Description
Book SynopsisA new edition of Kaplan’s landmark study on eighteenth-century French political economy, reissued with a new Foreword by Sophus A. Reinert. Based on research in all the Parisian depots and more than fifty departmental archives and specialized and municipal libraries, Kaplan’s classic work constitutes a major contribution to the study of the subsistence problem before the French Revolution and the political economy of deregulatory reform. Anthem Press is proud to reissue this path breaking work together with a significant new historiographic companion volume by the author, “The Stakes of Regulation: Perspectives on ‘Bread, Politics and Political Economy’ Forty Years Later.”
Trade Review“Broadly conceived, richly detailed, thoroughly researched in the national and local archives, and generously larded with suggestions for future study, this is a piece of work that must delight and inform any student of France under the Old Regime. It is likely to remain, for many years to come, the definitive work on the subject.” —Keith M. Baker, Stanford University
“This is a book of social history that renews the old political history. It is an economist’s investigation that raises questions about collective psychology, mentalities, and levels of culture … [a work of] erudite virtuosity … a great work.” —Daniel Roche, Collège de France
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations; Foreword to the Second Edition; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. The Police of Provisioning; 2. The Regulations and the Regulators; 3. The Origins of Liberty; 4. The Response to Liberalization: Theory and Practice; 5. Forcing Grain to be Free: The Government Holds the Line; 6. The Reforms and the Grain Trade; 7. Paris; 8. The Royal Trump; 9. The Government, the Parlements, and the Battle over Liberty: I; 10. The Government, the Parlements, and the Battle over Liberty: II; 11. From Political Economy to Police: The Return to Apprehensive Paternalism; 12. Policing the General Subsistence, 1771–1774; 13. The King’s Grain and the Retreat from Liberalization; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index
