title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Stanshall formed a number of short-lived groups during 1970 alone, including biG GRunt (formed while the Bonzos were still on their farewell tour, and including fellow Bonzos Roger Ruskin Spear and Dennis Cowan, and with Anthony 'Bubs' White on guitar), The Sean Head Showband (again featuring Cowan and White), Gargantuan Chums, and the slightly longer-lived Bonzo Dog Freaks, with Innes and the ever-faithful Cowan and White (this conglomerate was also known simply as 'Freaks'). Early that year, biG GRunt recorded a well-received session for BBC Radio 1 Disc Jockey John Peel, and shortly afterwards made a memorable appearance on BBC television. Despite this promising start, biG GRunt dissolved during their first UK tour when Stanshall became incapacitated by the onset of an anxiety disorder that caused a nervous breakdown and would continue to plague him for the rest of his life.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: However, he soon recovered sufficiently to record and release, on the Liberty label, his first solo single "Labio-Dental Fricative/Paper Round", credited to Vivian Stanshall and The Sean Head Showband (an oblique reference to Stanshall having shaved off all of his hair during his breakdown), and featuring Eric Clapton on guitar. Later in the year, his single version of Terry Stafford's song "Suspicion", credited to Vivian Stanshall and Gargantuan Chums and featuring Keith Moon and John Entwistle of The Who, was released. Featured on the B-side was "Blind Date", the only officially released track by biG GRunt. (However, all of Stanshall's backing bands of 1970 featured the same core personnel, so it could be argued that they were essentially the same band, masquerading under a variety of names.)


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In early 1971, Stanshall returned to touring with a new band, Freaks. This group soon recorded a BBC radio session for Peel that featured solo numbers by Stanshall and Innes alongside tracks from "Let's Make Up And Be Friendly", the Bonzos' yet-to-be recorded contractual obligation/reunion album of 1972. The session is also notable for marking the first appearance in any medium of an episode of Stanshall's magnum opus, Rawlinson End. Stanshall also found time during this period to be a founder member of the performance/poetry/music group Grimms, alongside Innes, The Scaffold and associated poets and musicians. Although Stanshall left Grimms before they made any recordings, he did continue to perform live with them on occasion.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Throughout this period, still suffering badly with anxiety and now drinking heavily to self-medicate, Stanshall nonetheless continued to write, record and tour with Freaks and then Grimms. He was also a regular guest, broadcaster and presenter on numerous series on BBC radio.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Despite his ongoing personal difficulties, Stanshall never lost his sense of humour. His exploits with long-time drinking buddy Keith Moon, who would become Stanshall's regular partner in crime for much of the 1970s after producing and appearing on Stanshall's single "Suspicion", are legendary. In one example, Stanshall visited a tailor's shop where he admired a pair of trousers. Moon then arrived, posing as another customer, and admired the same trousers, demanding to buy them. When Stanshall protested, the two men fought and split the trousers in two, so that they ended up with one leg each. The tailor was understandably beside himself. Then, a one-legged actor—hired by Stanshall and Moon—would enter the scene, see the split trousers and proclaim: 'Ah! Just what I was looking for! I'll buy them!'


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Thanks to his association with Peel, Stanshall was asked to fill in for the disc jockey while he was on a month's holiday. The resulting short series, entitled "Vivian Stanshall's Radio Flashes", was recorded under the supervision of Peel's regular producer John Walters and broadcast on BBC Radio One in August 1971. The series of four two-hour programmes were a mix of music and specially written and recorded comedic sketches. Out of the original four episodes, only episodes 2, 3 and 4 remain in the BBC archives, and these were re-broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2014 and again in 2016. However, since the 1970s, all four episodes and a Christmas 1971 compilation special have circulated among collectors as low-quality, edited off-air recordings. Contributors to the sketches in "Radio Flashes" included Moon, Traffic's Jim Capaldi and actress Chris Bowler. The sketches included a four-part serial adventure titled "Breath From The Pit", featuring the surreal exploits of a Dick Barton or Bulldog Drummond-style gentleman adventurer, Colonel Knutt (played by Stanshall) and his working-class sidekick, the 'likeable cheeky cockney, Lemmy'. The serial was also partly a parody of Charles Chilton's "Journey into Space", with Moon playing the role of Lemmy.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Stanshall had developed what many consider to be his seminal work, "Rawlinson End", as a spoken word performance piece during the first few years of the 1970s, recording an early version as part of The Bonzo Dog Band's reunion project "Let's Make Up And Be Friendly". Beginning in 1975, he expanded upon the concept as an episodic surrealist radio serial for BBC Radio 1's John Peel slot, elaborating further upon the weird and wonderful adventures of the inebriated and blimpish Sir Henry Rawlinson, his wife Lady Philippa Portly, the dotty Great Aunt Florrie, his "unusual" brother Hubert, old Scrotum 'the wrinkled retainer', the rambling and unhygienic cook Mrs E.; and many other inhabitants of the crumbling Rawlinson End and its environs. Stanshall had been playing around with the Rawlinson characters for some time, and they were first referred to on the Bonzos' 1967 number, "The Intro and the Outro": 'Great to hear the Rawlinsons on trombone.'


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In 1978, Stanshall released an album, "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End", which reworked some material from the Peel sessions. This in turn was adapted into a film version in 1980, which was produced in a sepia-tinted black and white. It starred Trevor Howard as Sir Henry, and Stanshall as Hubert. Some of the film's music was provided in collaboration with Stanshall's friend Steve Winwood. A book of the same title – by Stanshall, illustrated with stills from the film – was published by Eel Pie Publishing in 1980. Nominally a film novelisation, it was distilled from the various versions and included considerable material that did not make it to the film. A projected second book, "The Eating at Rawlinson End", was never completed.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: A second Rawlinson album, "Sir Henry at N'didi’s Kraal" (1984), recounts Sir Henry's disastrous African expedition, omitting the rest of the Rawlinson clan. At the time, Stanshall was living on "The Searchlight", a house boat he had bought from Denny Laine and kept moored near Shepperton on the River Thames. He lived on "The Searchlight" from 1977 to 1983, and recorded and produced the second 'Sir Henry' album on it during a period of debilitating physical illness. The album was disowned by Stanshall after its release, as he claimed it was both unfinished and unsatisfactory, and that the record label had rush-released it without his permission in an attempt to profit from his potentially imminent demise.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: However, the noticeably superior BBC radio broadcasts continued sporadically until late 1991. In the same year, a temporarily rejuvenated Stanshall embarked upon a nationwide concert tour, entitled 'Rawlinson Dog Ends', with support from former Bonzos and centred around a performance of new Rawlinson End material.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: 'Sir Henry' was last seen in a television commercial for Ruddles Real Ale (c. 1994), where he was portrayed by a cross-dressing Dawn French, presiding over a family banquet at a long table; shortly afterwards, Stanshall himself reprised the role of Hubert, reciting a poem loosely based on Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat."


