Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:01:19.046Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Disciplining the Market: Debt Imprisonment, Public Credit, and the Construction of Commercial Personhood in Revolutionary France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2014

Erika Vause
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1847, Raymond-Theodore Troplong, one of France's most distinguished legal minds, presented his recently finished work on debt imprisonment to Paris's prestigious Académie des sciences morales et politiques. He started his narrative with an imaginative reconstruction of debt imprisonment's origins in the “barbaric law” of “primitive peoples.” In such societies, Troplong explained, “the person responds corporally, and principally, to contracted engagements. On one hand, insolvency is assimilated to crime. The debtor who dishonors his word in not paying his creditor differs little from a thief. In dishonoring his word, he has dishonored the gods whom he has taken as witnesses of his oath; his body is therefore engaged by his offense; it belongs to its expiation. On the other hand, in order to make him pay with his possessions, the creditor must seize, first of all, his person.”

Type
Articles
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , August 2014 , pp. 647 - 682
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2014 

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

1. Louiseau, Gustave and Vergé, Charles Henri eds., Séances et travaux de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques, compte rendu (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1847) 11: 213Google Scholar. This is an excerpt from Troplong, Raymond-Theodore's published De la contrainte par corps en matière civile et de commerce : commentaire du titre XVI, livre III, du Code civil (Paris: Meline, 1847)Google Scholar.

2. Troplong, De la contrainte par corps, lxxvii.

3. Ibid., 290.

4. Between 1816 and 1832, for example, surviving pamphlets include: Bouilly, Michel-Antoine, Abus de la contrainte par corps (Paris : Delaunay, 1816)Google Scholar; Saint-Aubin, Camille, Essai sur la contrainte par corps, à l'occasion du projet de loi soumis en ce moment à la Chambre des Pairs (Paris : A. Bailleul, 1819)Google Scholar; Burg, Michel, Considérations sur la contrainte par corps en matières de dettes dites commerciales, suivies du tableau alphabétique des incarcérateurs (Paris: Delaunay, 1820)Google Scholar; Claveau, L.-J., Réflexions sur le régime de la contrainte par corps, à l'occasion des changemens demandés (Paris: les marchands de nouveautés, 1820)Google Scholar; Chevalier, A. P., Lettre à Me Claveau,... au sujet de ses réflexions sur la contrainte par corps (Paris: J. Crémière fils, 1820)Google Scholar; Anonymous, Lettres d'un ancien avocat à un député sur la contrainte par corps (Paris: Dentu, 1821)Google Scholar; de Boileau, Marie-Louis-Joseph, Contrainte par corps, abus à réformer. Appel à S. M. Louis XVIII et au Corps législatif (Paris: chez l'auteur, n. d.)Google Scholar; Huet, Nicolas-Francois, Observations sur l'exercice du droit de contrainte par corps envers l'indigence et la vieillesse, pour dettes commerciales ou supposées telles (Paris: impr. de A. Boucher, n. d.)Google Scholar; Bonnal, Auguste, Pétition à la Chambre des Députés, pour l'amélioration de la contrainte par corps en matière commerciale (Paris: impr. de A. Égron, 1823)Google Scholar, Albert Leroy, Observations pratiques sur l'exercice de la contrainte par corps (Paris: impr. de Pollet, n. d.)Google Scholar; Laly, Adresse au Roi, tendante à l'abolition de la contrainte par corps (Paris: impr. de Bellemain, n. d.)Google Scholar; Joyau, F.-J., Discours sur les abus de la contrainte par corps en matière de lettres de change et sur les moyens d'y remédier sans porter atteinte à la prospérité du commerce, prononcé le 5 novembre 1827 à la rentrée solennelle de l'Académie universitaire de Caen (Caen: impr. de A. Le Roy, n. d.)Google Scholar; fils, Leblanc, Observations sur l'esprit et les imperfections de nos lois relatives à la contrainte par corps en matière civile (Paris: Eymery, Fruger et Cie, 1828)Google Scholar; Loubens, J.-M., De la Contrainte par corps en matière civile et commerciale (Paris: L'Huillier, 1829)Google Scholar; Pirmé, Victor, De la Nécessité, dans l'intérêt du commerce, de l'industrie et de la morale, de l'abolition de la contrainte par corps, au lettre à M. le duc de Cazes, (Paris: Delaunay, 1829)Google Scholar; Anonymous, Réfutation proposition par proposition de l'exposé des motifs du projet de loi sur la contrainte par corps, par un légiste (Paris: Sellique, 1829)Google Scholar; Crivelli, Joseph-Louis, De la contrainte par corps considérée sous les rapports de la morale, de la religion, du droit naturel et du droit civil, et dans l'intérêt de l'humanité en general (Paris: G. Pissin, 1830)Google Scholar; Salel, Jean-Joseph, Bombe lumineuse, ou Abolition de la contrainte par corps, opuscule dédié aux deux Chambres législatives de la session de 1830 (Paris: Delaunay, 1830)Google Scholar; Anonymous, Pétition à MM. de la Chambre des pairs Au Sujet de la Contrainte par corps (Saint-Denis : imp. de Prevost, 1830)Google Scholar; Anonymous, Le Cri du peuple, ou La liberté conquise en juillet 1830, et la contrainte par corps rétablie avec le règne de la tyrannie en janvier 1832 (Paris: Impr. de Carpentier-Méricourt, 1832)Google Scholar; Foelix, Jean-Jacques-Gaspard, Commentaire sur la loi du 17 avril 1832 relative à la contrainte par corps (Paris: G. Pissin, 1832)Google Scholar; and Pance, B., De la Contrainte par corps (Paris: Tenon, 1832)Google Scholar.

