WEBVTT NOTE 8. French Mercantilist Thought in the 17th Century 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:15.960 Chapter 8. French Mercantilist Thought in the Seventeenth Century 2 00:00:15.960 --> 00:00:22.200 1. Building the Ruling Elite 3 00:00:22.200 --> 00:00:28.600 The system of mercantilism needed no high-flown theory to get launched. It came naturally 4 00:00:28.600 --> 00:00:32.760 to the ruling castes of the burgeoning nation states. 5 00:00:32.760 --> 00:00:40.200 The King, seconded by the nobility, favored high government expenditures, military conquests, 6 00:00:40.200 --> 00:00:46.040 and high taxes to build up their common and individual power and wealth. 7 00:00:46.040 --> 00:00:52.520 The King naturally favored alliances with nobles and with cartelizing and monopoly guilds 8 00:00:52.520 --> 00:00:59.360 and Companies, for these built up his political power through alliances, and his revenue through 9 00:00:59.360 --> 00:01:03.480 sales and fees from the beneficiaries. 10 00:01:03.480 --> 00:01:09.240 Neither did the cartelizing companies need much of a theory to come out in favor of themselves 11 00:01:09.240 --> 00:01:12.520 acquiring monopoly privilege. 12 00:01:12.520 --> 00:01:18.840 Subsidy to export, keeping out of imports, needed no theory either, nor did increasing 13 00:01:18.840 --> 00:01:25.560 Supplying the supply of money and credit to the kings, nobles or favored business groups. 14 00:01:25.560 --> 00:01:31.880 Neither did the famous urge of mercantilists to build up the supply of bullion in the country. 15 00:01:31.880 --> 00:01:38.680 That supply, in effect, meant increased bullion flowing into the coffers of kings, nobles 16 00:01:38.680 --> 00:01:41.660 and monopoly export companies. 17 00:01:41.660 --> 00:01:48.040 And who does not want the supply of money in their pockets to rise? 18 00:01:48.040 --> 00:01:55.700 Theory came later. Theory came either to sell to the deluded masses the necessity and benevolence 19 00:01:55.700 --> 00:02:01.840 of the new system, or to sell to the king the particular scheme being promoted by the 20 00:02:01.840 --> 00:02:10.420 pamphleteer or his confrères. Mercantilist theory was a set of rationales designed to 21 00:02:10.420 --> 00:02:16.860 uphold or expand particular vested economic interests. 22 00:02:16.860 --> 00:02:22.420 Many twentieth century historians have lauded the mercantilists for their proto-Keynesian 23 00:02:22.420 --> 00:02:30.920 concern for full employment, thus showing allegedly surprising modern tendencies. 24 00:02:30.920 --> 00:02:39.180 It should be stressed, however, that the mercantilist concern for full employment was scarcely humanitarian. 25 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:46.580 On the contrary, their desire was to stamp out idleness and to force the idle, the vagrant, 26 00:02:46.580 --> 00:02:53.540 of the Sturdy Beggars to Work. In short, for the mercantilists, full employment frankly 27 00:02:53.540 --> 00:03:02.780 implied its logical corollary, forced labor. Thus in 1545 the sturdy beggars of Paris were 28 00:03:02.780 --> 00:03:10.300 forced to work for long hours, and two years later, to take away all opportunity for idleness 29 00:03:10.300 --> 00:03:18.380 from the Healthy, all women able but unwilling to work were whipped and driven out of Paris, 30 00:03:18.380 --> 00:03:24.340 while all men in the same category were sent to the galleys as slave labor. 31 00:03:24.340 --> 00:03:31.220 The class basis of this mercantilist horror of idleness should be instantly noted. 32 00:03:31.220 --> 00:03:38.220 The nobility and the clergy, for example, were scarcely concerned with their own idleness. 33 00:03:38.220 --> 00:03:44.740 It was only that of the lower classes that must be ended by any means necessary. 34 00:03:44.740 --> 00:03:49.500 The same is true of the privileged merchants of the third estate. 35 00:03:49.500 --> 00:03:56.220 The thinly veiled excuse was the necessity of increasing the productivity of the nation. 36 00:03:56.220 --> 00:04:03.180 But these classes constituted the ruling elite, and such forced ending of idleness, whether 37 00:04:03.180 --> 00:04:09.020 on Public Works or in Private Production was a boon to the rulers. 38 00:04:09.020 --> 00:04:15.700 It not only increased production for the latter's benefit, it also lowered wage rates by adding 39 00:04:15.700 --> 00:04:20.260 to the supply of labor by coercion. 40 00:04:20.260 --> 00:04:26.860 Thus at the meeting of the States General, the parliamentary body of France, in 1576, 41 00:04:26.860 --> 00:04:31.700 all three estates united in their call for forced labor. 42 00:04:31.700 --> 00:04:37.540 The clergy urged that no idle person be allowed or tolerated. 43 00:04:37.540 --> 00:04:43.900 The third estate wanted sturdy beggars to be put to work, whipped or exiled. 44 00:04:43.900 --> 00:04:50.340 The nobles urged that sturdy beggars and idlers be forced to work and whipped if they refused 45 00:04:50.340 --> 00:04:52.180 to comply. 46 00:04:52.180 --> 00:04:58.020 The same states general made their special pleading all too painfully clear in the matter 47 00:04:58.020 --> 00:05:00.640 of protective tariffs. 48 00:05:00.640 --> 00:05:06.580 The Estates called for the prohibition of imports of all manufactured goods and the 49 00:05:06.580 --> 00:05:10.020 export of all raw materials. 50 00:05:10.020 --> 00:05:16.240 The purpose of both measures was to throw a wall of monopoly protection around domestic 51 00:05:16.240 --> 00:05:23.540 manufacturers and to force producers of raw materials to sell their goods to those domestic 52 00:05:23.540 --> 00:05:27.760 businesses at an artificially low price. 53 00:05:27.760 --> 00:05:34.960 The excuse that such measures were necessary to keep bullion, or money, at home would seem 54 00:05:34.960 --> 00:05:39.040 patently absurd to any objective person. 55 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:44.980 For if French consumers are to be prevented from buying imports in order to safeguard 56 00:05:44.980 --> 00:05:48.920 their bullion, what might happen otherwise? 57 00:05:48.920 --> 00:05:54.800 Was there really any danger of Frenchmen sending all their bullion abroad and keeping none 58 00:05:54.800 --> 00:05:57.240 for themselves? 59 00:05:57.240 --> 00:06:00.200 Obviously such an event would be absurd. 60 00:06:00.200 --> 00:06:07.520 But even if it happened, the worst-case scenario, there is an evident hard maximum limit to 61 00:06:07.520 --> 00:06:11.100 any outflow of bullion from home. 62 00:06:11.100 --> 00:06:17.280 For where are the consumers bent on further importation going to get more bullion? 63 00:06:17.280 --> 00:06:22.320 Clearly, only by exporting other products abroad. 64 00:06:22.320 --> 00:06:33.320 Consequently, the keeping-money-at-home argument is patently fraudulent, whether in 17th century France or in the 20th century United States. 65 00:06:33.320 --> 00:06:41.320 The states general were interested in protecting certain French industries, period. 66 00:06:41.320 --> 00:06:51.320 The keeping-money-at-home argument was also a convenient stick to beat foreign businessmen or financiers who could out-compete natives. 67 00:06:51.320 --> 00:06:59.240 Thus the prospect of German bankers and Italian financiers flourishing in France gave rise 68 00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:07.800 to paroxysms of fury at the ill-gotten gains of foreigners taking money out of the country. 69 00:07:07.800 --> 00:07:14.640 Fury that was, of course, fed by the typically mercantilist egregious Montaigne fallacy that 70 00:07:14.640 --> 00:07:21.980 But one man's, or one nation's, gain on the market was, ipso facto, another man's, or 71 00:07:21.980 --> 00:07:28.940 nation's, loss. These disgruntled Frenchmen often suggested that foreign financiers be 72 00:07:28.940 --> 00:07:35.460 expelled from the country, but the kings were typically too bogged down in debt to afford 73 00:07:35.460 --> 00:07:38.160 such counsel. 74 00:07:38.160 --> 00:07:40.720 2. 75 00:07:40.720 --> 00:07:47.420 The First Major French Mercantilist, Barthélemy de Lafamma 76 00:07:47.420 --> 00:07:56.620 The first French mercantilist of note was Barthélemy de Lafamma, 1545-1612, an uneducated 77 00:07:56.620 --> 00:08:04.640 son of a very poor Protestant family in Dauphiné. All his life he was the servitor of Henry 78 00:08:04.640 --> 00:08:12.280 Henry of Navarre, the Protestant Pretender, rising in 1582 to the exalted post of honorary 79 00:08:12.280 --> 00:08:15.820 tailor and valet to his master. 