Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern France, 1700-1860

The creation of free trade in France, and especially in the grain trade, came only through the most halting steps. In the eighteenth century, administrators crafted increasingly covert means to shape market processes even as they adopted liberal policies. In the early nineteenth century, which this book emphasizes, Napoleonic and Restoration officials and their successors developed hidden and finely-tuned strategies that allowed them to continue their intervention. By exploring those tactics, this book reveals how the state dominated the baking trades, influenced prices along supply lines, and amassed emergency stocks, thus effectively mastering this vital market.