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: During this same period, Stanshall embarked upon the recording of a proposed new Rawlinson End album, but this activity was curtailed in its early stages by its creator's untimely death in March 1995. After this, BBC Radio 4 retrieved some of the original Peel show recordings from the vaults for late-night repeat during Christmas 1996.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Stanshall regularly performed live with Grimms, as well as occasionally working with The Alberts and The Temperance Seven during the first few years of the decade. He was also a frequent contributor to BBC radio at this time, appearing weekly on "Start The Week" and "Jack de Manio Precisely", and also on the BBC television satire series "Up Sunday".


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In 1973, Stanshall recorded tracks for the soundtrack album of the movie "That'll Be the Day" backed by Moon, Ronnie Wood, Graham Bond and Jack Bruce, and collaborated on numerous musical projects, making a memorable appearance as the Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's 1973 album "Tubular Bells". (He reprised the role for "Tubular Bells II" in 1992, but the final release featured Alan Rickman instead.) Stanshall made guest appearances on a number of other artists' recordings including John Entwistle's "Smash Your Head Against The Wall" in 1971, Mike Hart's "Basher, Chalky, Pongo and Me" in 1972, Pete Brown's "The Not Forgotten Association" in 1973, and Robert Calvert's 1974 concept album "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters".


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In early 1974, Stanshall wrote, arranged, and quickly recorded his first solo album, "Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead". A rather more serious work than many would have expected, its darkly comic lyrics detailed Stanshall's alcoholism and troubled emotional state, laced with surreal poetic imagery and literary reference. Other lyrics included implicit references to other musicians and the music business, and a rather more explicit satire of the author's relationship with his own penis. Musically, while certain tracks display Stanshall's usual keen sense of rock and roll parody, most of the album has a 'tribal' or 'fusion' flavour. Prominently featuring the Nigerian musician Gasper Lawal and with many tracks infused with richly textured African percussion and chorus vocal stylings, the album (and its contemporary single "Lakonga") can justifiably lay claim to being an early, unheralded example of a crossover between world music and rock music. Stanshall's long-standing friends and colleagues Innes, White, Traffic's Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Ric Grech and Rebop Kwaku Baah, Doris Troy and Madeline Bell also made notable guest appearances. Deleted after its first pressing and out of print for many years, the album was finally re-released on CD in 2012.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: The BBC documentary "One Man's Week", broadcast on 9 April 1975, documented a week in Stanshall's life and included footage of him at The Manor recording studio during the sessions for "Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead", where he played with White, Lawal, Mongezi Feza, and Derek (or Deryk) Quinn.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In 1975, Stanshall provided the narration for "The Rock Peter and the Wolf", produced by Robin Lumley and Jack Lancaster and featuring, among others, Gary Moore, Manfred Mann, Phil Collins, Bill Bruford, Stéphane Grappelli, Alvin Lee, Cozy Powell, Brian Eno and Jon Hiseman. 1976 saw the release of his single "The Young Ones", where the old Cliff Richard standard was delivered in the style of Boris Karloff.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In 1977, Stanshall and his companion, Pamela 'Ki' Longfellow, moved into a house-boat, "The Searchlight", moored on the Thames between Chertsey and Shepperton. During this period, Stanshall compiled and re-recorded material from his popular BBC Radio 1 broadcasts for Peel, which was released as "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End" in 1978. He also wrote the script for the film adaptation of the same name, later produced for Tony Stratton-Smith's Charisma Records company in 1980.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Following 'Sir Henry', Stanshall wrote the songs for his third album "Teddy Boys Don't Knit" (1981), which included three songs about his family, and contributed a lyric to Winwood's "Arc of a Diver." He and Longfellow married in 1980, and together they wrote some of the songs they later used for a musical comedy, "Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera". The houseboat "The Searchlight" eventually sank.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: The Stanshalls lived and worked on "The Thekla", a Baltic Trader, which Ki sailed 732 nautical miles (1,356 km) from Sunderland to be moored in the Bristol Docks. Ki had bought the vessel and converted her into a floating theatre called 'The Old Profanity Showboat'. Stanshall joined her on it in 1983, when they opened the doors of the theatre. By this time, he was already suffering from alcohol and drug abuse, having become addicted to Valium while trying to control his anxiety.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In December 1985, The Old Profanity Showboat produced the debut of their work "Stinkfoot, A Comic Opera". Stanshall wrote 27 original songs for the opera, sharing book and lyric writing with his wife. It has proved popular over the years, and was revived in London some years later, with Peter Moss as musical director. It was also produced in concert form in Bristol, in July 2010.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Having returned to London alone in 1986 while his wife recovered from an illness, Stanshall saw "Stinkfoot" briefly, but unsuccessfully, revived at the Bloomsbury Theatre. After this, he returned to the stage again, touring in a solo show, 'Rawlinson Dog-Ends', initially with support from musicians including Jack Bruce. When Bruce quit, over a lack of adequate rehearsals, Moss stepped in to provide bass.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In 1968, Stanshall married fellow art student Monica Peiser, and their son Rupert was born that year. They divorced in 1975.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: On 9 September 1980, Stanshall married Pamela 'Ki' Longfellow, an American writer who had a daughter from an earlier relationship. The Stanshalls had a daughter, Silky, born on 16 August 1979, before they married; she was named after Silky Sullivan, a racehorse that was a childhood favourite of her mother. Stanshall celebrated Silky's birth in "The Tube", and his marriage to Ki in "Bewilderbeeste", both songs being included on his album "Teddy Boys Don't Knit" . He later gave his wife the name of 'Ki' from a dream. Even though their comic opera "Stinkfoot" was a success in late 1985, Stanshall returned alone to London after the turn of the year, while Longfellow recuperated from an illness brought on by overwork and stress. Once Ki was well again, the Stanshalls lived out the rest of their tumultuous marriage until his sudden death in March 1995. At this point, they were both planning on living together in Hampstead, London.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Years later, Longfellow wrote "The Illustrated Vivian Stanshall: A Fairytale of Grimm Art", detailing Stanshall's life and work from 1977 to 1995.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In 1991, Stanshall made a 15-minute autobiographical piece called "Vivian Stanshall: The Early Years", a.k.a. "Crank", for BBC2's "The Late Show." He confessed to having been terrified of his father, who he said had always disapproved of him. His last television appearance, on "The Late Show", was broadcast on 27 November that year.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: A programme for BBC Radio 4, "Vivian Stanshall: Essex Teenager to Renaissance Man" (1994) included an interview with his mother. She insisted his father had loved him. Stanshall said on the same programme that his father had never shown it, not even on his deathbed.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Stanshall was found dead on the morning of 6 March 1995, after an electrical fire had broken out as he slept in his top floor flat in Muswell Hill, North London. His private funeral service was held at the Golders Green Crematorium, North London. A few days later his memorial service was held at St Patrick's Church, Soho Square.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: A memorial plaque was unveiled in the Poets' Corner at Golders Green Crematorium on 13 December 2015, opposite that of his friend Keith Moon, by his widow Ki and his daughter Silky. Others attending included actor Tony Slattery, singer Linda Thompson and actress Cherri Gilham. The cost of the plaque was met by many of his fans and friends via online crowdfunding.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: Writing in "The Independent" after Stanshall's death, Chris Welch wrote: "Seen by some as a wild eccentric, and a powerful personality who could be both charming and intimidating, Stanshall was perhaps too large a figure even for the music business to handle. ... He needed a producer to channel his energies, but always wanted to remain his own boss, having suffered too many perceived indignities in his early experience of the music business." He was described by Neil Innes as "a national treasure".


