Profits du commerce intercontinental et croissance dans la France du xviiie siècle

Abstract

pour mesurer la quantité annuelle de profits dégagée par ce secteur. En prenant en compte les utilisations alternatives des moyens de production qu'il utilisait, je calcule le gain net qui peut lui être attribué. Finalement, je propose une méthode originale pour mesurer son rôle qui s'appuie sur la notion de « coeur de croissance ». Cet article montre que les profits du commerce intercontinental ont pu avoir une bien plus grande importance que ne le suggère leur valeur agrégée.

SWEET BUSINESS: QUANTIFYING THE VALUE ADDED IN THE BRITISH COLONIAL SUGAR TRADE IN THE 18THCENTURY

“…Previous scholars have largely discredited the argument that the slave trade provided any «super-profits», that is, very much higher profits than in other sectors of the economy, at least not in the 18 th century. The evidence does, however, show that the profits in those parts of the trade that have been studied previously were at least as high as in similarly risky investments elsewhere (Ward 1978; Daudin 2004; Daudin 2005).…”

“…In the 18 th century, French production on Saint Domingue would, for example, grow rapidly. Most importantly, however, Portugal was the first European nation to start large-scale production of sugar, in colonial Brazil, and continued to be a major producer of sugar throughout the early modern period (Arruda 1991; Curtin 1998; Schwartz 2004; Daudin 2005; Ebert 2008). So far, there are no studies showing how important the 18 th -century sugar commodity chain was relative to these economies, respectively, but it seems reasonable to assume that its importance was often quite substantial, at least in a case such as Portugal.…”

“…Many of the previous contributions in this field have thus focused on one part of this trade: the economic profits from the slave trade in particular, and the extent to which they contributed to Britain's industrial development (Engerman 1972; O'Brien 1982; Solow and Engerman 1987; Solow 1991; Morgan 2000; Inikori 2002; Daudin 2004; Daudin 2005). Joseph Inikori has, however, recently argued that the profits from the slave trade or even from the plantation complex were not the only — and perhaps not even the primary — means by which early modern Britain gained economically from possessing colonies in the Americas and the Caribbean.…”

L’histoire immobile?A reappraisal of French economic growth using the demand-side approach, 1280–1850

“…We have used three sources for estimating the ratio between agricultural production and domestic consumption of agricultural goods (r). The first is Arnould (1791) which reports significant pieces of information, recently re-proposed by Léon (1974) and Daudin (2012), about the sectoral distribution of foreign trade at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Arnould identifies four sectors, namely colonial consumption goods and slaves, raw materials, other agricultural goods, and industrial commodities including drinks.…”

Financing Long-Distance Trade: The Joint Liability Rule and Bills of Exchange in Eighteenth-Century France

“…In order to test the role played by JLR in mitigating problems of asymmetric information, I created a new dataset from the business records of Maison Roux, a French merchant house in Marseille. Marseille was one of the largest commercial centers in eighteenth-century France and dominated French trade in the Mediterranean, accounting for more than 35 percent of all French imports in the 1780s (Daudin 2005). Founded in 1728 as the successor of the Maison Bruny, Maison Roux initially specialized in the shipping and commission business of a vast array of commodities such as coffee, sugar, ivory, textiles, olive oil, soap, cod, and wine, amassing a commercial network that reached into more than 216 cities in France and 11 countries and colonies across Europe, the Levant, North Africa, French Caribbean, and South America (Carrière 1973, 1976).…”