5. Coleman, Paul, Debtors and Creditors in America: Insolvency, Imprisonment for Debt, and Bankruptcy, 1607–1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), 268Google Scholar.

6. Mann, Bruce, Republic of Debtors : Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 5Google Scholar.

7. See Balleisen, Edward, Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum American (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 203–20Google Scholar.

8. Cohen, Jay, “The History of Imprisonment for Debt and its Relation to the Development of Discharge for Bankruptcy,” Journal of Legal History 3 (1982): 153–71Google Scholar.

9. Finn, Margot, The Character of Credit: Debt and English Culture, 1740–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 154Google Scholar.

10. Debt imprisonment for criminal, correctional, and simple police debts involved the state as a creditor incarcerating a debtor for unpaid fines or for compensation owed for customs, fishing, and poaching violations. Contrainte par corps was frequently left up to judicial discretion in such cases. Imprisonment for “civil debt” applied only in highly specific cases, frequently pertaining to payment for legally entrusted property. For example, civil debt imprisonment could be applied against a guardian who failed to return his ward's property at the time of the ward's majority, a public officer who did not return public funds, or any individual who mortgaged or sold a property without rightful title. Foreigners faced arrest for any debt they owed to a French citizen. Exact ratios of commercial debt prisoners to other debt prisoners varied widely by region However, when, for example, the lawyer Jules Lalou surveyed 599 Paris debt prisoners in 1855, he found only 5 imprisoned for civil debts, with the overwhelming majority incarcerated for debts owed on shipments of merchandise, promissory notes, and bills of exchange. Lalou, Jules, De la emprisonnement pour dettes en matière civile, commerciale, de faillite, de extranéité, criminelle, correctionelle, de police (Paris: Cotillion, 1857), 15Google Scholar.

11. The use of debt imprisonment for a promissory note, as opposed to a bill of exchange, was supposed to only apply to “commercial individuals.” For more information on the use of negotiable instruments in France, see Kessler, Amalia, A Revolution in Commerce: The Parisian Merchant Court and the Rise of Commercial Society in Eighteenth-Century France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 188–237Google Scholar.

12. See Desan, Suzanne, “Reconstituting the Social after the Terror: Family, Property and the Law in Popular Politics,” Past & Present 164 (1999): 81–121Google Scholar; and Baczko, Bronislaw (trans. Petherham, Michael), Ending the Terror: The French Revolution After Robespierre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 218–22Google Scholar.

13. Scholarship on England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has pointed to the important role of punitive measures (in this case, the death penalty for forgery, counterfeiting, and clipping) as a form of monetary policy. See McGowen, Randall, “Managing the Gallows: The Bank of England and the Death Penalty, 1797–1821,” Law and History Review 25 (2007): 241–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Handler, Phil, “Forgery and the End of the ‘Bloody Code’ in Early Nineteenth-Century England,” The Historical Journal 48 (2005): 683–702Google Scholar; and Wennerlind, Carl, “The Death Penalty as Monetary Policy: The Practice and Punishment of Monetary Crime, 1690–1830,” History of Political Economy 36 (2004): 131–61Google Scholar. They have also hinted at the role of debtors' prison in similarly supporting the state's credit institutions, but have not looked at this in detail.

14. For the early medieval practice of debt imprisonment in France, see the work of Mayade-Claustre, Julie, Dans les geôles du roi : l'emprisonnement pour dette à Paris à la fin du Moyen-Âge (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2007)Google Scholar; “Le corps lié de l'ouvrier: Le travail et la dette à Paris au XVe siècle,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 60 (2005): 383–408Google Scholar; and “La dette, la haine et la force : les débuts de la prison pour dette à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Revue historique 309 (2007): 797–821Google Scholar.

15. On the early history of insolvency and bankruptcy in France, see Thiveaud, Jean-Marie, “L'ordre primordial de la dette: Petite histoire panoramique de la faillite, des origines à nos jours,” Revue d'économie financière 25 (1993): 67–106Google Scholar.

16. This assimilation of body and property in the logic of debt imprisonment has been noted by Finn, Margot in The Character of Credit: Debt and English Culture, 1740–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), esp. 1–22Google Scholar; and by Bailey, Amanda, Of Bondage: Debt, Property, and Personhood in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Mayade–Claustre, “Le corps lié de l'ouvrier,” 404.

18. Exceptions were also regularly made for forfeiture clauses, land loans, manual exchange, rent for capital lent, and obligations involving commercial companies. French Old Regime law was particularly complicated on the subject of usury. See Valente, Fabien “Usury in France in the Nineteenth Century,” in Private Law and Social Inequality in the Industrial Age: Comparing Legal Cultures in Britain, France, Germany and the United States, ed. Steimetz, Willibald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 437–55Google Scholar.

19. A saisie-arrêt or opposition froze a payment that a debtor expected to receive from a third party, including salaries, pay from posts, debts due to the debtor by another debtor, stocks, and private annuities. A saisie-execution entailed the impoundment of a debtor's goods and the installation of a guardian in the debtor's house. If the debtor had not paid after 8 days, the debtor's belongings could be auctioned off.