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In 2001, Welch and Lucian Randall wrote a biography entitled "Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall." Also in 2001 Jeremy Pascall and Stephen Fry produced a documentary about Stanshall for BBC Radio 4. Fry knew Stanshall quite well and, along with his personal thoughts, introduced a series of reminiscences. The show featured many clips from Stanshall's work. The recording includes one of Stanshall's last poems, entitled "With My Mouth Turned Down for the Night".


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In 2003, Sea Urchin Editions published the script of the Stanshalls' "Stinkfoot: An English Comic Opera," with an introduction by his widow, Ki.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: On 22 December 2009 BBC Radio 4's Great Lives series featured a programme on Stanshall, who had been nominated by Neil Innes, with Ki Longfellow as expert witness, hosted by Matthew Parris.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In June 2010, the 1978 album "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End" was re-imagined by Michael Livesley as a one-man show, in which he starred as the narrator and all characters, backed by a six-piece band replicating the instrumentation of the original. The production won rave reviews, then premiered in London on 14 October 2011. It also drew praise from Innes and Adrian Edmondson who were in the audience. On 25 March 2013, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Stanshall's birth, Livesley was joined by Innes, Rick Wakeman, Danny Thompson, Rodney Slater, Sam Spoons, Vernon Dudley Bowhay-Nowell, 'Legs' Larry Smith and John Otway, to perform "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End" at the Bloomsbury Theatre. The event was organised by Livesley and Stanshall's son Rupert.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: On 11 October 2011, the "Blackpool Comedy Carpet," a large public artwork by Gordon Young, was unveiled in Blackpool on the town's seaside promenade. It is made of 300 slabs of granite that cover about 2200 square meters. Featuring catchphrases, jokes and names, it commemorates more than 1000 selected "influential" comics, most of whom have played Blackpool in the last hundred years. The project was commissioned by the Blackpool Council as part of its redevelopment plan, and it is one of the largest pieces of public art in the United Kingdom. Stanshall is represented in the work by two quotes and his name.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: In 2012, Poppydisc Records reissued both a vinyl and CD version of Stanshall's "Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead", remastered with new liner notes from his widow and daughter.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: On 26 January 2018, Longfellow's biography/memoir/free-form art book detailing Stanshall's life was published. Filled with Stanshall's paintings, sketches, notes, letters, and private photographs, "The Illustrated Vivian Stanshall, a Fairytale of Grimm Art" (illustrated by the young illustrator and animator Ben Wickey) contains not only Longfellow's impressions of the life and work of her husband of 18 years, but also the remembrances of many of his closest friends, as well as Vivian's private journals.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: An event is planned at Union Chapel on 23 March 2023 to mark the 80th anniversary of Stanshall's birth. According to the press release "The late, great Vivian Stanshall would have been 80 years old in March 2023. To celebrate Michael Livesley, under the guidance of MD Andy Frizell, shall once more assemble friends, vagabonds and some VERY special guests to bash the tables, fill the glass and raise the roof in celebration of the great man's work.


title: Vivian Stanshall

text: The night will be a double celebration, as it marks the completion on Viv Stanshall's last "great work". Join us on a musical journey from the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band to Rawlinson End and witness the world premiere of Viv's final "great work".


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: "The Bizarro Jerry" is the 137th episode of the American television sitcom "Seinfeld". This was the third episode of the eighth season, originally airing on the NBC network on October 3, 1996. The title and plot extensively reference Bizarro Superman originally published by DC Comics. This episode introduced the phrase "man-hands.”


