Trade Shock, Rural Protests, and Political Behaviour in Revolutionary Normandy
In 1787, the implementation of the Eden Agreement marked a pivotal moment in the history of trade between France and England. It introduced a competitive trade system by reducing customs duties on manufactured goods. In the short run, many manufacturers were unable to withstand the competition from English products and went bankrupt. In this paper, we investigate the socio-economic consequences of the Eden Agreement, focusing on its impacts on Normandy, one of France’s most industrialised regions, renowned for its textile production. Because of the newfound competitive trade, the imports of cotton textiles from England surged while local textile production dwindled. The repercussions of this economic upheaval quickly spread through Normandy. Rising unemployment and vagrancy contributed to heightened social conflict. To address these questions, we assemble a new dataset at the parish level gathering information on their socio-economic characteristics. We complement these data with a new database on the diffusion of industries prior to the French Revolution (c. 1780). It contains information on the location, type, and intensity of industrial activity. We link these data with information on social conflict, the complaints raised in cahiers de doléances, and political behaviour during the French Revolution. We document how the Eden Agreement translated into a significant economic shock in parishes which specialised around textile production. We show that they had significantly more food riots after 1786 than their counterparts. They further reported more grievances about the consequences of the Eden Treaty in the cahiers de doléances and were more likely to complain about high staple prices.
Cédric Chambru is an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at the École normale supérieure de Lyon and a member of the Center for Economic Research on Governance, Inequality and Conflict (CERGIC)
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