Labour, Science and Technology in France, 1500–1620
Labour, Science and Technology in France, 1500–1620
For a generation, the history of the ancien régime has been written from the perspective of the Annales school, with its emphasis on the role of long-term economic and cultural factors in shaping the development of early modern France. In this detailed 1995 study, Henry Heller challenges such a paradigm and assembles a huge range of information about technical innovation and ideas of improvement in sixteenth-century France. Emphasising the role of state intervention in the economy, the development of science and technology, and recent research into early modern proto-industrialisation, Heller counters notions of a France mired in an archaic, determinist mentalité. Despite the tides of religious fanaticism and seigneurial reaction, the period of the religious wars saw a surprising degree of economic, technological and scientific innovation, making possible the consolidation of capitalism in French society during the reign of Henri IV.
- Deals with pre-seventeenth-century French industry, a virtually unknown area
- Challenges prevailing Annales approach to French history
- Reinterprets the age of the religious wars as much more progressive than previously thought
Product details
May 2002Paperback
9780521893800
272 pages
231 × 157 × 17 mm
0.44kg
6 b/w illus. 1 map
Available
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Table of Contents
- 1. The expansion of Parisian merchant capital
- 2. Labour in Paris in the sixteenth century
- 3. Civil war and economic experiments
- 4. Inventions and science in the reign of Charles IX
- 5. Expropriation, technology and wage labour
- 6. The Bourbon economic restoration
- 7. Braudel, Le Roy Ladurie and the inertia of history.