20. For Old Regime bankruptcy laws, see Thomas Luckett, “Credit and Commercial Honor in France 1740–1789” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1992). Book III of the Code of Commerce of 1807 affirmed a similar process, with bankruptcy proceedings ending either in a concordat (a rescheduling of debts) or a union (a liquidation). For nineteenth-century bankruptcy in France, see an earlier article I have written on this subject. Vause, Erika, “He Who Rushes to Riches Will Not Be Innocent': Commercial Values and Commercial Failure in Postrevolutionary France,” French Historical Studies 35 (2012): 319–49Google Scholar.

21. On banqueroute in Old Regime France, see Hardwick, Julie, “Banqueroute: la faillite, le crime et la transition vers le capitalisme dans la France moderne,” Histoire, économie & société 30 (2011): 79–94Google Scholar. Another form of banqueroute, banqueroute simple, was invented by the Napoleonic Codes to cover bankruptcies caused by negligence, profligacy, or gross incompetence by the debtor, including having spent large amounts of money in speculative endeavors or not keeping account books properly. See Teulet, Auguste François, Dictionnaire des Codes français (Paris: H. Plon, 1846), 98Google Scholar.

22. Claude Dupouy uses factums and the ambiguous wording of Title IX of the Ordinance of 1673––which employs the word “débiteur” rather than “marchand débiteur”––to argue for the flexibility of Old Regime rulings. See Dupouy, Claude, Le Droit des faillites en France avant le code de Commerce (Paris: Librarie générale de droit et de jurisprudence R. Pichon et R. Durand–Auzias, 1967)Google Scholar.

23. It is surprisingly—and perhaps revealingly—difficult to find much written on this practice in nineteenth-century France. The exception being Garraud, René's De la Déconfiture et des améliorations dont la législation sur cette matière est susceptible (Paris: Marescq, 1880)Google Scholar.

24. Debt imprisonment in the ancient regime could also be used for fathers who did not pay wet nurses (frais de nourrice), debts for compensation in course cases, debts for mortgaging or selling a property that did not belong to one (stellionate), debts for guardians who did not give back property, debts for ecclesiastic seats, debts for the transfer of landed property, and a nebulous category of debts that included those for gambling and those caused by dissipating money. See Jacques Gasnier, “La prison pour dettes à Paris au XVIIIe siècle” (Diplome d'études approfundies: Université Paris IV Sorbonne, 1996), 44.

25. For the applications of this ordinance in terms of contrainte par corps see Jousse, Daniel, Nouveau commentaire sur l'ordonnance civile du mois d'avril 1667. Nouvelle édition, augmentée de l'Idée de la justice civile, Volume 2 (Paris: Debure père, 1771)Google Scholar.

26. See Kessler, A Revolution in Commerce.

27. On law merchant, see Trackman, Leon E., The Law Merchant: The Evolution of Commercial Law (Littleton, CO: William S. Hein Publishing, 1983)Google Scholar; Rogers, James Stevens, The Early History of the Law of Bills and Notes: A Study of the Origins of Anglo-American Commercial Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Benson, Bruce, “The Spontaneous Evolution of Commercial Law,” Southern Economic Journal 55 (1989): 644–61Google Scholar. As Amalia Kessler notes, there is very little historical evidence to support the idea of a transnational merchant law, and much more that emphasizes the nation legal context. Kessler, Revolution in Commerce, 97–101.

28. See Title VII: “Contrainte par corps,” in Ordonnance de 1673; Édit du roi servant de règlement pour le commerce des négociants et marchands tant en gros qu'en détail, 10.

29. See Amalia Kessler, Revolution in Commerce, esp. 188–237.

30. See Kwass, Michael, “Ordering the World of Ideas: Classification of Objects in Eighteenth Century France,” Representations 82 (2003): 87–116Google Scholar; “Big Hair: A Wig History of Consumption in Eighteenth-Century France,” The American Historical Review 111 (2006): 631–59Google Scholar; Fox, Robert and Turner, Anthony John eds., Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Regime France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998)Google Scholar; and Fairchilds, Cissie “The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. Brewer, John and Porter, Roy (London: Routledge, 1993), 228–248Google Scholar.

31. See Shovlin, John, “The Cultural Politics of Luxury in Eighteenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies 23 (2000): 577–606Google Scholar; Kwass, Michael, “Consumption and the World of Ideas: Consumer Revolution and the Moral Economy of the Marquis de Mirabeau,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37 (2004): 187–213Google Scholar; and Maza, Sarah, “Luxury, Morality and Social Change: Why There Was No Middle-Class Consciousness in Prerevolutionary France,” Journal of Modern History 69 (1997): 199–229Google Scholar.

32. See Hirschman, Albert's articulation of this idea, in The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. See also Shovlin, John, “Toward a Reinterpretation of Revolutionary Anti-nobilism: The Political Economy of Honor in the Old Regime,” Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 35–66Google Scholar; and The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

34. Shovlin, “Toward a Reinterpretation,” 57.

35. See Smith, Jay M., “Social Categories, the Language of Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution: The Debate over noblesse commerçante,” The Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 339–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. See Kessler, A Revolution in Commerce. A little more cynically, Jean-Pierre Hirsch has argued that “freedom of trade was used to justify the political and social advantages gained by the merchants as a result of the revolution.” Hirsch, Jean-Pierre, “Revolutionary France, Cradle of Free Enterprise,” American Historical Review 94 (1989): 1285Google Scholar.