80 00:08:15.820 --> 00:08:22.500 When Henry of Navarre became King Henry IV, Lafamasse's fortune was made, and he became 81 00:08:22.500 --> 00:08:29.620 in 1601 Comptroller General of Commerce and head of the Commission of Commerce, to remain 82 00:08:29.620 --> 00:08:32.900 so until the King's death. 83 00:08:32.900 --> 00:08:40.100 Like a devoted dog who dies shortly after his master, Lafamma, now broken in power, died 84 00:08:40.100 --> 00:08:44.780 a year after Henry was assassinated in 1610. 85 00:08:44.780 --> 00:08:50.820 Lafamma comes to our attention because of the literally dozens of excrably written pamphlets 86 00:08:50.820 --> 00:08:57.260 he produced during his decades in power, on behalf of the mercantile system which he was 87 00:08:57.260 --> 00:09:00.060 helping to put into place in France. 88 00:09:00.060 --> 00:09:10.060 Laphama's focal point, his criterion for numerous economic policies, was whether or not they brought bullion into the kingdom. 89 00:09:10.060 --> 00:09:18.060 But note that these views need not necessarily be interpreted as dim-witted reliance on money as wealth, 90 00:09:18.060 --> 00:09:26.060 for when Laphama wrote that gold and silver were the sinews and support of kingdoms and monarchies, 91 00:09:26.060 --> 00:09:31.860 The True Matter and Substance Which Maintains the State Against Enemies. 92 00:09:31.860 --> 00:09:34.640 He was, of course, quite right. 93 00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:40.180 The more money kings can amass from their subjects, the wealthier and more powerful 94 00:09:40.180 --> 00:09:42.080 they would become. 95 00:09:42.080 --> 00:09:45.740 There is nothing odd or fallacious about that. 96 00:09:45.740 --> 00:09:51.780 The fallacy existed, should the argument be taken seriously, for anyone who identified 97 00:09:51.780 --> 00:09:57.280 The King's Interest with that of all of French society. 98 00:09:57.280 --> 00:10:03.180 The one spark of economic intelligence here came with the fact that Lafamard was one of 99 00:10:03.180 --> 00:10:10.460 the first mercantilists to shrewdly advise the king not to directly prohibit the export 100 00:10:10.460 --> 00:10:12.420 of bullion. 101 00:10:12.420 --> 00:10:19.020 Far better, he believed, to allow bullion to flow in and out of the country freely and 102 00:10:19.020 --> 00:10:25.780 and then strictly regulate commerce and industry in such a way that bullion would flow into 103 00:10:25.780 --> 00:10:28.340 the country. 104 00:10:28.340 --> 00:10:33.980 Apart from that, Lafamard's economic advice was a dreary litany. 105 00:10:33.980 --> 00:10:36.860 Prohibit all manufactured imports. 106 00:10:36.860 --> 00:10:43.060 Prohibit fares which drained money out of the kingdom and into the hands of foreigners. 107 00:10:43.060 --> 00:10:49.900 Forced merchants to buy only raw materials abroad and not manufacturers, prohibit the 108 00:10:49.900 --> 00:10:53.140 export of raw materials. 109 00:10:53.140 --> 00:10:59.300 Guilds must be revived and used to regulate all urban work and to keep up the quality 110 00:10:59.300 --> 00:11:01.340 of products. 111 00:11:01.340 --> 00:11:07.480 Committees of masters should supervise guilds, a bureau of manufacturers should supervise 112 00:11:07.480 --> 00:11:12.020 them and so on up to the royal court. 113 00:11:12.020 --> 00:11:18.680 Promoting the usual mercantilist cant, Lafamma assured agriculture that it would benefit, 114 00:11:18.680 --> 00:11:24.540 not suffer, from the establishment of protected manufacturers, since these would supply a 115 00:11:24.540 --> 00:11:32.500 home market for farm products. That this would be a highly inefficient and costly home market, 116 00:11:32.500 --> 00:11:39.900 Lafamma did not bother to add. Everyone who opposed his views, according to Lafamma, was 117 00:11:39.900 --> 00:11:51.940 All who disobeyed the regulations and prohibitions should suffer confiscation of their goods, 118 00:11:51.940 --> 00:11:54.780 as well as death. 119 00:11:54.780 --> 00:12:01.660 Like most of his mercantilist confraers, Barthélemy de la Fama was enamored of the idea of full 120 00:12:01.660 --> 00:12:06.060 employment and the eradication of idleness. 121 00:12:06.060 --> 00:12:12.260 Full employment, of course, meant coerced employment, and Lafamard called for an end 122 00:12:12.260 --> 00:12:19.180 to idleness by putting the idle to work, the reluctant to be forced into it by chains and 123 00:12:19.180 --> 00:12:20.980 prisons. 124 00:12:20.980 --> 00:12:27.540 Taverns and cabarets were to be severely restricted, and confirmed drunkards arrested and put into 125 00:12:27.540 --> 00:12:30.580 the pillory. 126 00:12:30.580 --> 00:12:37.100 Humanism begins by trying to ensure national self-sufficiency in goods that can be made 127 00:12:37.100 --> 00:12:45.260 at home, and then continues by expanding the definition of what can indeed be made. 128 00:12:45.260 --> 00:12:52.500 For when profitability on the market is abandoned as a criterion, virtually every good in creation 129 00:12:52.500 --> 00:12:56.640 can be made, at some cost, at home. 130 00:12:56.640 --> 00:13:02.600 If Americans wanted to, they could undoubtedly grow all their bananas in hothouses in Maine 131 00:13:02.600 --> 00:13:06.400 or Montana at astronomical cost. 132 00:13:06.400 --> 00:13:13.680 But what would be the point, apart from subsidies to a few privileged hothouse growers? 133 00:13:13.680 --> 00:13:19.800 One of Barthélemy de la Femasse's daftest projects, which, as Comptroller General, 134 00:13:19.800 --> 00:13:25.500 he did his best to put into effect, was to make France self-sufficient in one of her 135 00:13:25.500 --> 00:13:33.180 for Favorite Luxury Imports, Silks. Many of his pamphlets and practical efforts were devoted 136 00:13:33.180 --> 00:13:40.100 to force-feeding an enormous expansion of the French silk industry, hitherto small and 137 00:13:40.100 --> 00:13:47.340 confined to the south of France. Lafamard insisted that the climate of France was ideal 138 00:13:47.340 --> 00:13:54.420 for raising silkworms. Any belief to the contrary, any subversive talk that France was largely 139 00:13:54.420 --> 00:14:04.260 was merely propaganda spread by the evil designs of certain French merchants, retailers of 140 00:14:04.260 --> 00:14:06.540 foreign silks. 141 00:14:06.540 --> 00:14:13.340 Lafamard pointed to his own successful silk-growing, to King Henry's planting of mulberry trees 142 00:14:13.340 --> 00:14:16.260 on which silkworms were fed. 143 00:14:16.260 --> 00:14:22.980 He advocated a law compelling all property owners, including the clergy and monasteries, 144 00:14:22.980 --> 00:14:27.420 to plant two or three mulberry trees per acre. 145 00:14:27.420 --> 00:14:33.300 He painted a beautiful picture of vast profits that were sure to flow from mulberry trees 146 00:14:33.300 --> 00:14:35.940 and silk culture. 147 00:14:35.940 --> 00:14:40.800 Lafamma also claimed magical medicinal properties for mulberries. 148 00:14:40.800 --> 00:14:46.860 They would cure toothache and stomach trouble, relieve burns, chase away vermin, and be an 149 00:14:46.860 --> 00:14:50.100 antidote to poisons. 150 00:14:50.100 --> 00:14:55.860 Even though Lafamard persuaded the king to pour hundreds of thousands of livres into 151 00:14:55.860 --> 00:15:01.980 fostering the growth of mulberry trees and silk culture, and the king duly ordered each 152 00:15:01.980 --> 00:15:09.580 diocese in France to establish a nursery of 50,000 mulberries, the great silk experiment 153 00:15:09.580 --> 00:15:12.320 proved an abject failure. 154 00:15:12.320 --> 00:15:19.020 The climate of most of France indeed proved inhospitable, a product of hard reality rather 155 00:15:19.020 --> 00:15:47.060 La Fama's main, if not only, disciple was his son Isaac. At the tender age of 19, young 156 00:15:47.060 --> 00:15:57.180 Isaac de la Fama, 1587-1657, keen to become the heir of his powerful father in every sense, 157 00:15:57.180 --> 00:16:05.180 published A History of Commerce in France, 1606. The history was scarcely a memorable 158 00:16:05.180 --> 00:16:10.800 work, distinguished mainly for the fawning praise which he lavished upon his father and 159 00:16:10.800 --> 00:16:18.120 on King Henry and on the slavish repetition of his father's patnotions and nostrums. 160 00:16:18.120 --> 00:16:24.560 The tone of this work may be gauged from the fact that Isaac lauded Henry IV as the source 161 00:16:24.560 --> 00:16:27.720 of all that is good in France. 