The bet was daring – to tell the history of France in 500 pages using the tools of an economist – but it was won. L’Economic history of France by Charles Serfaty (Combined Past, 528 pages, 27 euros) is certainly more on the side of the story than the latest state of knowledge of economic science on the immense mass of subjects that such an ambitious objective imposes: the fall of Roman Empire, the rise of Europe in the Middle Ages before its “great crisis” of the 14th centurye century, the birth of taxation and nation states, the sudden growth of the West from the 18the century, colonial expansion and the first “globalization”, the economic crises and the wars of the 20th centurye century, the second globalization, and even the contemporary crises of debt, climate, deindustrialization…
The amount of information, data and analyzes collected in this book is phenomenal, as evidenced by the notes at the end of the volume, especially from a young (31 year old) economist at the Banque de France, certainly from Normale. , a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and disciple of the late Daniel Cohen, which perhaps explains his disinhibition in the face of academic caution. Which many will no doubt blame him for.
To present this gigantic subject, the author has indeed chosen to stick as closely as possible to what everyone has learned from their primary school history textbook. It is a real pleasure to read an “economic” explanation of images from Epinal such as the vase of Soissons, Saint Louis rendering justice under his oak, Sully and the hen in the pot, etc. The choice of a chronological story, punctuated by a very traditional division – Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, classical age, revolutions, contemporary France – makes reading easier. We can thus content ourselves with nibbling on pieces of a work which can remain on the bedside table for a long time, without any damage: there is no risk of losing the thread, since there really isn’t any.
Big data and the Roman Empire
Some might indeed have feared – or hoped, depending on your point of view – that the author had chosen to join the wave of the return to the “national narrative” to tell the marvelous story of the construction of eternal France, since “ our ancestors the Gauls” to the contemporary struggle of France against the winds of globalization. There are a few shortcuts, like “the historical particularity of France is that the State built society and then, gradually, the nation”but the author rather avoids hasty generalizations.
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