Continuity and change
The political history of 18th-century France can be conceptualized in terms of the double heritage and the problems it entailed. The discussion may be linked to two issues: first, the economic transformation of a traditional and essentially agricultural society by both commerce and ideas; and, second, the state’s efforts (and eventual inability) to modernize and unify its structure and purpose to encompass the changed economic and cultural expectations of the nation’s elites.
In contrast to the France of Louis XIV’s grand siècle (“great century”), beset by economic stagnation and periodic food shortages, 18th-century France enjoyed a climate of growing prosperity, fueled in part by a sustained rise in population. The kingdom’s population, which had barely grown at all during the years 1500 to 1700, increased from approximately 20 million at the end of Louis XIV’s reign to about 28 million by 1789. Better preventive medicine, a decline in infant mortality, and the near disappearance of widespread famine after 1709 all served to increase the population. Birth rates continued to be very high, despite both a traditional pattern of late marriage (men on the average at age 27, women at 24 or 25) and the beginnings of the practice of birth control, the effect of which was to become evident only after the Revolution. The yearly number of deaths per 10,000 fell from about 400 in 1750 to 350 in 1775, 328 in 1790, and 298 in 1800. The increased population meant more mouths to feed but also more consumers, more workers seeking employment, and more opportunities for investment; in short, every aspect of French life was affected.
Agricultural patterns
In its basic organization, French agriculture continued its age-old patterns. This contrasted starkly with England, where new agricultural techniques as well as major changes in the control of land—convertible husbandry (a progressive form of land use that did away with the wasteful fallowing of land every two or three years) and the enclosure movement (which made possible the consolidation of small parcels of land into large farms fenced off from use by the rest of the community)—were beginning to cause an agricultural revolution. In France there was no significant enclosure movement, despite enabling legislation that allowed the division of some common lands in 1767 and again in 1773. Communal patterns of planting—very common in northern France, where a three-field system ordinarily prevailed—were not suspended. Modest improvements in farming techniques and the introduction of new crops such as corn (maize) and potatoes allowed French farms to feed the country’s growing population. The increased number of peasants led to further subdivision of land and greater competition for leases; the economic benefits of agricultural growth went mostly to landlords and the small minority of prosperous peasants. In fact, the economic status of many peasants deteriorated markedly in the 18th century; perhaps as many as one-third of them were sporadically indigent, though there was no decline in the peasants’ share of the land. In 1789 French peasants still owned about one-third of the arable land, most of it in small plots of less than 10 acres (4 hectares); nobles owned about one-fifth of the land, the church one-sixth, and bourgeois landlords about one-third.