162 00:16:27.720 --> 00:16:33.580 Addressing his majesty, young Isaac wrote that heaven has favored my father in having 163 00:16:33.580 --> 00:16:37.440 him live during your reign. 164 00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:42.680 With the fall of his father from grace and his subsequent death, Isaac's career as a 165 00:16:42.680 --> 00:16:49.180 political economist came to an untimely end, and he ended his days as a minor but faithful 166 00:16:49.180 --> 00:16:54.280 lieutenant of the chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu. 167 00:16:54.280 --> 00:16:56.960 3. 168 00:16:56.960 --> 00:17:02.780 The First Colbert, the Duc de Sully 169 00:17:02.780 --> 00:17:10.100 That Jean-Baptiste Colbert would be in the last half of the 17th century to Louis XIV, 170 00:17:10.100 --> 00:17:21.620 Maximilien de Bétune, Baron de Rony, the Duke de Sully, 1560-1641, was to Henry IV. 171 00:17:21.620 --> 00:17:29.920 The young Bétune was born a Huguenot aristocrat, Baron de Rony. Naturally, he too gravitated 172 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:36.500 to the court of Henry of Navarre and fought and was wounded during the religious wars. 173 00:17:36.500 --> 00:17:42.240 It is characteristic of Rony that he urged Henry IV to turn Catholic in order to save 174 00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:47.720 his throne, although he himself refused to do so. 175 00:17:47.720 --> 00:17:54.200 The arrogant and ruthless Rony quickly became Henry IV's leading minister as superintendent 176 00:17:54.200 --> 00:18:01.800 of Finance, and, for his services, was made by his master, the duke de Sully. Sully's 177 00:18:01.800 --> 00:18:09.800 own views stem from his memoirs, 1638, written in old age as a glowing apologia for his 178 00:18:09.800 --> 00:18:17.400 own term in office, for Sully had been forcibly retired to private life after the assassination 179 00:18:17.400 --> 00:18:19.960 of His Royal Patron. 180 00:18:19.960 --> 00:18:26.060 In his memoirs, Sully claims to have opposed the more crackpot schemes of his fellow top 181 00:18:26.060 --> 00:18:29.200 bureaucrat, Lafamard. 182 00:18:29.200 --> 00:18:34.920 Thus he writes at length of his opposition to Lafamard's silk fiasco. 183 00:18:34.920 --> 00:18:40.060 Silk could not readily grow in the French climate, he had warned, and also it would 184 00:18:40.060 --> 00:18:44.120 lead Frenchmen into undue luxury. 185 00:18:44.120 --> 00:18:50.120 It is not, of course, that Sully was not a mercantilist. It is just that, instead of 186 00:18:50.120 --> 00:18:56.720 proceeding with the folly of force-feeding domestic luxury industries, such as silk, 187 00:18:56.720 --> 00:19:03.440 he would have passed laws directly against luxurious consumption. He was eager to ban 188 00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:10.120 the export of gold and silver directly, paying fees to himself and others for ferreting out 189 00:19:10.120 --> 00:19:12.600 without evaders of the law. 190 00:19:12.600 --> 00:19:17.960 Some of his specific views, of course, such as on the silk scheme, might be a rewriting 191 00:19:17.960 --> 00:19:22.760 of history to make himself look good to contemporaries. 192 00:19:22.760 --> 00:19:29.880 After all, neither Laphama nor King Henry were then alive to verify his recollections. 193 00:19:29.880 --> 00:19:36.640 Others might be simply the product of bureaucratic infighting with his fellow economic czar. 194 00:19:36.640 --> 00:19:44.340 A dedicated absolutist, who indeed did much to entrench centralized absolutism in France, 195 00:19:44.340 --> 00:19:51.260 the Duc de Sully was basically as much a protectionist as his colleague Lafamard, despite the claim 196 00:19:51.260 --> 00:19:58.160 of some historians that Sully and his monarch was some sort of free trader. 197 00:19:58.160 --> 00:20:04.520 The one significant case where Sully opposed a Lafamard protection scheme was the latter's 198 00:20:04.520 --> 00:20:12.040 Sully's proposal to ban all imports of textiles. But here, the basic reason was his loyalty 199 00:20:12.040 --> 00:20:18.340 to the city of Lyon, the leading Protestant stronghold in southeastern France, which would 200 00:20:18.340 --> 00:20:24.840 have suffered greatly from the prohibition of such trade. Throughout his career, Sully 201 00:20:24.840 --> 00:20:30.040 fought to uphold the fortunes and privileges of Lyon. 202 00:20:30.040 --> 00:20:37.700 4. The Eccentric Poet, Antoine de Montcretien 203 00:20:37.700 --> 00:20:42.760 One of the most bizarre characters in the history of economic thought was the poet and 204 00:20:42.760 --> 00:20:54.480 dramatist Antoine de Montcretien, circa 1575 to 1621. Born in Falaise, in Normandy, Montcretien 205 00:20:54.480 --> 00:21:00.560 He grew up in a middle-class household, his father probably having been an apothecary. 206 00:21:00.560 --> 00:21:06.920 He went to a fashionable school at Caen and at the age of 20 began to write poetry and 207 00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:14.320 tragic plays, some of which, including Hector and Les Cossais, are still considered classics 208 00:21:14.320 --> 00:21:16.680 of French literature. 209 00:21:16.680 --> 00:21:23.100 At 30, Montcretien became involved in a scandalous duel and fled to England. 210 00:21:23.100 --> 00:21:29.500 After traveling in Holland, he returned to France around 1610 and married a rich Norman 211 00:21:29.500 --> 00:21:33.380 widow, who financed his start in the hardware business. 212 00:21:33.380 --> 00:21:41.140 He thereupon set up a factory at Ousson-sur-Loire, where he produced knives and scythes. 213 00:21:41.140 --> 00:21:50.540 In 1615, at the age of 40, Antoine de Montcretien published his one and only work on economics, 214 00:21:50.540 --> 00:21:53.600 The Treatise on Political Economy 215 00:21:53.600 --> 00:21:58.700 The only distinction of this book was its title, for it was the first time in history 216 00:21:58.700 --> 00:22:03.500 that the phrase political economy had ever appeared. 217 00:22:03.500 --> 00:22:09.740 The treatise is a rambling, disorganized account of the economic resources of the country, 218 00:22:09.740 --> 00:22:16.940 and a plea to the twin rulers of France, the young King Louis XIII and his regent and queen 219 00:22:16.940 --> 00:22:24.380 and Mother Marie de Medici to impose order, rule with an iron hand and advance the greatness 220 00:22:24.380 --> 00:22:27.580 of their nation state, France. 221 00:22:27.580 --> 00:22:33.420 As Charles Cole puts it, the book is based in large part on the tacit assumption that 222 00:22:33.420 --> 00:22:39.220 control and direction of the economic life of the country is one of the chief functions 223 00:22:39.220 --> 00:22:45.300 of government, and it is a plea for greater activity in economic matters on the part of 224 00:22:45.300 --> 00:22:52.340 of the Rulers. One sentence from the work will convey its essential spirit. Your Majesties 225 00:22:52.340 --> 00:22:59.140 possess a great state, agreeable in geographic situation, abounding in wealth, flourishing 226 00:22:59.140 --> 00:23:07.420 in peoples, powerful in good and strong cities, invincible in arms, triumphant in glory. All 227 00:23:07.420 --> 00:23:15.980 All France needs, Moncrétien opined, is order. Order is the Antelike of states. 228 00:23:15.980 --> 00:23:22.460 The alleged need for a state-imposed order was linked neatly with Moncrétien's conscious 229 00:23:22.460 --> 00:23:30.560 echoing of the Montaigne fallacy. It is said that no one ever loses without another gaining. 230 00:23:30.560 --> 00:23:37.340 This is true, and is borne out in the realm of commerce more than anywhere else. 231 00:23:37.340 --> 00:23:43.800 For Montcretillon, the French Crown in particular was supposed to regulate and foster production 232 00:23:43.800 --> 00:23:51.680 and trade, and especially manufacturers, so that France could become self-sufficient. 233 00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:56.380 Foreign goods and foreign manufacturers should be driven out of France. 234 00:23:56.380 --> 00:24:02.680 Thus, Dutch linen manufacturers were at the time allowed to operate in France. 235 00:24:02.680 --> 00:24:04.460 That must be ended. 236 00:24:04.460 --> 00:24:07.220 English textiles should be banned. 237 00:24:07.220 --> 00:24:13.540 France must be made self-sufficient in silk, Moncretien asserted, and he claimed that the 238 00:24:13.540 --> 00:24:20.960 fiasco of silk subsidy in the reign of Henry IV had come about only because of faithlessness 239 00:24:20.960 --> 00:24:23.900 on the part of the monarch's aides. 