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: Elaine breaks up with her boyfriend Kevin, but they decide to remain friends. Kevin proves to be a much more reliable friend than Jerry. Jerry suggests to Elaine that Kevin is "Bizarro Jerry", and explains how the Superman character Bizarro does everything in an opposite manner.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: While using the restrooms at a company called Brandt-Leland, Kramer aids an employee with a printer and is mistaken for a co-worker by the staff. He begins showing up at regular work hours with no contract and no pay, simply appreciating the structure that a steady job adds to his life.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: Jerry starts dating Gillian, an attractive woman whose only flaw is that she has "man-hands", i.e. her hands are large and strong like a man's. George gets into a club of attractive female models by saying that a photo of Gillian is his late fiancee Susan. He accidentally burns the picture with a hair dryer. Jerry breaks up with Gillian due to her hands. While Jerry tries to get another picture of her from her purse for George, she grabs Jerry's hand, crushing it. Jerry feels neglected at home, now that Kramer is working, Elaine is hanging out with Kevin and his friends Gene and Feldman (Bizarro versions of George and Kramer, respectively), and George refuses to bring him along to the club.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: George tries to use a picture of a model from a magazine to get back into the club, but he accidentally approaches the same model from the magazine picture and is kicked out. Jerry, George and Kramer head to the coffee shop and bump into Elaine as she is meeting up with Kevin, Gene and Feldman. Elaine decides to stay with her "Bizarro friends." He invites her over where she meets Vargas, the Bizarro Newman, with whom Kevin is friendly. However, they reject her when they do not take to some of the things she usually does with Jerry, such as eating Kevin's food without asking, and playfully pushing Kevin so hard that he is knocked down. A saddened Elaine takes her leave.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: Kramer is terminated by Leland because of his incomprehensible reports, only for Kramer to respond that he doesn't actually work there. Leland acknowledges the difficulty of the situation.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: George takes Jerry to the location of the club, but all they find is a meat packing plant, with the photo George took from a magazine lying amid the sawdust.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: In a mid-credits scene, Kevin and his friends continue to demonstrate their virtuousness and generosity. After Kevin tells his friends how much he appreciates them, the three gather into a group hug, and Kevin declares, “Me so happy, me want to cry,” imitating Bizarro Superman's distinctive speech pattern.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: David Mandel wrote the episode after his then girlfriend Rebecca ended their long-distance relationship. Rebecca, the now wife of Mandel, was self-conscious about what she called her "farm-hands". Part of the new generation of "Seinfeld" writers who were fans of the show prior to working on it, Mandel saw the opportunity to include such self-referential "meta" humor as the Bizarro characters, as they could rely on audiences being familiar enough with the series to understand the jokes. Mandel has since described it as his favorite episode of the series.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: The episode's Kramer story was inspired by how Mandel often assisted customers at Tower Records who mistakenly thought he worked there. An acquaintance of Mandel's was so ashamed of how physically unattractive the woman who dumped him was, when talking about her he would show a photo of a different woman, inspiring the George story.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: The "man hands" are all close-ups of a male crew member's hands, while actress Kristin Bauer van Straten's real hands were kept off-camera.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: Kevin's apartment was modeled to be a Bizarro opposite of Jerry's apartment, with the kitchen and furniture in reverse of Jerry's. Kevin also has a unicycle hanging on his wall instead of a bicycle like Jerry, and a Bizarro statue in place of Jerry's normal Superman statue. In addition, the exterior of Kevin's apartment is a mirror-image of Jerry's apartment, and the usual musical cues of the show are played backwards during the Bizarro scenes.


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: At the time of its original airing, John J. O'Connor of "The New York Times" explained why he found the episode fun: "'Bizarro Jerry' has found Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) entering a world of virtual reality with a new boyfriend who eerily resembled Jerry except that he was reliable and considerate. Moreover, his friends were physical clones of George and Kramer (Michael Richards). 'It's like Superman's opposite,' observed Jerry, pinpointing the "bizarro" of the title. Meanwhile, Jerry was dating a beautiful young woman whose only flaw (flaws are inevitable on "Seinfeld") was having man's hands: meaty paws, whined Jerry, 'like a creature out of Greek mythology.' Kramer drifted incomprehensibly into a corporate job in which he 'finally found structure' and was able to strut about with a briefcase full of Ritz crackers."


title: The Bizarro Jerry

text: In a retrospective review of two adjacent episodes, David Sims of "The A.V. Club" writes, "'The Bizarro Jerry' and 'The Little Kicks' are probably two of the better-known season 8 episodes and for good reason – they're a lot of fun." Sims speculates that "'The Bizarro Jerry' just reeks of a concept that Seinfeld wanted to do forever, given his obsession with Superman, and finally got the chance to once he was fully in charge of the show... Elaine finds that Kevin...and his friends are like a weird mirror group to her friends. But it's very effectively staged that it works, even once the joke has become totally familiar – the idea of characters having strange doubles is now one of the oldest sitcom tropes in the book... Elaine, of course, quickly realizes that the bizarro universe is not for her... the whole time she's more of an interested party than anything, examining the bizarro gang like a scientist." Of the "man-hands" segments, Sims says, "Like many a good Seinfeld episode, there's a B-plot nestled in here that feels like the dominant A-plot of another episode, considering what a major meme it became."


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Azusa Pacific University (APU) is a private, evangelical Christian university in Azusa, California. The university was founded in 1899, with classes opening on March 3, 1900, in Whittier, California, and began offering degrees in 1939. The university's seminary, the Graduate School of Theology, holds to a Wesleyan-Arminian doctrinal theology. APU offers more than 100 associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs on campus, online, and at seven regional locations across Southern California.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Azusa Pacific University is organized into three colleges and seven schools. The academics programs are available from the Honors College, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, College of Music and the Arts, Leung School of Accounting, University College, School of Behavioral and Applied Sciences, School of Business and Management, School of Education, School of Nursing, and School of Theology. APU is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Azusa Pacific University was established on March 3, 1899, in Whittier, California. Under the name "Training School for Christian Workers", it was the first Bible college on the West Coast. Led by president Mary A. Hill, the school initially had a total enrollment of 12 students.<ref name="http://www.apu.edu/about/history"></ref>


