Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Berkut]

France is four times the size of GB,

Maddison project database has France at 21 million pop in 1700 and 31 million in 1820
For Great Britain it is 8.5 million in 1700 and 21 million in 1820

Britain's pop has a big surge in the early industrial revolution; still I'd say 2X is more likely 4X in 1776.

I just googled each population in 1770. France was estimated at 26.4 million, and GB at 6.4 million.

[Jacob]

I just googled each population in 1770. France was estimated at 26.4 million, and GB at 6.4 million.

I think the ~6.5 million is for England & Wales. If you include Scotland then you get closer to 8 million.

This site has England + Wales + Scotland estimated at ~8.9 million in 1770: https://1841census.co.uk/1570-1750-estimated-population/

[viper37]

Any way you slice it, if GB can afford to engage in the American War without breaking their society, then France should be able to help the Americans out in that war without breaking theirs, if the problem was simply financial. Surely the cost for GB to fight the American War was an order of magnitude greater then France's cost to simply help out, right. Although its not like there is any apple to apples way to compare, is there?

Of course, it was NOT simply financial. France was broken, and trying to help out the Americans is not what broke them.

Again, from 1792 through 1815 they engaged in a series of truly massive wars that dwarfed the expenditures they made for the American Revolution just a decade or so earlier. Now, it's not like those wars weren't bankrupting as well, but the sheer scale difference, IMO, makes it pretty clear that the cost of the American war was entirely sustainable by France had they had a political system that was able to leverage their nations resources more in line with what GB was able to accomplish in that timeframe, much less how they were able to leverage their resources just a decade later themselves.

Great Britain won the Seven Years Wars.  France lost it.

Great Britain was trying to pass on the cost of the war to its colonies, some of it rebelled.
France did not have any colonies to offset its costs.
France got out of the war with its navy in shambles and had to rebuild it.  GB still had its navy.
France fought a continental war a decade earlier, GB paid Prussia to fight on its behalf.  Prussia was no longer a threat to anyone in 1776 either.

The problem for France was the lack of a colonial empire.  Losing it broke France.  St-Pierre et Miquelon might have been great for cod fishing, but it wasn't comparable to India and what it brought Great Britain.

[Berkut]

The problem for France was a broken political system, not a "lack of colonial empire".

[Razgovory]

I seem to recall France conquering most of Europe in this time period.

[grumbler]

France was not broken in 1775.  It was deeply in debt, but at levels it had sustained and recovered from in the past, and it was recovering again (bar the disastrous crop of 1770, which set back recovery).  The 50% increase in debt from 1777-1783 broke France, though.  Unlike the Seven Years' War, which France financed mostly through bonds, the American Revolution was financed by direct loans, since the bond market was tapped out.  The direct loans were much more costly, both directly and because the government had to provide collateral or other sureties (like handing over tax collection to the loaner).

France may have been able to survive either the Seven Years' War debt or the AWR debt, but trying to pay both broke the French financial system.  It's worth noting that France had no central bank through which to get loans or repay debts, unlike the fairly efficient British one.  Britain was able to mobilize its finances much better than France. 

[grumbler]

It was not the lack of Empire that caused the French financial crisis.  Louis XIV vastly expanded the French Empire and still had a financial crisis.

[viper37]

I seem to recall France conquering most of Europe in this time period.

You recall wrongly. 

The revolutionary wars were 1792-1802.  Napoleon became first consul in 1799.  He sold Louisiana in 1803, after the soldiers sent to reconquer Haiti, and later British territories were decimated by yellow fever.

Different political regime, different army organization, different motivations (France was really on the defensive), and war was fought, at first, mostly in Europe (Egypt and the Caribeans came later, IIRC), not everywhere in the world, so that was much less costly.

Winning wars is generally positive.  Losing them is costly.

[viper37]

It was not the lack of Empire that caused the French financial crisis.  Louis XIV vastly expanded the French Empire and still had a financial crisis.

But France still managed to keep its head above water.  Louis XVI couldn't anymore, and then he took on more debt and didn't make much commercial gains. France did not regain new colonies in 1783, nor did it expand it trade network.

The tax base was not expanded, and the commercial trade was not expanded.  There was no way from France to recuperate its losses from the 7YW + the American Revolution without any drastic changes if it didn't have a colonial empire.

[Berkut]

It was not the lack of Empire that caused the French financial crisis.  Louis XIV vastly expanded the French Empire and still had a financial crisis.

But France still managed to keep its head above water.  Louis XVI couldn't anymore, and then he took on more debt and didn't make much commercial gains. France did not regain new colonies in 1783, nor did it expand it trade network.