240 00:24:23.900 --> 00:24:30.960 Furthermore, since whatever is foreign corrupts us, foreign books should be prohibited, since 241 00:24:30.960 --> 00:24:35.720 Since they poison our spirits and corrupt our manners. 242 00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:40.120 Nor did Montcretien neglect his own scythe business. 243 00:24:40.120 --> 00:24:47.000 It was a national tragedy, he warned, that German scythes were outcompeting French products, 244 00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:50.680 even though French scythes were superior. 245 00:24:50.680 --> 00:24:57.040 One wonders, then, why French consumers were perverse enough to prefer the German product, 246 00:24:57.040 --> 00:25:01.520 Unless, of course, its price was lower. 247 00:25:01.520 --> 00:25:08.800 Idleness, according to Montcretien, was evil and had to be stamped out by force if necessary. 248 00:25:08.800 --> 00:25:15.080 Man, to Montcretien, is born to live in continual labor. 249 00:25:15.080 --> 00:25:20.640 The policy of the State should therefore be to make sure that no part of the population 250 00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:23.200 ever remains idle. 251 00:25:23.200 --> 00:25:26.160 The devil's hands are the devil's hands. 252 00:25:26.160 --> 00:25:30.960 Idleness corrupts the strength of men and the chastity of women. 253 00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:34.620 Idleness, in short, is the mother of all sins. 254 00:25:34.620 --> 00:25:39.520 The criminals and the unruly should, therefore, be made to work. 255 00:25:39.520 --> 00:25:46.480 As for so many other mercantilists, full employment for Montcretien meant, at bottom, coerced 256 00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:48.960 employment. 257 00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:56.000 The most pervasive motif in Montcretien's work was his deep and abiding hatred and revulsion 258 00:25:56.000 --> 00:26:01.440 toward foreigners, toward their imported products and toward their persons. 259 00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:08.200 Foreigners, he fulminated, are leeches who attach themselves to this great French body, 260 00:26:08.200 --> 00:26:16.040 suck out its best blood and gorge themselves with it, then leave the skin and detach themselves. 261 00:26:16.040 --> 00:26:24.480 All in all, France, once so pure, so clean, had been turned into a bilge, a sewer, a cesspool 262 00:26:24.480 --> 00:26:27.240 for other countries. 263 00:26:27.240 --> 00:26:33.680 It is impossible to know if Montcretien was hoping for great things from the French monarch, 264 00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:40.080 but in any case nothing happened, and so he began to ordain himself into the nobility 265 00:26:40.080 --> 00:26:44.940 by simply calling himself the sur de vaudeville. 266 00:26:44.940 --> 00:26:50.780 And even though he implied in several spots in his treatise that he was Catholic and declared 267 00:26:50.780 --> 00:26:57.580 his adoration for the absolute monarchy often enough, yet he took part in a Huguenot uprising 268 00:26:57.580 --> 00:27:03.020 in Normandy in 1621 and was killed in battle. 269 00:27:03.020 --> 00:27:09.780 Four days later, a judicial tribunal condemned the dead man posthumously, dragged, broke 270 00:27:09.780 --> 00:27:27.180 5. 271 00:27:27.180 --> 00:27:32.480 The Grandiose Failure of François de Noyer 272 00:27:32.480 --> 00:27:37.140 François de Noyer, Sûr de Saint-Martin, had a dream. 273 00:27:37.140 --> 00:27:40.340 It was a grandiose vision of the future. 274 00:27:40.340 --> 00:27:46.260 All around him, in the early seventeenth century, and in all major nations of the West, the 275 00:27:46.260 --> 00:27:49.460 state was creating monopoly companies. 276 00:27:49.460 --> 00:27:53.580 Then why not, Du Noyer reasoned, go all the way? 277 00:27:53.580 --> 00:28:00.220 If monopoly companies for specific products or specific areas of trade were good, why not 278 00:28:00.220 --> 00:28:01.840 go one better? 279 00:28:01.840 --> 00:28:08.920 Why Not One Big Company, One Gigantic Monopoly for Virtually Everything 280 00:28:08.920 --> 00:28:13.580 King Henry IV listened to Du Noyer's schemes with interest. 281 00:28:13.580 --> 00:28:19.440 They were, after all, only logical conclusions of doctrines and notions that were everywhere 282 00:28:19.440 --> 00:28:21.140 in the air. 283 00:28:21.140 --> 00:28:28.200 But it was not until 1613 that Du Noyer worked out his plan in detail and set it before the 284 00:28:28.200 --> 00:28:30.280 Council of State. 285 00:28:30.280 --> 00:28:37.600 It was to be an enormous, virtually all-inclusive company, to be called the French Royal Company 286 00:28:37.600 --> 00:28:41.000 of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem. 287 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:47.040 The company, to be headed, of course, by Du Noyer himself, was to have either a privileged 288 00:28:47.040 --> 00:28:53.760 monopoly or the right to regulate all other firms in virtually every trade. 289 00:28:53.760 --> 00:29:00.880 Thus, the Royal Company was to make cloth and regulate all other manufacture and preparation 290 00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:08.720 of all types of cloth, control all aspects of winemaking, and all merchants and hotels 291 00:29:08.720 --> 00:29:16.320 buying wine would have to invest certain sums in the company at a low fixed return, hold 292 00:29:16.320 --> 00:29:23.240 Hold four privileged fairs a year in Paris, have a monopoly of all public coaches, control 293 00:29:23.240 --> 00:29:31.880 all mines in France, obtain gratis various unoccupied crown lands and abandoned quarries, 294 00:29:31.880 --> 00:29:39.520 dig canals, erect mills, have a monopoly on sale of playing cards, make munitions, borrow 295 00:29:39.520 --> 00:29:43.720 and lend money, and numerous other activities. 296 00:29:43.720 --> 00:29:50.720 Furthermore, Du Noyer would have the Royal Company obtain extraordinary powers from the Crown. 297 00:29:50.720 --> 00:29:59.720 It would have the right to seize beggars and vagabonds and take them to the French colonies, which it would presumably run. 298 00:29:59.720 --> 00:30:05.720 All convicted criminals would be sentenced to forced labor for the Company in the colonies. 299 00:30:05.720 --> 00:30:15.220 All bankrupts who had managed to save some money from their wreckage would be forced to invest that amount in the company. 300 00:30:15.220 --> 00:30:24.220 All people exiled from France could be let back into the country by serving or paying money to the company. 301 00:30:24.220 --> 00:30:31.720 All who conducted trade higher than their rank or privileges would be forced to join the company. 302 00:30:31.720 --> 00:30:39.720 All business documents whatsoever would have to use stamped paper sold to them by the company. 303 00:30:39.720 --> 00:30:47.720 The Council of State was impressed by Dunoyet's vision and ordered an investigation of the project. 304 00:30:47.720 --> 00:30:54.720 The following year, 1614, the Royal Company Plan was approved by the States General of France, 305 00:30:54.720 --> 00:31:00.720 and various generals, admirals and other high-level officials joined in the praise. 306 00:31:00.720 --> 00:31:08.000 Dunoyet reached the peak of his influence, being given the old Lafima post of Comptroller 307 00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:15.680 General of Commerce. It seemed as if the grandiloquent Royal Company Plan was actually going to be 308 00:31:15.680 --> 00:31:21.760 adopted. Dunoyet elaborated on his plan in a pamphlet which he presented to the King 309 00:31:21.760 --> 00:31:41.760 The King, or rather the regent, Marie de' Medici, was impressed, and in 1616 recreated the old Commission of Commerce, formerly headed by Lafama, with instructions to study the Du Noyer project in detail. 310 00:31:41.760 --> 00:31:54.760 The Commission met, and the following year approved the plan of the Royal Company, and urged that all persons carrying on trade be forced to invest their money exclusively in it. 311 00:31:54.760 --> 00:32:01.760 In short, the Royal Company would be the monopoly company to end all companies. 312 00:32:01.760 --> 00:32:14.360 The delighted Dunoyet, in the meanwhile, seeing his cherished scheme close to fruition, published a longer pamphlet on the plan, urging his one big company upon France. 313 00:32:14.360 --> 00:32:24.360 Like the king himself, the royal company would be unique and universal, and its capital would come from both private and royal sources. 