37. See Bossenga, Gail, “Protecting Merchants: Guilds and Commercial Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies 15 (1988): 693–703Google Scholar.

38. Shovlin, “Towards a Reinterpretation,” 37.

39. Smith, “Social Categories,” 350–53.

40. See Kessler, Amalia, “Enforcing Virtue: Social Norms and Self-Interest in an Eighteenth-Century Merchant Court,” Law and History Review 22 (2004): 71–118Google Scholar.

41. Jay Cohen links the importance of debt imprisonment and bankruptcy in contemporaneous England to the severely restricted options for establishing limited liability incorporation. See Jay Cohen, “Imprisonment for debt: understanding its persistence and its relation to the historical development of discharge in bankruptcy” (JD diss., University of Chicago Law School, 1980).

42. de Montesquieu, Baron, De l'esprit des lois (Paris: Didot frères, fils et cie, 1860), 279Google Scholar. More generally, Montesquieu's opinion on debt imprisonment is found in Book 20, Chapter 15 of De L'esprit des lois titled “La Contrainte Par Corps.”

43. Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, Mémoires sur le prêt à intérêt et sur le commerce des fers (Paris: Froullé, 1789), 64Google Scholar. It is worth noting that French law required creditors—on penalty of having their debtor freed—to supply an advance for the debtor to live on in prison.

44. Ibid., 69–70.

45. Claude-Gaspard Barbat Closel d'Arnery, Abus et dangers de la contrainte par corps (Paris: Royez, 1788), 47–50Google Scholar.

46. The Cahier du tiers-état de Paris asks for contrainte par corps to not be exercised for debts less than 100 livres. See Cahier du tiers-état de la ville de Paris (Paris: Méquignon, 1789), 38Google Scholar.

47. “Exposé des motifs du livre III du Code du commerce, presenté au Corps legislative par M. Ségur, pour une portion, et M. Treilhard, pour l'autre portion séance 3 septembre 1807” in Code du Commerce servant de supplement au procès-verbal des séances du Corps legislatif September 1807: Exposés des motifs par les orateurs du gouvernement (Paris: Hacquart, 1807), 72Google Scholar.

48. Nevertheless, it is important not to overstate the significance of the Revolution in producing radical discontinuity with the ancien regime. This point is made by the brilliant research of both Hirsch, Jean-Pierre in Les deux rêves du commerce: entreprise et institution dans la région lilloise, 1780–1860 (Paris: École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1991)Google Scholar and Bergeron, Louis in Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à l'Empire (Paris: École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1978)Google Scholar both of which demonstrate how the traditional families and networks that had dominated the Old Regime persisted into the nineteenth century, despite the rise of a class who had benefited from the Revolution.

49. For the liberation of debtors in the early Revolution, see Luckett, Thomas, “The Debate about Debt Imprisonment in the Eighteenth Century,” in Des personnes aux institutions: réseaux et culture du crédit du XVIe au XXe siècle en Europe; actes du colloque international centenaire des FUC, ed. Fontaine, Laurence, Postel-Vinay, Gilles, Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, Servais, Paul et al. (Louvain-la-Neuve: Bruylant-Academia,1996), 164Google Scholar.

50. Moniteur universel, March 11, 1793, 321.

51. These being the laws of April 11, 1793, and September 5, 1793, respectively.

52. Quoted in Braudel, Ferdinand and Labrousse, Ernest, ed. Histoire économique et sociale de la France Tome III/1 L'avènement de l'ére industrielle (1789-années 1880) (Paris: Presses universitaires francaises, 1976), 53.Google Scholar

53. Dominique-Vincent Ramel-Nogaret cited in. Crouzet, François, La grande inflation: La monnaie en France de Louis XVI à Napoléon (Paris: Fayard, 1993)Google Scholar, 453.

54. Braudel and Labrousse, Histoire économique, I51.

55. Although it remained official currency, by September 1796, the mandat's worth had fallen to less than 1% of its nominal value bid. See Roussel, P.L., Le Système des mandats territoriaux: 1796–1797 (Paris: L.Tenin, 1920), 23Google Scholar.

56. Ibid., 76.

57. On 5 frimaire an IV (November 26, 1795) the Council allowed parties to make contracts in hard currency, although creditors could not refuse paper money. The law of 12 frimaire an IV (December 3, 1795) permitted creditors with contracts, including on bills of exchange and other short-term commercial effects, dated before 1 vendémiaire IV (September 23, 1795) to reject reimbursement until appropriate legislation appeared. Once the mandat territorial had been voted in, the law of 15 germinal an IV (April 4, 1796) allowed some payments to resume. The law of 29 messidor an IV (July 17, 1796) again suspended payments as the mandat's value plummeted precipitously. The Councils authorized parties to make agreements in the terms and currencies they wanted on 5 thermidor an IV (July 23, 1796). The law of 11 frimaire an VI (December 1, 1797) permitted debt payments to resume.

58. In accordance with the law of 5 thermidor an IV (July 23, 1796), loans made during the period of paper money had been stipulated with reimbursement payable in “money in use.”