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Early years saw the school relocate and change leadership several times. In 1939, Cornelius P. Haggard, Th.D., became the school's 13th president. In response to low enrollment and a lack of donations, Haggard launched a variety of fundraising efforts. Haggard served for the next 36 years.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Following mergers with three Southern California colleges, the university relocated in 1946 to the city of Azusa, where it resides today. In 1939 the Training School became "Pacific Bible College", and four-year degrees were offered. In 1956, the name was changed to "Azusa College". By 1965, "Azusa College" had become "Azusa-Pacific College" ("APC"), and three years later, "APC" merged with Arlington College. Upon its achievement of university status in 1981, the college changed its name to Azusa Pacific University.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: After Haggard's death, Paul E. Sago, Ph.D., became president, serving until 1989. Sago encouraged the development and growth of off-site educational regional campuses throughout Southern California, and presided over the addition of master's degree programs and the development of schools within the university.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Richard E. Felix, Ph.D., became president in 1990, and initiated the university's first doctoral programs. He also introduced the university's "Four Cornerstones," Christ, Scholarship, Community, and Service, and oversaw the construction of seven new buildings, a doubling of student enrollment, and a quadrupling of graduate programs.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: When nearby institution, Ambassador College closed in 1997, the Worldwide Church of God and Azusa Pacific University jointly established the "Ambassador Center" at Azusa Pacific University for the continuation of classes for former Ambassador College students.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: In November 2000, then-Executive Vice President Jon R. Wallace, DBA, became president. In April 2018, Wallace announced his plan to retire and accepted his new role as president emeritus.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: In 2017, a new independent economic study found that APU generates $1.25 billion in economic impact within California each year. Of that, APU contributes $37 million in state taxes each year and supports 7,260 jobs statewide. The report also found approximately 47,500 APU alumni reside within California, increasing the state's productivity and earning power. Of those, 10,600 APU alumni and 600 APU employees live in the San Gabriel Valley.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: In 2018, two university board members resigned from the university, citing concerns over financial mismanagement and "theological drift." As of 2018, the credit rating agency Moody's had downgraded its credit rating of APU's bonds to BA1, just above junk status.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: On April 10, 2019, APU named Paul W. Ferguson as its 17th president. He began his new role on June 3, 2019.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: A small group of Quakers (also known as Friends) and a Methodist evangelist laid the foundation for the Training School for Christian Workers in 1899.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: As faculty members began to embrace Evangelicalism and reject a growing liberal trend in the California Yearly Meeting of Friends, a campus church was established in 1933. This shift moved the "school church" from the local Huntington Park Friends Church to the on-campus worship gathering. The new campus church planted eight "tabernacles" throughout California which collectively became known as the Evangel Church denomination.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: The series of college mergers and campus re-locations which followed helped to solidify the school's identity as an Evangelical institution.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Azusa Pacific University academic resources include the Writing Center, Accessibility Services, Testing Services, Tutoring Services, university libraries, Math Center, Academic Success Center, and the Graduate and Professional Registrar. Special programs include the Friends Center, Honors College, Sigma Theta Tau (Iota Sigma), and the Western Conservancy of Nursing History.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: The APU libraries include the William V. Marshburn Library (East Campus), the Hugh and Hazel Darling Library (West Campus), the Stamps Theological Library (West Campus), and off-campus libraries supporting academic programs at the APU High Desert, Inland Empire, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, and Murrieta locations.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: A unified catalog identifies the more than 240,000 books, media items, and 1,900 periodical titles in the libraries' print collections. More than 703,000 microforms include the Library of American Civilization, Library of American Literature, "The New York Times", and Educational Resources Information Center collections. The university network also provides access to more than 140 online databases, which include more than 46,000 electronic journals.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: In the fall of 2009, Azusa Pacific University acquired a collection of antiquities, including five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and five first-edition prints of the King James Bible. These new acquisitions were displayed in an exhibit, Treasures of the Bible: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Beyond, in summer 2010.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Special collections of Azusa Pacific University are housed in the Thomas F. Andrews Room of the Hugh and Hazel Darling Library, located on APU's West Campus. The special collections consist of over 6,500 holdings ranging from presidential signatures to historical citrus crate labels.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Azusa Pacific University is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity". APU conducts its research through eight university research centers:


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: APU's Office of Institutional Research and Assessment provides resources, training, and consultations designed to help academic and student life departments successfully assess their educational effectiveness. The office also coordinates and facilitates the academic program review process.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: APU's Honors College was launched in 2013, with David L. Weeks as dean. An Oxford-style, writing-intensive program, the Honors College grants graduates a second major or minor in Honors Humanities and an honors scholar diploma designation. The program content replaces all general education courses. The Honors College describes its purpose as "liberally educat[ing] the next generation of intellectually-gifted Christian leaders." Students study classic literature including works by Aristotle, Shakespeare, and C.S. Lewis, and are given publication and regional/national presentation opportunities.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Azusa Pacific University's Azusa campus is situated in the San Gabriel Valley, located northeast of Los Angeles.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: The university also maintains a Los Angeles Regional Site, a Monrovia Regional Site, and five additional off-site regional centers in Southern California:


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: The Azusa Pacific athletic teams are called the Cougars. The university is a member of the Division II level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), primarily competing in the Pacific West Conference (PacWest) for most of its sports since the 2012–13 academic year; while its women's swimming & diving team competes in the Pacific Collegiate Swim and Dive Conference (PCSC) and its women's water polo team competes in the Golden Coast Conference (GCC). The Cougars previously competed in the Golden State Athletic Conference (GSAC) of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) from 1986–87 to 2011–12. On July 11, 2011 Azusa Pacific began the three-year transition process to becoming a member of the NCAA. Azusa Pacific University decided to end its football program in December 2020 due to financial restructuring.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Azusa Pacific competes in 16 intercollegiate varsity sports: Men's sports include baseball, basketball, cross country, soccer, tennis and track & field; while women's sports include acrobatics and tumbling, basketball, cross country, soccer, softball, swimming & diving, tennis, track & field, volleyball, water polo.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Azusa Pacific Athletics achieved eight consecutive wins of the Directors’ Cup from 2005 to 2012, with a total of 108 GSAC Championships and 36 NAIA National Championships. Since joining NCAA Division II, the program has added 31 PacWest Conference Championships and four GNAC championships in football.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: A past eight-time winner of the NAIA's Directors' Cup, APU finished 17th for the second consecutive year in the 2015–16 NCAA Division II Directors' Cup standings. A total of 14 APU athletes have competed in the Olympics, including 2008 decathlon gold medalist Bryan Clay '03, and 50 other alumni have been drafted into other professional sports, including Christian Okoye '87, former Kansas City Chiefs fullback; Stephen Vogt '07, Atlanta Braves catcher; Kirk Nieuwenhuis '08, Long Island Ducks outfielder; and Terrell Watson '15, San Diego Fleet running back. Several graduates have gone onto serve as leaders in higher education including J. David Carlson, Jeff Siemers, and Jacob Amundson.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Azusa Pacific University's 2018-19 enrollment consisted of 10,095 students, of whom 5,021 are at the undergraduate and 5,074 at the graduate and professional levels. As of 2018, 58 countries, 57 states (and US territories), and 56 Christian denominations are represented by the student population. Approximately 68% of students are female and 32% are male.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: APU features 20 music ensembles, 11 intramural sports, and about 40 clubs and organizations, including ethnic organizations, performing arts clubs, social clubs, service clubs, academic clubs, athletic clubs, and honors societies, as well as a Student Government Association. The university also hosts military and veteran services, including active duty military and veteran benefits, scholarships, and programs.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Music ensemble offerings include choral ensembles, vocal groups, large ensembles, chamber ensembles, commercial ensembles, and orchestral groups. Music groups require an audition, and perform at local churches as well as state and national orchestral and symphonic events. In addition to these ensembles, the Artist Certificate program offers a conservatory style experience to the School of Music's highest performing musicians.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: APU's Student Government Association (SGA) is composed of 28 students. The SGA has served APU since 1945 by meeting with offices on campus and conducting surveys that analyze the needs of the APU student body. The SGA's governing structure, listed from highest position to lowest, is composed of a president, five executives, two commissioners, nine senators, and nine representatives.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: APU is a Yellow Ribbon University recognized by Military Friendly as a military-friendly college, and is an approved degree-granting institution recognized by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. APU was also named as one of 130 "Best for Vets Colleges 2017" in the 4-year schools category by "Military Times".


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: APU also offers a Veterans Club intended to create a network for veterans transitioning into academic life. The club hosts regular meetings and community service opportunities.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: In 2016, APU was recognized by "Diverse Issues in Higher Education" as one of the nation's top schools in awarding degrees to minority students. The university ranked among the top 100 in 11 baccalaureate categories, and ranked 5th for awarding Hispanic master's degrees in the "business/commerce, general" category, and 55th for total minority master's degrees awarded across all disciplines. APU is recognized by the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities as one of 104 Hispanic-Serving Institutions in California.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: The university has cited its Christian faith in its student code of conduct to prohibit students from "engag[ing] in a romanticized same-sex relationship." The ban has been lifted and reinstated a number of times and has been the target of student protests.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: The Student Center for Reconciliation and Diversity administers scholarship programs and provides information on internship and scholarship opportunities offered by local community organizations. SCRD also advises campus ethnic organizations, including the Armenian Student Association, Asian Pacific American Student Organization, Black Student Association, Latin American Student Association, Indigenous Peoples Circle, and the Pacific Islander Organization. In addition, SCRD coordinates a Multi-Ethnic Leadership Scholarship Program.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: The Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Excellence hosts initiatives including staff and faculty diversity network luncheons, diversity ambassador training, and diversity workshops. The center also facilitates a diversity plan based on a 2016 UCLA Climate Study conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute assessing APU's social climate. The center collaborates with the Council of Christian Colleges & Universities on national diversity-related projects.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: For eight consecutive years, "Azusa Pacific" has been named to the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for exemplary leadership in civic engagement, service-learning, and building community partnerships. Azusa Pacific University, as one of 115 U.S. institutions named to the Carnegie Foundation's 2010 Community Engagement Classification, is recognized for its commitment to community service and service-learning. Through APU's Center for Student Action, undergraduates perform more than 165,000 hours of service each year locally and globally.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: Local service is conducted by the City Links program, where students aid the city of Azusa and greater Los Angeles area. Services include assisting food banks and providing after school tutoring and mentoring. In addition to these weekly service opportunities, students can spend a semester living and learning in Los Angeles through L.A. Term.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: APU students serve in Mexico through the Mexico Outreach Program, which continues a more-than-40-year relationship with churches, refugee shelters, prisons, and rehabilitation centers. Several opportunities exist throughout the year for students to serve the Mexicali community. APU also maintains a site in Ensenada–Rancho El Refugio–that is available throughout the year for students to stay at while conducting outreach in the area.


title: Azusa Pacific University

text: The Center for Student Action sends more than 250 students, faculty, staff, and alumni around the world to partner with long-term and national workers. Programs include but are not limited to: educational development, orphan work, conversational English teaching, prayer ministry, mobile medical care clinics, and anti-human and anti-sex trafficking. The following are relief efforts that the Center for Student Action has worked toward mobilizing aid and volunteers:


title: Sergio Tacchini

text: Sergio Tacchini (; born 2 September 1938) is an Italian fashion designer of sportswear and former professional tennis player. The sportswear firm bearing his name is located in Bellinzago Novarese, Novara, Italy.


title: Sergio Tacchini

text: Sergio Tacchini became a professional tennis player at age 17 by entering the Tennis Club of Milan in 1955. In 1960 he won the title of the Italian Champion over Nicola Pietrangeli. He also competed in the Davis Cup, counting five victories in singles and one in doubles in a total of fifteen matches. He took another two Italian titles in doubles, with Pietrangeli as his partner, in 1967 and 1968.


title: Sergio Tacchini

text: In 1966, Sergio Tacchini founded "Sandys S.p.A." which was to be renamed after Tacchini himself a few years later. The initial idea was to experiment with colours and fabrics to create elegant and stylish tenniswear, at a time when white dominated the players' clothes. However the project expanded to other sports such as ski, fitness, golf and sailing, as well as leisure wear. The mid-eighties saw Sergio Tacchini issue the "Dallas" tracksuit.