314 00:32:24.360 --> 00:32:40.360 The Royal Company project seemed to keep barreling along, the Council of State granting its approval in 1618 and again in 1620, when King Louis XIII himself gave it his warm endorsement. 315 00:32:40.360 --> 00:32:52.360 In early 1621, public criers throughout Paris announced the glad tidings that the Royal Company had been formed and was open to receive funds for investment. 316 00:32:52.360 --> 00:33:07.360 The problem, however, was money. No one seemed to want to provide actual cash or even pledges to the new enterprise, however grandiloquent and privileged it appeared to be. 317 00:33:07.360 --> 00:33:15.360 The King urged every city in France to join, but the cities kept hanging back, pleading that they had no funds. 318 00:33:15.360 --> 00:33:28.360 In desperation, Comptroller General of Commerce Du Noyer scaled down the Royal Company to concentrate only on commerce and trade with the Indies and other overseas areas. 319 00:33:28.360 --> 00:33:41.360 Finally, Du Noyer narrowed the scope of his beloved company's capital still further to just Paris and Brittany, but even the Bretons proved not to be interested. 320 00:33:41.360 --> 00:33:50.860 The coming to power as Prime Minister of Cardinal Richelieu in 1624 put the Du Noyer scheme into abeyance. 321 00:33:50.860 --> 00:33:54.860 But four years later, the project had its final fling. 322 00:33:54.860 --> 00:34:02.860 The King urged the Commission of Commerce to act, and in the spring of 1629 it again approved the plan, 323 00:34:02.860 --> 00:34:09.860 this time adding to its original grandiose powers the right to make treaties with foreign countries 324 00:34:09.860 --> 00:34:14.860 and to establish colonial islands for entrepot trade. 325 00:34:14.860 --> 00:34:23.860 After nearly three decades of planning and lobbying, Du Noyer now needed only the simple signature of King Louis 326 00:34:23.860 --> 00:34:26.860 to put his hypertrophied vision into effect. 327 00:34:26.860 --> 00:34:30.860 But, for some reason, the royal signature never came. 328 00:34:30.860 --> 00:34:32.860 No one knows quite why. 329 00:34:32.860 --> 00:34:38.860 Perhaps the powerful Rishu didn't want a rival scheme to be approved. 330 00:34:38.860 --> 00:34:45.860 or perhaps the king was getting weary of the aging monomaniac and his untiring enthusiasm. 331 00:34:46.860 --> 00:34:51.860 Repeated entreaties and importuning, however, fell only on deaf ears. 332 00:34:52.860 --> 00:35:00.860 The royal company was, at last, dead, stillborn, and old Du Noyer's loss was the French public's gain. 333 00:35:03.860 --> 00:35:06.860 6. Under the Rule of the Cardinals 334 00:35:06.860 --> 00:35:12.420 Cardinals 1624-1661 335 00:35:12.420 --> 00:35:20.260 The 1620s to the 1650s were decades of rule in France by two very secular cardinals. 336 00:35:20.260 --> 00:35:27.780 The first was the stern, implacable, cunning and charismatic Armand Jean de Plessis, Cardinal 337 00:35:27.780 --> 00:35:32.860 de Richelieu, 1585-1642. 338 00:35:32.860 --> 00:35:39.620 A scion of an old family of lesser nobility and poitou, Richelieu's father, François, 339 00:35:39.620 --> 00:35:46.260 had been a particular favorite of Henry III and Henry IV. As a result, young Armand was 340 00:35:46.260 --> 00:35:53.940 made bishop of Lucent by Henry IV in 1606. Eight years later, Richelieu attracted the 341 00:35:53.940 --> 00:36:00.860 attention of the Queen Mother, Marie de Medici, and became chief advisor in her exile. He 342 00:36:00.860 --> 00:36:10.860 He was made a cardinal in 1622 and became prime minister in 1624, to remain so until his death 20 years later. 343 00:36:10.860 --> 00:36:22.860 Richelieu's main interest was his participation in the Thirty Years' War, 1618 to 1648, which devastated Germany for decades to come. 344 00:36:22.860 --> 00:36:35.860 This war symbolized a fundamental shift in European wars from the strictly religious conflicts of the previous century to the political nation-state ambitions of the 17th century. 345 00:36:35.860 --> 00:36:52.860 Thus Richelieu, the at least nominally Catholic, albeit politique, cardinal of a Catholic country, found himself heading a largely Protestant European coalition against the Catholic Habsburgs of Austria and Spain. 346 00:36:52.860 --> 00:37:05.860 The Cardinal's theoretical views were set forth in two books written near the end of his life, his Memoirs on the Reign of Louis XIII and his Political Testament. 347 00:37:05.860 --> 00:37:15.860 While his major practical interest had not been domestic or economic affairs, he had helped build up the absolutism of the French state. 348 00:37:15.860 --> 00:37:22.860 In his works, he repeated the usual absolutist mercantilist views of the France of his era. 349 00:37:22.860 --> 00:37:30.860 France should be self-sufficient in all things, the navy and merchant marine built up, monopolies granted, 350 00:37:30.860 --> 00:37:37.860 the idol put to work or locked up in institutions, and luxurious consumption prohibited. 351 00:37:37.860 --> 00:37:44.860 An interesting new variant was Richelieu's candid attitude toward the mass of Frenchmen 352 00:37:44.860 --> 00:37:49.860 Richelieu added the revealing comment that it is necessary for the French state to be 353 00:37:49.860 --> 00:37:54.860 as simple as animals, to be prodded or coerced in ways that were optimal for the French state. 354 00:37:54.860 --> 00:37:59.860 Thus taxes should not be so high that commerce and industry are discouraged, but neither 355 00:37:59.860 --> 00:38:04.860 should they be so low as to leave the public too well off. For if the people were too comfortable 356 00:38:04.860 --> 00:38:09.860 and complacent, it would be impossible to contain them in the rules of their duty. 357 00:38:09.860 --> 00:38:17.380 Richelieu added the revealing comment that it is necessary to compare them, the people, 358 00:38:17.380 --> 00:38:25.900 to mules, who, being accustomed to burdens, are spoiled by a long rest more than by work. 359 00:38:25.900 --> 00:38:30.540 It is clear that in the course of promoting the interests of the nation-state and of his 360 00:38:30.540 --> 00:38:35.140 monarch, Richelieu did not neglect his own concerns. 361 00:38:35.140 --> 00:38:42.260 A receiver of a modest annual income of 25,000 livres upon his entry into the post of Prime 362 00:38:42.260 --> 00:38:43.620 Minister. 363 00:38:43.620 --> 00:38:49.820 By the end of his career in office, Cardinal Richelieu was earning some 3 million livres 364 00:38:49.820 --> 00:38:52.060 per annum. 365 00:38:52.060 --> 00:38:56.820 Apparently the Cardinal had no problem in serving the enrichment of his sovereign and 366 00:38:56.820 --> 00:38:59.540 of himself at the same time. 367 00:38:59.540 --> 00:39:06.060 Richelieu's successor was a fascinating character, a Sicilian whose father was a high official 368 00:39:06.060 --> 00:39:09.220 attached to the powerful Colonna family. 369 00:39:09.220 --> 00:39:17.900 Jules Mazarin, 1602-1661, was educated in Rome by the Jesuits and then became a church 370 00:39:17.900 --> 00:39:22.340 official at the University of Alcala in Spain. 371 00:39:22.340 --> 00:39:28.100 Returning to Rome to earn his doctorate in law, Mazarin was a captain of infantry and 372 00:39:28.100 --> 00:39:30.900 and then a papal diplomat of note. 373 00:39:30.900 --> 00:39:35.380 He was made a church canon without ever having been a priest. 374 00:39:35.380 --> 00:39:41.340 While serving as papal nuncio to France, he gained the favor of the great Richelieu, who 375 00:39:41.340 --> 00:39:48.620 offered Mazarin a high official post if he should become a naturalized French citizen. 376 00:39:48.620 --> 00:39:54.460 It is not many men who emigrate, become a citizen of another land, as Mazarin did in 377 00:39:54.460 --> 00:40:01.220 in 1639, and then become Prime Minister of that country only three years later. 378 00:40:01.220 --> 00:40:08.500 Mazarin, however, achieved that feat, becoming Cardinal, still without being a priest, in 379 00:40:08.500 --> 00:40:14.740 1641, and succeeding Richelieu when the latter died a year later. 380 00:40:14.740 --> 00:40:21.020 Mazarin was shrewd enough to court the favor of the Queen, so that when Louis XIII died 381 00:40:21.020 --> 00:40:28.700 the next year and the Queen became regent, Maserat could continue in his powerful post. 382 00:40:28.700 --> 00:40:34.460 Except for a year or two's hiatus, Maserat continued as prime minister until his death 383 00:40:34.460 --> 00:40:37.780 in 1661. 