59. This is the main point in Basin, Dialogue sur les transactions entre un créancier et un débiteur d'assignats (Paris: De l'Imprimerie de Tarlier, 1797)Google Scholar. Another writer claimed that debtors “aren't demanding a simple reduction of their debts anymore from their creditors, it is all they owe that they want to make their creditors lose, they believe themselves entitled to justify all losses in saying that it is the discredit of the assignats that has caused their ruin, the government, they say, has not reimbursed us but 24 out of 72 thousands livre.” See AN DXXXIX n. 15 “Adresse aux citoyens répresentants du peuple formant le Conseil de Cinq Cents” 1 Germinal An V.

60. On the creation of the tables of depreciation see Miller, Judith A., “The Aftermath of the Assignat: Plaintiffs in the Age of Property, 1794–1804,” in Taking Liberties: Problems of a New Order from the French Revolution to Napoleon, ed. Brown, Howard G. and Miller, Judith A. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 70–91Google Scholar.

61. On the abolition of the guilds see Fitzsimmons, Michael P. “The National Assembly and the Abolition of Guilds in France,” The Historical Journal 39 (1996): 133–54Google Scholar; and Vardi, Liana, “The Abolition of the Guilds during the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies 15 (1988): 704–17Google Scholar.

62. Ferguson, Dean T., “The Body, the Corporate Idiom, and the Police of the Unincorporated Worker in Early Modern Lyons” French Historical Studies 23(2000): 545–75Google Scholar; Kaplan, Steven L., “Les Corporations, les ‘faux-ouvriers’ et le faubourg de Saint-Antoine au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales: Economies, sociétés et civilizations 43 (1988): 353–78Google Scholar; Sonenscher, Michael, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics, and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Fairchilds, “Populuxe Goods;” and Kessler, Amalia, “A ‘Question of Name’: Merchant-Court Jurisdiction and the Origins of the Noblesse Commerçante,” in A Vast and Useful Art: The Gustave Gimon Collection on French Political Economy, ed. Parrine, Mary Jane (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

63. “Exposé des motifs, des titres I à VII, inclusivement, du livre 1er du Code de Commerce, presenté au Corps Legislatif séance 1 septembre 1807” in Code du Commerce, 75.

64. Refusing to sell agricultural products in assignats, peasants kept their food, even letting it go to waste rather than sell to the cities. Exacerbated further by poor supply routes and a brutal winter, the coldest France had known since at least 1709, where some major cities were entirely cut off by snow and ice, the winter of Year III was worsened by skyrocketing prices in the cities. Police were faced with an epidemic of theft and begging. Suicide and general death rates soared, especially among young children. See Cobb, Richard, Terreur et substances 1793–1795 (Paris: Librairie Clavreuil, 1968)Google Scholar.

65. See the police reports from years IV and V printed in Aulard, Alphone ed., Paris pendant la réaction thermidorienne et sous le directoire: Recueil de documents pour l'histoire de l'ésprit publique à Paris (Paris: Librairie L. Cerf, 1899), 3Google Scholar: esp. 12.

66. Quoted in Marion, Marcel, Histoire financière de la France depuis 1715 (Paris: Rousseau, 1927–1931), 3: 365Google Scholar.

67. Mercier, Sébastien, Le nouveau Paris, ed. Bonnet, Jean-Claude (Paris : Mercure de France, 1994), 2:692Google Scholar.

68. See Marion, Histoire financière, 3:365–66. In order to crack down on what was perceived as a situation in which “everyone sets himself up as a businessman and violates shamelessly the laws of commerce,” the patente was instituted 5 thermidor an III (July 23, 1795), creating a graduated code of taxes necessary to practice business. A general patente covered all trades cost 4000 livre, whereas smaller amounts allowed for the purchase of specialized patentes. Prices varied depending upon the size of the town. Fines were to be levied to merchants found practicing without a patente.

69. When the Bourse was reopened, the law of 13 fructidor an III (August 20, 1795) —an effort to crack down on illicit speculation—forbade all speculation other than that in the Bourse, under threat of having a placard on one's chest reading “AGIOTEUR. [stock-jobber]” See Marion, Histoire financière, 3:359.

70. du Pan, Jacques Mallet (ed. Michel, André), Correspondance inédite de Mallet du Pan avec la cour de Vienne (1794–1798) (Paris: Plon, 1884), 2:176Google Scholar.

71. Le nouveau Paris, 2: 602. Although Jews were the most common targets of antiusury discourse, other groups were targets as well. One petitioner blamed usury on single adults and people without children, and said that a compensatory tax of 100,000 francs should be leveled on them. Archives nationales F 12 971 B dos VII fol. 3 “Lettre de Lacoste au Ministère de l'Interieur,” June 30, 1806.

72. Lefebvre, Georges, La France sous la directoire 1795–1799 (Paris: Messidor Editions Sociales, 1989), 143Google Scholar.

73. “Variétés,” Le Moniteur universel, January 26, 1797, 506.

74. Le Sentinelle, November 29, 1796, 1 noted that when the businessmen of Paris nominated Delessert, Fulchiron jeune, and Boursier jeune as the extraordinary deputies, everyone guessed that this was primarily about the establishment of a bank. Georges Lefebvre briefly mentions this, but only in reference to the state's desire to found a bank in order to fund its war effort rather than because of the secondary mission of the meeting; to revive commerce. See Lefebvre, France sous le Directoire, 139.

75. AN F 12 2469 mélanges: commerce “Discours des Ministère de Finance et Ministère de l'Interieur” (Paris: Bureau du Journal du Commerce, 1796), 5–6.

