Author : Judith A. Miller
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521621298
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (212 download)
Book Synopsis Mastering the Market by : Judith A. Miller
Download or read book Mastering the Market written by Judith A. Miller and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The grain trade, a crucial sector of the French economy, caused enormous concern throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Bread was the staple of French diets, so harvest shortfalls triggered unrest. The royal government had only the most scattershot and ineffective means to draw foodstuffs into restless cities. Successive regimes developed strategies to dominate the baking trades, influence prices along vital supply lines, and amass emergency stocks of grain that could meet months-long demand. As free trade ideologies developed, French administrators at both the national and local levels sought to reconcile these ideologies with the perceived need to control the market. They created increasingly hidden, and effective, means to shape the grain trade. Thus, the French state played an instrumental role in establishing a viable form of free trade.