384 00:40:37.780 --> 00:40:44.700 Maserat had far less interest in economic affairs than his predecessor and was no theoretician, 385 00:40:44.700 --> 00:40:48.820 devoting himself largely to diplomacy and war. 386 00:40:48.820 --> 00:40:54.620 He didn't need much theoretical insight, however, to amass a fortune in high office that put 387 00:40:54.620 --> 00:41:00.980 even his predecessor to shame. By the end of his rule, he had accumulated an immense 388 00:41:00.980 --> 00:41:06.540 personal fortune of approximately 50 million livres. 389 00:41:06.540 --> 00:41:13.820 One noteworthy work written during Mazarin's term was by a Carmelite monk, Jean Ayon, whose 390 00:41:13.820 --> 00:41:20.940 Hayek's religious name was Matthias de Saint-Jean, circa 1600 to 1681. 391 00:41:20.940 --> 00:41:27.420 Hayon was born in Saint-Malo in Brittany and became a friend and advisor of the governor 392 00:41:27.420 --> 00:41:32.900 of Brittany, a relative of Richelieu's, Marshal de la Mélaraie. 393 00:41:32.900 --> 00:41:39.260 Hayon eventually became Carmelite provincial in Turenne and refused the opportunity to 394 00:41:39.260 --> 00:41:43.220 become attorney general of that province. 395 00:41:43.220 --> 00:41:48.160 During Ayon's life in Brittany, the Breton merchants became interested in founding a 396 00:41:48.160 --> 00:41:55.420 privileged commercial company, and in 1641, a group of merchants consulting with de la 397 00:41:55.420 --> 00:42:02.460 Mellerie worked out plans for a large company, centered at Nantes, to be called the Société 398 00:42:02.460 --> 00:42:05.540 de la Bourse Commune de Nantes. 399 00:42:05.540 --> 00:42:11.800 The company was approved by the Council of State in 1646, but it provoked an anonymous 400 00:42:11.800 --> 00:42:31.760 1647. 401 00:42:31.760 --> 00:42:37.760 The book was dedicated to Ayon's friend and patron, La Mélaraie, whom he extolled as 402 00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:42.880 as inheriting the mantle of economic leadership of the nation from Richelieu. 403 00:42:42.880 --> 00:42:49.800 Ayon's book was a compilation of standard mercantilist doctrines and need not be examined 404 00:42:49.800 --> 00:42:51.900 in detail here. 405 00:42:51.900 --> 00:42:58.360 He almost rivaled Montcretien in his Hatred for Foreigners and in his wish to drastically 406 00:42:58.360 --> 00:43:03.760 curtail their activities in or selling to France. 407 00:43:03.760 --> 00:43:09.520 Two of his personal and original contributions were his peon to the sea, shipping and the 408 00:43:09.520 --> 00:43:16.760 seafaring life, and his eulogy to the city of Nantes, its glory and its unique suitability 409 00:43:16.760 --> 00:43:20.800 for locating a privileged company. 410 00:43:20.800 --> 00:43:25.680 7. Colbert and Louis XIV 411 00:43:25.680 --> 00:43:35.700 Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 1619-1683, was no scholar or theorist, but he knew with firm 412 00:43:35.700 --> 00:43:41.360 conviction what ideas he liked, and these were the mercantilist notions that had filled 413 00:43:41.360 --> 00:43:45.720 the air in France and the rest of Europe for generations. 414 00:43:45.720 --> 00:43:52.200 Colbert's accomplishment, while functioning as the Sun King's economic czar, was to put 415 00:43:52.200 --> 00:43:58.800 this compendium of mercantilist ideas into effect on a grand scale. 416 00:43:58.800 --> 00:44:04.920 Colbert was convinced that the ideas were good, just and correct, and he fervently believed 417 00:44:04.920 --> 00:44:11.320 that any opponent was completely wrong, either ignorant or biased by personal motives and 418 00:44:11.320 --> 00:44:13.400 special pleading. 419 00:44:13.400 --> 00:44:20.000 His opponents, such as businessmen who preferred competition or free exchange, were narrow, 420 00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:22.700 and Sighted and Selfish. 421 00:44:22.700 --> 00:44:29.360 Only he, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, had the long-run interests of the nation and the nation-state 422 00:44:29.360 --> 00:44:30.560 at heart. 423 00:44:30.560 --> 00:44:37.400 Merchants, he repeatedly declared, were little men, with only little private interests. 424 00:44:37.400 --> 00:44:42.680 For example, they often preferred liberty to compete with each other, whereas it is in 425 00:44:42.680 --> 00:44:48.180 the public interest and the good of the state to see to it that all products are uniform 426 00:44:48.180 --> 00:44:54.660 in Make-Up and Quality. Colbert was speaking here, of course, of the joint interests of 427 00:44:54.660 --> 00:45:01.580 the State, its rulers and bureaucracy, and of cartelists, all of whose private interests 428 00:45:01.580 --> 00:45:09.340 were in fact at stake. But although the myth of the public was, as usual, a mask for particular 429 00:45:09.340 --> 00:45:16.340 individuals and groups, their interests were indeed far grander than those of little individual 430 00:45:16.340 --> 00:45:18.740 Merchants. 431 00:45:18.740 --> 00:45:24.840 The mercantilist ideas of Colbert were familiar, encouraging and keeping bullion in the country 432 00:45:24.840 --> 00:45:31.060 so that it can flow into the coffers of the state, prohibiting the export of bullion, 433 00:45:31.060 --> 00:45:38.300 cartelizing through compulsory high standards of quality, subsidizing of exports and restriction 434 00:45:38.300 --> 00:45:43.340 on imports until France became self-sufficient. 435 00:45:43.340 --> 00:45:49.460 Mayer's ideas on taxation were those of almost every minister of finance everywhere, except 436 00:45:49.460 --> 00:45:54.100 they were more clearly and far more candidly expressed. 437 00:45:54.100 --> 00:46:00.620 The art of taxation, he said, consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest 438 00:46:00.620 --> 00:46:04.980 amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing. 439 00:46:04.980 --> 00:46:10.420 There is no more dramatic encapsulation of the inherently conflicting interests of the 440 00:46:10.420 --> 00:46:13.100 people versus the state. 441 00:46:13.100 --> 00:46:18.500 From the point of view of the State and its rulers, the people are but a giant goose to 442 00:46:18.500 --> 00:46:26.460 be plucked as efficaciously as possible. Furthermore, that swelling the coffers of the King and the 443 00:46:26.460 --> 00:46:33.100 State was the simple reason for the otherwise silly bullionist doctrines of the mercantilists, 444 00:46:33.100 --> 00:46:38.380 can be seen in this revealing statement of Colbert's to the King. 445 00:46:38.380 --> 00:46:45.760 The universal rule of finances should be always to watch and use every care and all the authority 446 00:46:45.760 --> 00:46:52.760 of your majesty to attract money into the kingdom, to spread it out into all the provinces 447 00:46:52.760 --> 00:46:56.280 so as to pay their taxes. 448 00:46:56.280 --> 00:47:03.280 Like other mercantilists, Colbert warmly embraced the Montaigne fallacy about trade. Trade was 449 00:47:03.280 --> 00:47:09.980 was war and conflict. The total amount of trade in the world, the total number of ships, 450 00:47:09.980 --> 00:47:17.040 the total production of manufacturing, was fixed. One nation could only improve its trade 451 00:47:17.040 --> 00:47:24.680 or shipping or manufactures by depriving some other country of this fixed quantum. One nation's 452 00:47:24.680 --> 00:47:32.200 gain must be another's loss. Colbert gloried in the fact that French trade was growing, 453 00:47:32.200 --> 00:47:57.840 In reality, trade and conquest are not akin, but are diametric opposites. 454 00:47:57.840 --> 00:48:04.060 Each party to every exchange benefits, whether the exchange is between nationals of the same 455 00:48:04.060 --> 00:48:07.360 country or of different countries. 456 00:48:07.360 --> 00:48:13.360 Political boundaries have nothing to do with the economic gain from trade and markets. 457 00:48:13.360 --> 00:48:21.360 In exchange, one man's gain is only accomplished by contributing to the gain of someone else. 458 00:48:21.360 --> 00:48:27.440 Most as both nation, that is, people living in certain countries or any other geographical 459 00:48:27.440 --> 00:48:33.000 area, mutually benefit from trade between them. 460 00:48:33.000 --> 00:48:38.960 Colbert's theories, however, fitted in with deep hostility toward all foreigners, particularly 461 00:48:38.960 --> 00:48:43.920 such prosperous nations as England and Holland. 