76. Ibid., 1.

77. See Hirsch, “Revolutionary France: Cradle of Free Enterprise.”

78. Miller, Judith, “Economic Ideologies, 1750–1800: The Creation of the Modern Political Economy?” French Historical Studies 23 (2000): 497–511Google Scholar.

79. Livesey, James, Making Democracy in the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 61Google Scholar. The entire second chapter of this book (48–87) discusses the way in which “luxury” and “pleasure” were insinuated into a new vision of French republicanism, which Livesey calls “commercial republicanism.” See also Spang, Rebecca, “The Frivolous French: ‘Liberty of Pleasure’ and the End of Luxury,” in Taking Liberties: Problems of a New Order from the French Revolution to Napoleon, ed. Brown, Howard G. and Miller, Judith A. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 110–25Google Scholar.

80. AN F 12 2469 mélanges: commerce “Députés extraordinaires du commerce au Ministère de Finance,” 10 nivôse an V (December 30, 1796).

81. Ibid. The Constituent Assembly in the laws of October 3–6, 1789 had declared usury legal, but capped at 5% for conventional interest, and left the legal rate for commercial loans up to the discretion of commercial jurisdictions. The law of July 23, 1796, instituted free trade in coin. See Valente, Fabien “Usury in France in the Nineteenth Century,” in Private Law and Social Inequality in the Industrial Age: Comparing Legal Cultures in Britain, France, Germany and the United States, ed. Steimetz, Willibald (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), 437–55Google Scholar.

82. Ibid.

83. For the history of government attempts to found a bank see Marion, Histoire financière, 3: 442–48.

84. AN F 12 2469 mélanges: commerce “Lettre écrite au Ministère des finances par les députés extraordinaires du commerce le 18 Nivôse de l'An V”.

85. On the impact of John Law, whose disastrous attempt to finance royal debt came to symbolize the evils of a speculative economy in French discourse for the next 150 years, see Spang, Rebecca, “The Ghost of Law: Speculating on Money, Memory and Mississippi in the French Constituent Assembly,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques 31 (2005): 19–27Google Scholar.

86. Députés extraordinaires du commerce, “Lettre des députés extraordinaires du commerce, au Ministère des finances,” Le Moniteur universel, January 20, 1797, 481.

87. Michal, André, ed., Mallet du Pan to Court of Vienna, Correspondence du Mallet du Pan avec la cour de Vienne (1794–1798), Vol. II (Paris: Librarie Plon, 1884) letter C dated March 30, 1797Google Scholar.

88. “National Convention séance du 2 thermidor an III,” Le Moniteur universel, July 26, 1795, 1241.

89. “Députation de Bonne Nouvelle at the National Convention, séance du 24 thermidor an III,” Le Moniteur universel, August 16, 1795, 1324. The patente, as it was set up in 1798 and operated until reforms in the 1840s and 1850s, consisted of a two part droit fixe (based on the type of business and area where it operated) and a droit proportionnel based on the rent paid on the store. Theoretically, all businessmen paid such a task, though considerable evidence indicates that many practicing commercial trades managed to avoid it in the first decades of the nineteenth century. See Koepke, Robert “The loi des patentes of 1844,” French Historical Studies 11 (1980): 400Google Scholar.

90. One representative even suggested extending contrainte par corps to citizens who did not pay their taxes or contribute to the forced loan. See Edmond Louis Alexis Dubois-Crancé, “Opinion de Dubois-Crancé, sur les moyens de restauration du crédit public: séance du 7 ventôse, l'an IVe” (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1796).

91. Quoted in Livesey, James, Making Democracy in the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 64Google Scholar. It is highly unlikely that Robespierre said anything of the sort.

92. White, Eugene Nelson, “The French Revolution and the Politics of Government Finance, 1770–1815,” The Journal of Economic History 55 (1995): 248–50Google Scholar.

93. AN III 35 folio 123, Anonymous petition dated 8 pluviôse an VI (January 27, 1798).

94. Anonymous, A l'Assemblée des négocians convoqués à Paris par le gouvernement (Paris: imprimerie de Desenne, 1796), 4Google Scholar.

95. Ibid.

96. “Conseil de 500 séance du 3 ventôse an V,” Le Moniteur universel, February 24, 1797, 697. For Debry's belief in the need to establish republican mœurs, see Jainchild, Andrew, Reimagining Politics After the Terror: The Republic Origins of French Liberalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 62–68Google Scholar.

97. For the ambiguous revolutionary relationship to property, see Smith, Bonnie and Kelley, Donald, “What Was Property? Legal Dimensions of the Social Question in France (1789–1848),” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 128:3 (1984): 200–30Google Scholar; and Sewell, William Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 114–42Google Scholar.

98. “Conseil des 500 séance du 9 ventôse an V,” Moniteur universel, March 2, 1797, 647.

99. Ibid.

100. J.G.A. Pocock makes this argument in numerous works, notably fleshing out his terms in “The Mobility of Property and the Rise of Eighteenth-Century Sociology,” in Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Pocock, John Greville Agard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 103–24Google Scholar. For French variations on republicanism, see Baker, Keith Michael, “Transformations of Classical Republicanism in Eighteenth-Century France,” The Journal of Modern History 73 (2001): 32–53Google Scholar.

