------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (May 2007)

Jeff Horn, _The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization and in the 
Age of Revolution_. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. ix + 383 pp. $45 
(cloth), ISBN: 0-262-08352-3.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Noel D. Johnson, Department of Economics, 
Hobart and William Smith Colleges.


The subject of Jeff Horn's well researched new book is the _Path Not 
Taken_ by France into the industrial world. In nine exhaustive 
chapters Horn, an associate professor at Manhattan College, argues 
his thesis: that far from being an incompetent imitator of the 
"British" model of industrial success, France pursued its own path to 
industrialization. For Horn, the defining event that led to the 
unique French path was the Revolution and the "threat from below" 
that it magnified. The credible threat of popular violence in France 
resulted in the government being unable to repress working class 
opposition to liberal economic reforms and technological innovation 
as the British did. As a result, industrialization in France 
proceeded along a path characterized by greater state intervention in 
the economy, mediating between the interests of labor and capital. 
The book will appeal most to a specialist audience already somewhat 
familiar with the France vs. Britain "retardation-stagnation," 
"revisionist," and finally, "anti-revisionist" debate. Horn, a 
"revisionist," takes the refreshing approach of avoiding discussion 
of the macroeconomic variables which are the bread and butter of 
these arguments. Instead, his important contribution is to focus on 
the relationship between politics and industrial policy. The book 
makes a fundamental contribution by placing the political events of 
the Revolution at the center of the explanation for the divergent 
paths of British and French industrialization.

Horn's argument can be usefully separated into three parts: The path 
of French industrialization at the end of the Old Regime, the impact 
of the Revolution on this path, and finally, the lasting impact of 
the Revolution on industrial policy in the following decades. After 
framing the argument, he launches into a discussion of industrial 
policy before the Revolution. In Chapter 2 on the attempted reforms 
of the corporations Horn argues that the Bourbon government was aware 
of what was going on across the Channel. Far from being tied to 
traditional methods of production, ministers actively attempted to 
introduce reforms that emulated what they perceived to be British 
industrial policy. Horn rightly points out that the French perception 
of British free markets efficiently allocating resources, a la the 
_Wealth of Nations_, was off target. The discussion of the gradual 
chipping away of privilege begun by Turgot in 1776 and never quite 
completed until 1791 is a welcome contribution to a subject often 
glossed over by economic historians. It is clear that the French 
Monarchy wanted to steer the state in a different direction, what 
requires greater understanding is what forces prevented it from 
making the turn. Horn argues vehemently that the government's 
attempts to eliminate corporate privilege foundered because of 
resistance by entrepreneurs who were fearful of what workers would do 
if new technology (Horn focuses on machinery) was introduced into the 
workshop. This emphasis on French fear of a "threat from below" is a 
major theme of the book, but it seems one-sided in this context. 
Surely, the state was constrained by both labor and capital during 
eighteenth century? Research by John Bosher, David Bien, and Hilton 
Root, among many others, has made clear the connection between 
privilege and the finances of the Bourbon Monarchy. Is it reasonable 
to think that the only reason these privileged corps feared change 
was because of a threat of popular violence? Perhaps they also simply 
wanted to protect their rents?

Chapter 3 on the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1786 also does an 
effective job at arguing for the active role of bureaucrats, 
inventors, and some entrepreneurs in trying to steer France towards a 
more "British" industrial policy. This is useful ammunition against 
those who would claim that the French were hamstrung by a preference 
for "traditional" modes of production. The vigor with which the 
French pursued the Commercial Treaty, and the attempts by the 
government to enforce its provisions, constitute excellent evidence 
to this effect. Nonetheless, Horn at times confuses the _desires_ of 
certain Old Regime players to introduce liberalizing reforms with the 
_effectiveness_ of these attempts. For example, Horn discusses the 
views of John Holker, the inspecteur general des Manufactures 
???trang???res, concerning the possibilities of mechanizing spinning in 
Normandy. Holker's views on eliminating regulations that blocked the 
introduction of new methods are excellent evidence of the desire for 
reform in France. However, Holker's suggestion that the lack of 
fast-running streams to provide power could be made up for by "fast 
moving horses" seems to epitomize the problem facing French policy 
makers trying to allocate resources without the benefit of British 
style institutions. Horn's conclusion on page 87 that the "British 
model" of industrialization was off to a "promising" start in France 
before the Revolution seems to ignore the very constraints he so 
carefully elucidates in the previous seventy pages.