title: Sergio Tacchini

text: The firm went into bankruptcy in 2007 and was purchased in 2008 by Hong Kong Chinese businessman Billy Ngok, owner of Hembly International and associate of American businessman Ron Burkle. In 2011, the firm's annual revenue were reported to be "less than €50 million (US$71 million)." A report at the time of the firm's purchase said the price was EUR27m (US$42.3m), and that Ngok "planned to open 120 shops in mainland China in the next three years." A 2011 report said the firm had "more than 100 Tacchini stores worldwide."


title: Sergio Tacchini

text: Many athletes joined the Sergio Tacchini brand over the years. Most of them were well-known tennis players from the 1970s and 1980s such as Jimmy Connors, Vitas Gerulaitis, Ilie Năstase, Mats Wilander, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Sergi Bruguera, Pat Cash, Gabriela Sabatini, Pete Sampras, and Martina Hingis. Goran Ivanišević was sponsored by the firm when he won Wimbledon in 2001 and Novak Djokovic was sponsored when he won the Australian Open for the second time, and Wimbledon, in 2011. The firm has also sponsored the 1983 Italian basketball team in the European Cup, the skiers Pirmin Zurbriggen and Marc Girardelli, Formula 1 drivers such as Ayrton Senna and Carlos Reutemann and the golfer Ian Woosnam.


title: Sergio Tacchini

text: In the 1980s, Tacchini and Fila led in tennis sponsorship, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nike and Adidas moved into, and took the lead in, sponsoring the top athletes in the sport.


title: Sergio Tacchini

text: At present, sponsored athletes include sailor Karine Fauconnier (Transat Jacques Vabre and Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race) and English cricketer Ian Bell.


title: Sergio Tacchini

text: Djokovic signed a 10-year deal with Tacchini in November 2009. At the time of signing, he was fourth in the ATP rankings and had won only one Grand Slam title. In 2011, he became the world No. 1 and winner of 48 of 49 matches on the professional tour. Under the terms of the deal, Djokovic receives "incentive bonuses linked to tournament wins and end-of-year rankings, ... a share of all Tacchini revenue from sales in China, and [a share of] worldwide revenue from Djokovic-branded Tacchini products." After his Wimbledon victory, he traveled with Ngok and Burkle to Serbia to discuss plans for investment, including a Tacchini plant, in the Niš area. Tacchini, however, "fell behind on the payments in 2011 as Djokovic's success triggered significant bonuses". Their association ended in May 2012.


title: Alone at Prom

text: Alone at Prom is the sixth studio album by Canadian singer and rapper Tory Lanez. It was released on December 10, 2021, through his independent label One Umbrella. The album is heavily inspired by '80s music, and it was developed based on that era of music and aesthetics.


title: Alone at Prom

text: The album was first announced through the singer's Instagram account when he revealed that he was working on an "80s capsule" in late 2020, sharing snippets of the project during the last months of 2020 and throughout 2021. "Alone at Prom" was officially announced, along with its title, in September 2021. Lanez cited as musical inspirations for the project artists such as Hall & Oates, Toto, Michael Jackson and Rick James.


title: Alone at Prom

text: He explained its musical direction by saying, "The music was so retro and nostalgic that the character had to be created and authenticated through film, picture and music video."


title: Alone at Prom

text: Andy Kellman of AllMusic gave the album a 2.5 rating in his review, saying that the album "works to Tory's advantage that he sounds as if he's in character and (perhaps as a consequence) doesn't resort to self-pitying histrionics. This is all conducive to passive listening, a soundtrack to idly browsing racks of distressed jeans".


title: Economic history of France

text: Economic history of France since its late-18th century Revolution was tied to three major events and trends: the Napoleonic Era, the competition with Britain and its other neighbors in regards to 'industrialization', and the 'total wars' of the late-19th and early 20th centuries.


title: Economic history of France

text: The collapse of the Roman Empire unlinked the French economy from Europe. Town and city life and trade declined and society became based on the self-sufficient manor. What limited international trade existed in the Merovingian age — primarily in luxury goods such as silk, papyrus, and silver — was carried out by foreign merchants such as the Radhanites.


title: Economic history of France

text: Agricultural output began to increase in the Carolingian age as a result of the arrival of new crops, improvements in agricultural production, and good weather conditions. However, this did not lead to the revival of urban life; in fact, urban activity further declined in the Carolingian era as a result of civil war, Arab raids, and Viking invasions. The Pirenne hypotheses posits that at this disruption brought an end to long-distance trade, without which civilization retreated to purely agricultural settlements, and isolated military, church, and royal centers. When trade revived these centers became the nucleus of new towns and cities around which sunburns of merchants and asians grew.


title: Economic history of France

text: The High Middle Ages saw a continuation of the agricultural boom of the Carolingian age. In addition, urban life grew during this period; towns such as Paris expanded dramatically.


title: Economic history of France

text: The 13 decades from 1335 to 1450 spawned a series of economic catastrophes, with bad harvests, famines, plagues, and wars that overwhelmed four generations of Frenchmen. The population had expanded, making the food supply more precarious. The bubonic plague ("Black Death") hit Western Europe in 1347, killing a third of the population, and it was echoed by several smaller plagues at 15-year intervals. The French and English armies during the Hundred Years War marched back and forth across the land; they ransacked and burned towns, drained the food supply, disrupted agriculture and trade, and left disease and famine in their wake. Royal authority weakened, as local nobles became strongmen fighting their neighbors for control of the local region. France's population plunged from 17 million, down to 12 million in 130 years. Finally, starting in the 1450s, a long cycle of recuperation began.


title: Economic history of France

text: (Figures cited in the following section are given in livre tournois, the standard "money of account" used in the period. Comparisons with modern figures are extremely difficult; food items were comparatively cheap, but luxury goods and fabrics were very expensive. In the 15th century, an artisan could earn perhaps 30 livres a year; a great noble could have land revenues from 6,000 to 30,000 livres or more. A late seventeenth-century unskilled worker in Paris earned around 250 livres a year, while a revenue of 4000 livres a year maintained a relatively successful writer in modest comfort. At the end of the 18th century, a well-off family could earn 100,000 livres by the end of the year, although the most prestigious families could gain twice or three times that much, while, for provincial nobility, yearly earnings of 10,000 livres permitted a minimum of provincial luxury).