101. Originally, as Rebecca Spang has argued, the revolutionaries felt the assignat to possess a more “real” value than specie precisely because it was bound up with land, the source of wealth. See Spang, Rebecca, “The Ghost of Law: Speculating on Money, Memory and Mississippi in the French Constituent Assembly,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques 31 (2005): 19–27Google Scholar.

102. Goldstein, Jan, The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 46Google Scholar. For the importance of anxieties about credit in the construction of postrevolutionary selves, see pages 46–52.

103. On Jacobin political economy during the Terror, see Feher, Fereno, The Frozen Revolution: An Essay on Jacobinism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

104. “Conseil des Anciens séance du 21 ventôse an V,” Moniteur universel. March 16, 1797, 702.

105. “Conseil des Anciens séance du 20 ventôse an V,” Moniteur universel, March 13, 1797, 692.

106. Ibid.

107. Scott, William, “The Pursuit of ‘Interests’ in the French Revolution: A Preliminary Survey,” French Historical Studies, 19 (1996): 811–51Google Scholar.

108. “Conseil des Anciens séance du 18 ventôse an V” Moniteur universel, March 12, 1797, 687.

109. Ibid.

110. Ibid.

111. “Conseil des Anciens séance du 21 ventôse an V,” Moniteur universel, March 16, 1797, 702.

112. “Conseil des Anciens séance du 22 ventôse an V,” Moniteur universel, March 17, 1797, 707.

113. For an analysis of this see Shovlin, Political Economy, 63–65.

114. On the meanings of honor among businessmen in the eighteenth century see Smail, John, “Credit, Risk, and Honor in Eighteenth-Century Commerce,” Journal of British Studies 44 (2005): 439–56Google Scholar.

115. “Conseil des Anciens séance du 18 ventôse an V,” Moniteur universel, March 12 1797, 687.

116. Ibid.

117. “Conseil des Ancien séance du 23 ventôse an V,” Moniteur universel, March 18, 1797, 710.

118. “Conseil des Anciens séance du 24 ventôse an V,” Moniteur universel, March 19, 1797, 716.

119. “Conseil des Anciens séance du 20 ventôse an V,” Moniteur universel, March 13, 1797, 692.

120. Ibid.

121. The Code de procedure civile (1807) and the Law of 13 September 1807, which regulated debt imprisonment for foreigners, provided additional explanations of contrainte par corps. “Loi relative à la contrainte par corps,”Bulletin des Lois an VI 1 semestre N.1795. Paris police reports indicate nearly universal approval for the re-establishment of contrainte par corps, especially in business quarters. The public voiced hope that conventional loans would soon receive similar security. “Rapport du Bureau central du 10 ventôse an V” (AN BB3 85) printed in François Victor Alphonse Aulard, Paris sous le consulat: Recueil de documents pour l'histoire de l'esprit public à Paris (Paris: Léopold Cerf, 1906), 3:773.

122. “Rapport des censeurs à l'assemblée generale des actionnaires de la Banque de France, 1803,” quoted in Bergeron, Louis, “Profits et risques dans les affaires parisiennes à l'époque du Directoire et du Consulat,” Annales historiques de la révolution française 185 (1966): 388Google Scholar.

123. See Code civil (art. 2059–2070) and Code de procédure (art. 126 and 127).

124. Code de commerce 1807 Livre 1, art. 1.

125. The Paris Chamber of Commerce pointed to contrainte par corps and fraudulent bankruptcy proceeding: “it is there rather than in corporations” that should provide answers to the problem. See Chambre de Commerce de Paris, Rapport sur les jurandes et maîtrises; et sur un projet de statuts et règlemens pour MM. les Marchands de vin de Paris (Paris: Chambre de Commerce de Paris, 1805), 99Google Scholar. Petitions, however, frequently used martial metaphors to argue for the reintroduction of guilds. A “négociant” named Vauchelet compared commerce to a “military force, beaten, dispersed; still soldiers but no longer an army…As soon as a strong hand comes to assemble the soldiers and reunite these different bodies under a single flag, everyone will again take his place, security will reign where there was disorder.” AN F 12 971 B. The AN F 12 971 series contains several such letters. See also AN F 12 501 A “Lettre du Vauchelet au Ministère de l'Interieur,” September 10, 1807. There was apparently a good deal of support for this position. See also 30 brumaire an X Rapport de la Prefecture de Police du 1 frimaire an X reprinted in Alphone Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, 2:619–21. On sentiment toward the guilds among Napoleon's elite see Sibalis, Michael, “Corporatism after the Corporations: The Debate on Restoring the Guilds under Napoleon I and the Restoration,” French Historical Studies 15 (1988): 718–30Google Scholar. For the continuing difficulty in regulating commerce without corporations and the role of the law in so doing, see Lemercier, Claire, “Discipliner le commerce sans corporations. La loi, le juge, l'arbitre et le commerçant à Paris au XIXe siècle,” Le Mouvement social, 224 (2008): 61–74Google Scholar.

126. Gorneau, Philippe-Joseph, Legras, Philippe and Roux, Vital, Révisions du projet de Code du Commerce, précédée de l'analyse raisonnée des observations du Tribunal de Cassation, des Tribunaux d'appel et Conseil de commerce, (Paris: Imprimerie de la République, 1803), 8Google Scholar. This was a hotly debated issue among the promulgators of the Code of Commerce. See, in particular, the minutes of their meetings in AN F 12 192 Procès–Verbaux Conseil général du Commerce XI-1806.