The tax base was not expanded, and the commercial trade was not expanded.  There was no way from France to recuperate its losses from the 7YW + the American Revolution without any drastic changes if it didn't have a colonial empire.

But with drastic change, it was able to do so. 

The problem wasn't that they couldn't do that "drastic change" bit. If they could the debt from the American war was bearable.

[Razgovory]

I seem to recall France conquering most of Europe in this time period.

You recall wrongly.

The revolutionary wars were 1792-1802.  Napoleon became first consul in 1799.  He sold Louisiana in 1803, after the soldiers sent to reconquer Haiti, and later British territories were decimated by yellow fever.

Different political regime, different army organization, different motivations (France was really on the defensive), and war was fought, at first, mostly in Europe (Egypt and the Caribeans came later, IIRC), not everywhere in the world, so that was much less costly.

Winning wars is generally positive.  Losing them is costly.

Different political regime... 

[The Minsky Moment]

I just googled each population in 1770. France was estimated at 26.4 million, and GB at 6.4 million.

The GBR number is far too low - it was higher than that in 1700.
The Maddison project uses this book as it source: Broadberry, S.N., B. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton and B. van Leeuwen (2015), British Economic Growth 1270-1870 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
I have not read it but it purports to be the most recent study of population and macro indicators in pre 1850 Britain.


EDIT: The Maddison/Broadberry figures must be including Ireland in the total. 

[Berkut]

I have no real care whether the number is 6 million or 10 million. My point stands either way.

[Oexmelin]

Re: American Revolution, French fiscal policy and empire - there's a lot of nuance and nitpicks and more general points of disagreement I could go over, but, succinctly:

* The War of American Independance was perhaps the only war of the 18th century that France had properly planned. There had been a dynamic shipbuilding  programme; stocks had been  purchased well in advance. Yet, the costs ballooned out of control - considerably beyond, quid pro quo, what the Seven Years War had cost. A few historians point to the later reformations of the 1770s, which placed the "civilian" administration of the Navy (i.e., those responsible for financial control) firmly under military control (i.e., those for whom money was no object). The explanation  has some merit.

* One of the main issues of the 1780s was indeed the problem of taxation - which, itself, had little to do with mercantilism (a term that is considerably less useful than its widespread use in historical textbooks suggests). France was getting richer. That wealth, however, wasn't getting to the Treasury. To get to that wealth required negotiating the privileges of the nobility, the church, but also the Provinces and others "corporations" (political entities, not joint-stock companies). Renegotiating these privileges opened up a can of worms for the monarchy, and crystalized a lot of grievances that had been mounting throughout the 18th century, especially around seigneurial dues.

* In that regard, therefore, Berkut's point about the systemic problems of France - i.e., the issue of renegotiating privileges, is sound. It was indeed a systemic problem, with no easy answer. This wasn't an issue of "figuring out how to run a Nation". Framing it as such is half-anachronistic. No one in the 18th century thought of Crowns, or Kingdoms, as tabula rasae that could be reorganized. Yet, the political transformations of the 18th century (shorthand: "Enlightenment") increasingly pushed people in that direction. The American example was but one of many: European reformers looked with great interest to Poland and Corsica, for instance, as worthwile thought experiment (along  with those drawn from Ancient Rome and Greece). Again, the American "model" was quite limited - and the prosperity of American merchants was quite relative, compared to the wealth of Caribbean planters (and French Caribbean planters) or even, compared to the wealth of the richest French merchants. It was nothing that inspiring. What the American case offered was a set of interesting political concepts to play

* It is indubitable that it is the immediate pressures of the War of American Independance that made the issue one needed to be dealt with the utmost urgency. Historically, French kings were quite able to play one region's privilege against another. Extract taxes and concessions from one region, and use troops to crush uprisings in an other. This was no longer possible in the climate of the 18th century. We could argue whether such a strategy could have worked, if the pressures of the War of American Independance had been managed over longer periods of time, or had been lessened by lower costs.

* Because it's an issue over short-term, and long-term debt and taxation, I find it difficult (and quite artificial) to claim it's either strictly a political or strictly an economic issue.

[The Minsky Moment]

One of the problems with mercantilism as a conceptual historical label is that it means different things at different times.  In the mid-20th century and in some present day historical and policy arguments, it is used as a synonym for trade protection; in the late 19th century it roughly referred to policies perceived as "cheating" the "rules of the game" of the international gold standard, and in 17th/18th century it refers roughly to a set of policies and practices that has no direct present day complement but could probably best analogized to what we would call monetary policy.