ibid., pp. 97, 100.

12 Ibid., p. 167.

13 These results are presented in Bairoch, Paul, “Europe's Gross National Product: 1800–1975,” Journal of European Economic History, 5 (Fall 1976), 273–340;Google Scholar and in Maddison, Angus, “Phases of Capitalist Development,” in Economic Growth and Resources, ed. Matthews, Robin C. O., vol. 2 (London, 1980).Google Scholar

14 This work is reported in Crafts, N. F. R., “Gross National Product in Europe, 1870–1910: Some New Estimates,” Explorations in Economic History (forthcoming).Google Scholar

15 The procedure used by these authors is different in detail but similar in spirit to that used here to obtain the European Norm; see Chenery, Hollis B. and Syrquin, Moses, Patterns of Development, 1950–1970 (Oxford, 1975).Google Scholar

16 Full details of the regressions can be found in Crafts, N. F. R., “Patterns of Development in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” Oxford Economic Papers (forthcoming).Google Scholar

17 A fuller discussion of Britain's idiosyncrasies can be found in ibid.

18 These statements can be given greater quantitative precision. They are confirmed formally, and statistical significance is shown in the regressions in ibid., Table 3.

19 For further amplification of this point, see Kuznets, Simon S., Economic Growth of Nations (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Crafts, “Patterns of Development,” Tables 4 and 5.Google Scholar

20 O'Brien and Keyder, Economic Growth, p. 31.Google Scholar

21 Roehl, Richard, “French Industrialization: A Reconsideration,” p. 268.Google Scholar

22 Barsby, Steven L., “Economic Backwardness and the Characteristics of Development,” this JOURNAL, 29 (09 1969), 449–72.Google Scholar

23 Crafts, “Patterns of Development.”Google Scholar

24 O'Brien and Keyder, Economic Growth, p. 90.Google Scholar

25 The sources used by O'Brien, and Keyder, are Homer, S., A History of Interest Rates, 2000 B.C. to the Present (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1963);Google Scholar and Phelps, Ernest H.Brown, and Browne, Margaret, A Century of Pay (London, 1968).Google Scholar

26 O'Brien and Keyder (Economic Growth, p. 88) acknowledge the disappointing rate of growth of French industrial labor productivity, a point that does not receive emphasis in Cameron and Freedeman.Google Scholar

27 Carré, J., Dubois, P., and Malinvaud, E., La Croissance Française (Paris, 1972), p. 88.Google Scholar

28 Levy-Leboyer's, M. data is in “Capital Investment and Economic Growth in France, 1820–1930,” in Cambridge History of Europe. ed. Mathias, P. and Postan, M. (Cambridge, 1978), vol. 7, pt. 1, pp. 292–95.Google Scholar

29 For Feinstein's index of industrial production, see Feinstein, Charles H., National Income, Expenditure and Output of the United Kingdom, 1855–1965 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. T118–T119.Google Scholar

30 Carré et al., La Croissance, pp. 89–90.Google Scholar

31 Caron, François, An Economic History of Modern France (London, 1979), pp. 15, 22, 24.Google Scholar

32 Marczewski, Jean, Le produit physique de l'économie française de 1789 à 1913 (Paris, 1965), p. XLIX.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. LVI.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., p. LIX.

36 Caron, Economic History, p. 17.

37 Ibid., p. 42.

38 A quasi production function equation of a Cobb-Douglas type for manufacturing output can be generated using coal consumption as a proxy for capital inputs and approximating labor force inputs by multiplying the population aged 15–64 multiplied by the fraction of males recorded by the census as engaged in manufacturing. All these data can be constructed from Mitchell, “Abstract.” Manufacturing output can be obtained using the data in Crafts, “Patterns of Development.” Estimation is over a pooled sample of available European data for 1850–1910 and the results are as follows (t-statistics in parentheses). TIME is a variable taking I for observations from 1850, 2 for 1860, …7 for 1910. If a simpler equation is adopted the results are: If the French dummy variable is also combined with capital, neither FRENCH LABOR nor FRENCH CAPITAL are statistically significant.

39 Brown, Phelps and Browne, Century of Pay, pp. 46, 432–37.Google Scholar

40 O'Brien and Keyder, Economic Growth, p. 149.Google Scholar

41 Derived from Carré et al., La Croissance, p. 150.Google Scholar

42 Calculated using Levy-Leboyer, “Capital Investment,” p. 267,Google Scholar and Kanefsky, J., “Motive Power in British Industry and the Accuracy of the 1870 Factory Return,” Economic History Review, 32 (08 1979), p. 373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Carré et al., La Croissance, p. 151.Google Scholar

44 This is based on Feinstein, Charles H., “Capital Formation in Britain,” Table 26 in Mathias and Postan, Cambridge Economic HistoryGoogle Scholar, and on subsequent growth of the capital stock as shown in Matthews, Robin C. O. et al. , British Economic Growth 1856–1973 (Stanford, 1982), Tables 8.1 and 8.3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 O'Brien and Keyder. Economic Growth, pp. 91–100.Google Scholar