127. For subsequent elaboration on the legal categories covered by business and commercial law in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Hilaire, Jean, Introduction historique au droit commercial (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1986): 95–132Google Scholar. Tangi Noël notes that throughout the nineteenth century, the commercial tribunals had a much broader construction of the term commerçant than the criminal tribunals. See Noël, Tangi, “La notion de ‘commerçant’ d'après les procedures de faillite devant les tribunaux de commerce de Bretagne au XIXe siècle,” in Les Tribunaux de Commerce: Genèse et enjeux d'une institution (Paris: Association française pour l'histoire de la justice, 2007), 153–64Google Scholar. In AN F 12 2007, the minister of justice had been asked about the title commerçant and had said that this applied to “manufacturers, businessmen [négocians], merchants and bankers,” but not bakers, cobblers, tailors, woodworkers, and carriage and boat drivers, as they did not conduct commerce “properly speaking.” See “Note pour le Bureau du Commerce” (extract from Journal du commerce, October 22, 1809). However, given the number of the latter who were filing bankruptcies and would continue to do so throughout the century, this strict definition was not generally followed. See also Torre–Schaub, Marta, Essai sur la construction de la categorie de marché (Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 2002)Google Scholar.

128. See, for example, Lafosse, G. Touchard, De la contrainte par corps en matière civile et commerciale / par Loubens et G. Bourbon–Leblanc,.... Suivie de considérations... sur le même sujet (Paris: L'Huillier, 1826), 152–58Google Scholar.

129. de Bellemare, Louis, Tancrède de Chateaubrun (Paris: imprimerie de Dubuisson, 1855), 37–38Google Scholar.

130. See, for example, Gozlan, Léon, Nuits du Père La Chaise (Paris: A. Lemerle, 1845)Google Scholar; Xavier de Montépin Les Pécheresses. Pivoine (Paris: A. Cadot, 1849)Google Scholar; and Guérin, Eugène-Louis, Magdeleine la Repentie, roman intime (Paris: C. Lachapelle, 1837)Google Scholar.

131. “Les détenus pour dettes,” in Les français peints par eux-mêmes: encyclopédie morale du dix-neuvième siècle (Paris: L. Curmer, 1840–1842), 4:132Google Scholar.

132. Mayret, Jules, “La Nouvelle prison pour dettes,” in Paris, ou Le livre des cent et un (Paris: Ladvocat, 1831–1834), 15:336Google Scholar.

133. “Chambre des Pairs: Bulletin de 2 mars,” Journal des débats politiques et litérraires, March 3, 1818, 3.

134. “Chambre des Pairs séance du 14 mars 1821,” Moniteur universel, March 24, 1821, 398.

135. “Chambre des députés addition a la séance du 26 février 1816,” Moniteur universel, February 29, 1816, 230.

136. Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, April 9, 1826, 2.

137. See, in particular, Foelix, Jean-Jacques Gaspard, Commentaire sur la loi du 17 avril 1832 relative à la contrainte par corps (Paris: G. Pissin, 1832)Google Scholar.

138. “Senat: séance du 27 mars 1867,” Moniteur universel, March 28, 1867, 635. In addition, my own investigation of the file Archives Banque de France 1069200401/ 218 Dossier: Contentieux, which reveals the Bank's participation in a few bankruptcies in the early nineteenth century, contains no evidence of involvement with debtors' prison. This is hardly surprising, given that the Bank only discounted commercial paper with three signatures, the last of which was generally another bank. It is more probable that the governors were concerned about commercial paper taken in by small banks.

139. Archives de la Banque de France (ABF) 1069200401/ 218 Dossier: contrainte par corps N. 34 “Conseil général 19 june 1848–22 June 1848.”

140. Ibid.

141. The small business community in particular mobilized in favor of debtors' prison: in an 1867 vote, 35 of the 42 Parisian small trade associations wanted to maintain contrainte par corps, most of them voting unanimously. See Bertrand, Clément, Pourquoi la contrainte par corps doit etre aboli suivi de nos bons huissiers, curieux details!!! (Paris: Chez l'Auteur, 1867), 36Google Scholar. The upper ranks of the business community were divided on the issue in 1867. For example, of the prior three presidents of the Parisian commercial court, all distinguished businessmen, two opposed abolition while suggesting modifications to the extant legislation. Ibid, 882. “Senat: Rapport fait par M. le premier president de Royer, au nom de la commission chargée d'examiner la loi relative à la contrainte par corps,” Moniteur universel, July 6, 1867, 880.

142. “Senat: séance du jeudi 18 juillet 1867,” Moniteur universel, July 19, 1867, 977.

143. Ibid.

144. “Senat: seance du jeudi 18 juillet 1867,” Moniteur universel, July 19, 1867, 978.

145. Brolles, Aperçus nouveaux sur la Contrainte par corps son rétablissement ou suppression de la faillite (Paris: E. Dentu, 1868), 8Google Scholar.

146. Ibid.

147. Potier, P.-E., De la contrainte par corps sous le régime républicain (Paris: Chez l'Auteur, 1851), 11.Google Scholar

148. Ibid, 18.

149. Ibid.

150. Bayle–Mouillard, Jean-Baptiste, De l'Emprisonnement pour dettes (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1836), 94Google Scholar.

151. Stanziani, Alessandro, Rules of Exchange: French Capitalism in Comparative Perspective Eighteenth through Early Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 41Google Scholar.