In Chapter 4 Horn discusses labor militancy and machine breaking in 
Britain and France in detail. His evidence on labor uprisings in both 
countries is compelling. One of the main differences between the two 
movements was that, while labor militancy was more pronounced in 
Britain up to 1789, the Revolution cast French machine breaking in an 
understandably more radical light. The key question posed by this 
evidence is, "Why was there no revolution in Great Britain at the end 
of the eighteenth century?" Again, Horn's single-minded pursuit of 
the thesis that the "threat from below" was the source of the 
divergent path of the French state prevents him from attacking the 
question of why this threat existed in France and not in Britain. His 
evidence suggests that labor militancy was worse in eighteenth 
century Britain than in France, requiring "massive repression" of the 
working class by the English state. If England and France were on 
similar paths during the years leading up to the Revolution, why was 
the English state capable of quelling rebellion, whereas the French 
state seemed to cave in? There must be more to the story than labor.

Chapter 5 and 6 explicitly deal with the impact of the Revolution on 
industrial policy. The institutions which Bourbon ministers had been 
trying to reform since Turgot were finally disassembled by the 
Revolutionaries. The Allard law suppressing corporations and the Le 
Chapelier law forbidding coalitions were both passed in 1791. With 
these vestiges gone, the path was finally open for the government to 
follow the British path to industrial success. However, the crisis 
years of 1793-1795 instead compelled the government to impose a 
command economy in order ensure that food and armaments were 
available to defeat the First Coalition. In the long run, this state 
of affairs could not persist and by 1800 a middle path between the 
government intervention of 1793-1795 and the more "liberal" policies 
of the British was being laid by ministers such as Jean-Antoine 
Chaptal. Chaptal and others recognized that French entrepreneurs 
possessed the industrial technology to compete with the British, 
however, they also recognized that existing institutions did not 
create the incentives to use this technology. Horn's discussion of 
carding technology is very helpful in illustrating this point. To 
make the classical distinction, given the institutions that were 
inherited from the more radical phases of the Revolution, in 1800 the 
French had the inventions they needed to compete, but not the 
incentives to innovate. Chaptal and others attempted to fill this 
void by actively promoting technology through specialized schools, 
prizes, tax free enterprise zones, protective tariffs, and industrial 
expositions.

Horn's discussion in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 on the influence of the 
"Chaptalian Compromise" between state intervention and Laissez Faire 
is a valuable contribution. He correctly points out that it would be 
unreasonable to think that the French would want to compete directly 
with the British in aftermath of the Revolution. There was a role for 
the state to play in getting French industry back on its feet. Horn's 
discussion of the extent of smuggling during the years of the 
Continental System and after is, as he states, evidence that 
entrepreneurs resisted the intervention of the state. His 
interpretation of this widespread smuggling as evidence that 
industrialization does not always proceed under the rules of laissez 
faire is interesting. Though, I wonder whether the correct 
counterfactual should be, "Would France have industrialized more 
quickly under a different set of rules?" Horn, presumably, would 
answer this question in the negative, pointing to the ever-present 
"threat from below" that made it impossible to impose discipline on 
the workforce without significant government intervention. Again, 
though, I am not satisfied by the emphasis on labor. Horn's own 
discussion of the abandonment of Napoleon's liberal labor policies is 
instructive. We are told that, "... workers increasingly left 
employers who imposed or enforced the high degree of industrial 
discipline deemed necessary to maximize the efficiency of production" 
(p. 204). However, at the same time, "... many entrepreneurs pressed 
to find competent and disciplined laborers, simply stole them from 
others with promises of higher wages and better conditions" (p. 204). 
Sounds like a well-functioning market that is redistributing surplus 
from capital to labor. Unsurprisingly, "... vociferous complaints 
from entrepreneurs all over France prompted the government to 
intervene in the name of international competitiveness" (p. 204). The 
government responded to complaints from entrepreneurs by 
reintroducing restrictions on labor mobility and wages. This sounds 
remarkably like a "threat from above" rather than a threat from 
below. It is entirely possible that labor would have been a lot less 
threatening if entrepreneurs did not collude with the state to keep 
their wages low.

The _Path Not Taken_ fills an important void in research on French 
industrialization. Jeff Horn is to be congratulated for tackling a 
question often avoided by researchers, the relationship between 
political change and economic growth. While I have reservations 
concerning some of his conclusions, the story Horn outlines is 
compelling. Hopefully, this book will set a precedent and more 
researchers will find the courage to incorporate the Revolution, 
along with its formidably complex political history, into their 
investigations of French industrialization.


Noel D. Johnson is a visiting assistant professor of economics at the 
Hobart and William Smith Colleges. His most recent work on the 
Company of General Farms in seventeenth century France was published 
in the _Journal of Economic History_. He also does empirical research 
on the process of institutional change, which was presented most 
recently at the meetings of the American Economics Association.

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