462 00:48:43.920 --> 00:48:49.240 Like other mercantilists, Colbert detested the idleness of others and sought to force 463 00:48:49.240 --> 00:49:10.280 Colbert was unusual among mercantilists in giving a special care to bringing the intellectual 464 00:49:10.280 --> 00:49:14.900 and artistic life of the nation under state control. 465 00:49:14.900 --> 00:49:21.980 The object was to make sure that art and intellect served to glorify the king and his works. 466 00:49:21.980 --> 00:49:28.020 An enormous amount of money was poured into palaces and chateaux for the king, the mightiest 467 00:49:28.020 --> 00:49:35.900 of which was approximately 40 million livres on the great isolated palace at Versailles. 468 00:49:35.900 --> 00:49:42.100 During Colbert's term, some 80 million livres were spent on royal edifices. 469 00:49:42.100 --> 00:49:51.100 Moreover, Colbert mobilized artists and intellectuals into academies and supported them by grants and government projects. 470 00:49:51.100 --> 00:50:03.100 The French Academy, created shortly before as an uninfluential semi-private group, was nationalized by Colbert and put in charge of the French language. 471 00:50:03.100 --> 00:50:22.100 The Academy of Painting and Sculpture, founded under Mazarin and given a legal monopoly of art instruction, was reinforced by Colbert, who imposed strict regulations on these artists so that their work would be proper and orderly and always in service to the king. 472 00:50:22.100 --> 00:50:31.100 Colbert founded an Academy of Architecture to work on royal buildings and to inculcate the proper architectural principles. 473 00:50:31.100 --> 00:50:32.820 principles. 474 00:50:32.820 --> 00:50:38.740 Neither were music nor the theater safe from the all-encompassing rule of Colbert. 475 00:50:38.740 --> 00:50:45.020 Colbert preferred the Italian opera form to the French ballet, and so doomed the latter 476 00:50:45.020 --> 00:50:48.540 to the benefit of the Italian import. 477 00:50:48.540 --> 00:50:57.060 In 1659 the Abbe Parrain produced the first French opera, and so a decade later Colbert 478 00:50:57.060 --> 00:51:03.180 were conferred upon the abbé a monopoly of all rights to present musical performances. 479 00:51:03.180 --> 00:51:08.540 Perrin, however, was a poor manager, and he went bankrupt. 480 00:51:08.540 --> 00:51:14.780 While in a debtor's prison, Perrin sold his monopoly right to Jean-Baptiste Lully, an 481 00:51:14.780 --> 00:51:18.180 Italian musician and composer. 482 00:51:18.180 --> 00:51:23.860 Lully was given the right to form the Royal Academy of Music, and Lully's permission was 483 00:51:23.860 --> 00:51:29.580 is necessary for any further musical performance with more than two instruments. 484 00:51:29.580 --> 00:51:34.420 Similarly, Colbert created a theatrical monopoly. 485 00:51:34.420 --> 00:51:39.860 In 1673 he forced two existing theatres to unite. 486 00:51:39.860 --> 00:51:45.860 When a third troupe was later forced to join them, the Comédie Francaise was thereby formed 487 00:51:45.860 --> 00:51:48.260 in 1680. 488 00:51:48.260 --> 00:51:54.360 The Comédie Francaise was given a monopoly of all dramatic performances in Paris, was 489 00:51:54.360 --> 00:52:01.740 subjected to tight state regulation and control, and aided by state funds. 490 00:52:01.740 --> 00:52:08.700 With regulation and monopoly came subsidy and subvention, pensions, grants, no-show 491 00:52:08.700 --> 00:52:15.540 appointments as valets of the king, lucrative appointments as artists to the king, exemptions 492 00:52:15.540 --> 00:52:22.420 – from taxes or from the wrath of creditors – all poured out into the arts. Similarly 493 00:52:22.420 --> 00:52:30.020 for the theatre, writers, scientists, historians, philosophers, mathematicians and essayists. 494 00:52:30.020 --> 00:52:36.340 All manner of largesse poured out to them from the state trough. It was subvention that 495 00:52:36.340 --> 00:52:44.060 put to shame any contemporary national endowment for the Humanities or National Science Foundation. 496 00:52:44.060 --> 00:52:50.140 The outpouring truly subverted any sort of spirit of independence that French intellectuals 497 00:52:50.140 --> 00:52:52.140 might have attained. 498 00:52:52.140 --> 00:52:58.860 The mind of a whole nation had been corrupted into the service of the State. 499 00:52:58.860 --> 00:53:05.340 What manner of man was this, then, this grand bureaucrat who scorned the interests of mere 500 00:53:05.340 --> 00:53:12.420 individuals and merchants as petty and narrow, who presumed always to speak and act for the 501 00:53:12.420 --> 00:53:15.780 The National and even Public Interest 502 00:53:15.780 --> 00:53:23.180 Jean-Baptiste Colbert was born in Reims, into a merchant family. His father, Nicolas, purchased 503 00:53:23.180 --> 00:53:30.620 a minor government office in Paris. His more influential uncle, Odar Colbert, was a successful 504 00:53:30.620 --> 00:53:37.800 merchant banker. Jean-Baptiste was an uneducated young man, but his uncle knew a banker for 505 00:53:37.800 --> 00:53:44.060 for Cardinal Mazarin. More importantly, one of Audard's sons married the sister of an 506 00:53:44.060 --> 00:53:52.100 important government official, Michel Letelier. Uncle Audard got young Colbert a job working 507 00:53:52.100 --> 00:53:57.920 for Letelier, who had just been appointed to the post of Secretary of State for Military 508 00:53:57.920 --> 00:54:05.960 Affairs. Jean-Baptiste's lifelong service in the top French bureaucracy had begun. After 509 00:54:05.960 --> 00:54:12.400 After seven years in this post, Colbert married Marie Charon after obtaining for her father, 510 00:54:12.400 --> 00:54:17.720 a wealthy financial official, an important tax exemption. 511 00:54:17.720 --> 00:54:25.080 Soon Colbert became counselor of state and then one of the top aides of Cardinal Mazarin. 512 00:54:25.080 --> 00:54:32.360 Soon after Mazarin's death, Colbert rose to become virtual economic czar of Louis XIV, 513 00:54:32.360 --> 00:54:43.440 Cold, humorless, hard and implacable, a man of marble, as he was called by a contemporary, 514 00:54:43.440 --> 00:54:50.320 Jean-Baptiste Colbert yet had the wit to engage in boundless flattery and demeaning personal 515 00:54:50.320 --> 00:54:53.560 service to his royal patron. 516 00:54:53.560 --> 00:54:57.600 Thus Colbert wrote to Louis on the occasion of a military victory, 517 00:54:57.600 --> 00:55:08.400 One must, sire, remain in silent wonder, and thank God every day for having caused us to be born in the reign of a king like your Majesty. 518 00:55:08.400 --> 00:55:18.200 And no service to the Sun King was too demeaning. Colbert searched for the king's missing swans, supplied Louis with his favorite oranges, 519 00:55:18.200 --> 00:55:25.600 arranged for the birth of the king's illegitimate children, and bought jewels for mistresses on the king's behalf. 520 00:55:25.600 --> 00:55:32.920 Colbert's personal philosophy was best summed up in his advice to his beloved son, Senuli, 521 00:55:32.920 --> 00:55:35.640 on how to get ahead in the world. 522 00:55:35.640 --> 00:55:41.760 He told his son that the chief end that he should set himself is to make himself agreeable 523 00:55:41.760 --> 00:55:43.240 to the king. 524 00:55:43.240 --> 00:55:48.340 He should work with great industry during his whole life to know well what might be 525 00:55:48.340 --> 00:55:52.080 agreeable to his majesty. 526 00:55:52.080 --> 00:55:57.480 Colbert was well rewarded for his life of hard work and abject sycophancy in the service 527 00:55:57.480 --> 00:55:59.600 of the king. 528 00:55:59.600 --> 00:56:05.960 Apparently only the interests of individual merchants and citizens were narrow and petty. 529 00:56:05.960 --> 00:56:11.280 Colbert had little difficulty in identifying the lucrative feathering of his own nest with 530 00:56:11.280 --> 00:56:16.360 the public interest, national glory and the common will. 531 00:56:16.360 --> 00:56:23.100 A stream of offices, benefices, pensions and grants streamed into his coffers from the 532 00:56:23.100 --> 00:56:25.420 ever-grateful king. 533 00:56:25.420 --> 00:56:31.200 In addition, Colbert received special bonuses or gratifications from the king. 534 00:56:31.200 --> 00:56:39.860 Thus, in one order, in February 1679, Colbert received a gratification of no less than 400,000 535 00:56:39.860 --> 00:56:41.740 livres. 536 00:56:41.740 --> 00:56:48.700 The overall sum poured into Colbert's coffers was immense, including lands and bribes for 537 00:56:48.700 --> 00:56:54.460 subsidies and exemptions from grateful lobbyists and economic interests. 538 00:56:54.460 --> 00:57:01.540 All in all, he amassed at least 10 million livres, notable, to be sure, but not the enormous 539 00:57:01.540 --> 00:57:06.940 extent of Cardinal Mazarin's boodle as prime minister. 540 00:57:06.940 --> 00:57:10.840 Colbert also did extremely well by his extensive family. 541 00:57:10.840 --> 00:57:17.500 Brothers, cousins, sons and daughters of Colbert were showered with favors and became bishops, 542 00:57:17.500 --> 00:57:23.980 ambassadors, military commanders, entendants and abbesses of leading convents. 543 00:57:23.980 --> 00:57:30.760 The Colbert family certainly did well by doing good on behalf of the sovereign and the public 544 00:57:30.760 --> 00:57:33.820 interest of France. 545 00:57:33.820 --> 00:57:40.860 After Colbert's death in 1683, his successors under Louis XIV developed and strengthened 546 00:57:40.860 --> 00:57:44.340 the policy of Colbertism. 547 00:57:44.340 --> 00:57:50.160 Protective tariffs were greatly increased, imports of various goods limited to specific 548 00:57:50.160 --> 00:57:56.380 ports, quality regulations strengthened, and innovations hobbled for the protection of 549 00:57:56.380 --> 00:58:01.300 the industrial and occupational status quo. 550 00:58:01.300 --> 00:58:06.300 All of them was frozen into the French political economy. 551 00:58:18.300 --> 00:58:24.300 For his part, Louis XIV had no trouble fitting the absolutist role. 552 00:58:24.300 --> 00:58:30.300 Even more than Colbert, he totally identified his own private interest as monarch, 553 00:58:30.300 --> 00:58:35.300 with the interests of the state and with the public good. 554 00:58:35.300 --> 00:58:44.300 Whether or not Louis uttered the famous words often attributed to him, I am the state, he certainly believed and acted upon them, 555 00:58:44.300 --> 00:58:52.300 as did his father, Louis XIII, before him, who had said, It is not I who speak, it is my state. 556 00:58:52.300 --> 00:59:05.700 Statism logically implies that the state owns all the property in the land, and that all who live on or use such property do so only by the sufferance of the true owner. 557 00:59:05.700 --> 00:59:11.500 And Louis certainly believed that he was the true owner of all property in France. 558 00:59:11.500 --> 00:59:20.500 Hence justice was my justice, and hence he claimed the inherent right to tax all his subjects at will. 559 00:59:20.500 --> 00:59:29.500 And why not, indeed, if they were all truly existing in his realm only at his, the owner's, pleasure? 560 00:59:29.500 --> 00:59:38.500 Furthermore, virtually everyone, even the king's opponents, believed that he ruled by divine grace and divine right. 561 00:59:38.500 --> 00:59:43.500 Previously, Cardinal Richelieu had called kings the images of God. 562 00:59:43.500 --> 01:00:00.500 Early in the Sun King's reign, court propagandist Daniel de Priézac, in his Political Discourses 1652-1666, called monarchical sovereignty a great light that never sets. 563 01:00:00.500 --> 01:00:06.500 Furthermore, that light is a great divine mystery hidden from mere mortals. 564 01:00:06.500 --> 01:00:09.000 As de Priézac put it, 565 01:00:09.000 --> 01:00:28.000 The source of the majesty of kings is so high, its essence so hidden, and its force so divine, that it should not seem strange that it should make men reverent, without their being permitted to understand it, just as is true with celestial things. 566 01:00:28.000 --> 01:00:45.000 In contrast to the adulatory worshippers at the Shrine of the King's quasi-divinity were the Montaigne-type skeptics and pessimists about human nature, who fed the stream of panegyriques to Louis XIV in their own way. 567 01:00:45.000 --> 01:00:56.000 In a set of three skeptical discourses, 1664, the cynical Samuel Sorbier, admirer and translator of Thomas Hobbes, 568 01:00:56.000 --> 01:01:06.000 decried the tendencies of bestial and corrupt modern man in grabbing from the public trough and having no sense of the common good. 569 01:01:06.000 --> 01:01:20.000 But there is, opined Sorbier, a way out, absolute submission to the commands of the presumably superhuman king, so that order is established out of perpetual conflict. 570 01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:33.000 In that total submission, the people will find their way back to the instinctual, childlike simplicity of the state of nature preceding their entry into civil society. 571 01:01:33.000 --> 01:01:36.200 As Professor Kyoan writes of Sorbier, 572 01:01:36.200 --> 01:01:44.400 As the subjects of an absolute despot, they would live much the same way, he argues, in serene simplicity, 573 01:01:44.400 --> 01:01:53.900 totally dependent on the sovereign for their lives and fortunes, protected against the encroachments of their fellows, happy in their slavery. 574 01:01:53.900 --> 01:02:02.400 King Louis XIV was able to combine both strands into a worshipful blend of absolutist thought. 575 01:02:02.400 --> 01:02:16.400 On the one hand, as he makes clear in his private memoirs, written for the instruction of his son, his view of human nature, at least of the nature of ordinary mortals, was pessimistic and Machiavellian. 576 01:02:16.400 --> 01:02:28.400 Individuals are, by nature, limited, striving always for their own personal ends, and heedless of the reasons why they should be subordinated to the commands of others. 577 01:02:28.400 --> 01:02:36.080 The king, on the other hand, is superhuman, a man who is above all and sees all, and is 578 01:02:36.080 --> 01:02:42.240 the only one working for the public good, which is identical with his own. 579 01:02:42.240 --> 01:02:51.000 And the sun-king also took unto himself quasi-divine status, for he, Louis XIV, is like the sun, 580 01:02:51.000 --> 01:02:56.600 the noblest of all, which by virtue of its uniqueness, by the brilliance that surrounds 581 01:02:56.600 --> 01:03:26.600 by the light it imparts to the other heavenly bodies that seem to pay at court, by its equal and just distribution of this same light to all the various parts of the world, by the good that it does everywhere, constantly producing life, joy and activity everywhere, by its perpetual yet always imperceptible movement, by never departing or deviating from its steady and invariable course, 582 01:03:26.600 --> 01:03:33.400 assuredly makes a most vivid and a most beautiful image for a great monarch. 583 01:03:33.400 --> 01:03:40.960 Professor Keough unjustly comments that Louis XIV is not content to compare himself to God. 584 01:03:40.960 --> 01:03:47.280 He compares in such a manner that it is clear that it is God who is the copy. 585 01:03:47.280 --> 01:03:56.760 The Acme of Absolutist Thought was provided by Jacques Benigny Bossuet, 1627-1704, Bishop 586 01:03:56.760 --> 01:04:02.240 of Meaux, court theologian and political theorist under Louis XIV. 587 01:04:02.240 --> 01:04:08.180 The whole state, opined the bishop, is in the person of the prince. 588 01:04:08.180 --> 01:04:11.900 In him is the will of the whole people. 589 01:04:11.900 --> 01:04:17.860 The kings identify with the public good because God has raised them to a condition where they 590 01:04:17.860 --> 01:04:21.860 no longer have anything to desire for themselves. 591 01:04:21.860 --> 01:04:29.460 Absolutism is necessary, asserted Bosway, because any constitutional limits on the prince 592 01:04:29.460 --> 01:04:35.320 raise the dread specter of anarchy, than which nothing can be worse. 593 01:04:35.320 --> 01:04:41.340 The only limits on the power of the sovereign should be those he imposes on himself in his 594 01:04:41.340 --> 01:04:46.860 His Own Interest, which must be identical to the public interest whenever the prince 595 01:04:46.860 --> 01:04:54.060 regards the state as his possession, to be cultivated and passed on to his descendants. 596 01:04:54.060 --> 01:05:01.240 Finally, Bossuet conflates the King and God as follows. 597 01:05:01.240 --> 01:05:05.900 Majesty is the image of the grandeur of God in the prince. 598 01:05:05.900 --> 01:05:07.480 God is infinite. 599 01:05:07.480 --> 01:05:08.940 God is all. 600 01:05:08.940 --> 01:05:14.140 The prince, as prince, is not to be considered an individual man. 601 01:05:14.140 --> 01:05:16.420 He is the public person. 602 01:05:16.420 --> 01:05:20.020 The whole state is included in him. 603 01:05:20.020 --> 01:05:27.020 Just as all perfection and all virtue are united in God, so all the power of the individuals 604 01:05:27.020 --> 01:05:30.820 is brought together in the person of the prince. 605 01:05:30.820 --> 01:05:37.540 What grandeur that a single man can contain so much! 606 01:05:37.540 --> 01:05:42.740 That political thought had come a long way from the Spanish scholastics.