title: Economic history of France

text: The economy of Renaissance France was, for the first half-century, marked by dynamic demographic growth and by developments in agriculture and industry. Until 1795, France was the most populated country in Europe and the third most populous country in the world, behind only China and India. With an estimated population of 17 million in 1400, 20 million in the 17th century, and 28 million in 1789, its population exceeded even Russia and was twice the size of Britain and Dutch Republic. In France, the Renaissance was marked by a massive increase in urban populations, although on the whole, France remained a profoundly rural country, with less than 10% of the population located in urban areas. Paris was one of the most populated cities in Europe, with an estimated population of 650,000 by the end of the 18th century.


title: Economic history of France

text: Agricultural production of a variety of food items expanded: olive oil, wine, cider, woad (Fr. "pastel", a source of blue dye), and saffron. The South grew artichokes, melons, romaine lettuce, eggplant, salsifys, celery, fennel, parsley, and alfalfa. After 1500 New World crops appeared such as beans, corn (maize), squash, tomatoes, potatoes, and bell peppers. Production techniques remained attached to medieval traditions and produced low yields. With the rapidly expanding population, additional land suitable for farming became scarce. The situation was made worse by repeated disastrous harvests in the 1550s.


title: Economic history of France

text: Industrial developments greatly affected printing (introduced in 1470 in Paris, 1473 in Lyon) and metallurgy. The introduction of the high-temperature forge in northeast France and an increase in mineral mining were important developments, although it was still necessary for France to import many metals, including copper, bronze, tin, and lead. Mines and glasswork benefited greatly from royal tax exemptions for a period of about twenty years. Silk production (introduced in Tours in 1470 and in Lyon in 1536) enabled the French to join a thriving market, but French products remained of lesser quality than Italian silks. Wool production was widespread, as was the production of linen and of hemp (both major export products).


title: Economic history of France

text: After Paris, Rouen was the second largest city in France (70,000 inhabitants in 1550), in large part because of its port. Marseille (French since 1481) was France's second major port: it benefited greatly from France's trading agreements signed in 1536 with Suleiman the Magnificent. To increase maritime activity, Francis I founded the port city of Le Havre in 1517. Other significant ports included Toulon, Saint Malo and La Rochelle.


title: Economic history of France

text: Lyon was the center of France's banking and international trade markets. Market fairs occurred four times a year and facilitated the exportation of French goods, such as cloth and fabrics, and importation of Italian, German, Dutch, English goods. It also allowed the importation of exotic goods such as silks, alum, glass, wools, spices, dyes. Lyon also contained houses of most of Europe's banking families, including Fugger and Medici. Regional markets and trade routes linked Lyon, Paris, and Rouen to the rest of the country. Under Francis I and Henry II, the relationships between French imports and the exports to England and to Spain were in France's favor. Trade was roughly balanced with the Netherlands, but France continually ran a large trade deficit with Italy due to the latter's silks and exotic goods. In subsequent decades, English, Dutch and Flemish maritime activity would create competition with French trade, which would eventually displace the major markets to the northwest, leading to the decline of Lyon.


title: Economic history of France

text: Although France, being initially more interested in the Italian wars, arrived late to the exploration and colonization of the Americas, private initiative and piracy brought Bretons, Normans and Basques early to American waters. Starting in 1524, Francis I began to sponsor exploration of the New World. Significant explorers sailing under the French flag included Giovanni da Verrazzano and Jacques Cartier. Later, Henry II sponsored the explorations of Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon who established a largely Calvinist colony in Rio de Janeiro, 1555–1560. Later, René Goulaine de Laudonnière and Jean Ribault established a Protestant colony in Florida (1562–1565). (see French colonization of the Americas).


title: Economic history of France

text: By the middle of the 16th century, France's demographic growth, its increased demand for consumer goods, and its rapid influx of gold and silver from Africa and the Americas led to inflation (grain became five times as expensive from 1520 to 1600), and wage stagnation. Although many land-owning peasants and enterprising merchants had been able to grow rich during the boom, the standard of living fell greatly for rural peasants, who were forced to deal with bad harvests at the same time. This led to reduced purchasing power and a decline in manufacturing. The monetary crisis led France to abandon (in 1577) the "livre" as its money of account, in favor of the écu in circulation, and banning most foreign currencies.


title: Economic history of France

text: Meanwhile, France's military ventures in Italy and (later) disastrous civil wars demanded huge sums of cash, which were raised with through the "taille" and other taxes. The taille, which was levied mainly on the peasantry, increased from 2.5 million livres in 1515 to 6 million after 1551, and by 1589 the taille had reached a record 21 million livres. Financial crises hit the royal household repeatedly, and so in 1523, Francis I established a government bond system in Paris, the "rentes sure l'Hôtel de Ville".


title: Economic history of France

text: The French Wars of Religion were concurrent with crop failures and epidemics. The belligerents also practiced massive "scorched earth" strategies to rob their enemies of foodstuffs. Brigands and leagues of self-defense flourished; transport of goods ceased; villagers fled to the woods and abandoned their lands; towns were set on fire. The south was particularly affected: Auvergne, Lyon, Burgundy, Languedoc—agricultural production in those areas fell roughly 40%. The great banking houses left Lyon: from 75 Italian houses in 1568, there remained only 21 in 1597.


title: Economic history of France

text: In the 17th century rich peasants who had ties to the market economy provided much of the capital investment necessary for agricultural growth, and frequently moved from village to village (or town). Geographic mobility, directly tied to the market and the need for investment capital, was the main path to social mobility. The "stable" core of French society, town guildspeople and village laborers, included cases of staggering social and geographic continuity, but even this core required regular renewal. Accepting the existence of these two societies, the constant tension between them, and extensive geographic and social mobility tied to a market economy holds the key to a clearer understanding of the evolution of the social structure, economy, and even political system of early modern France. Collins (1991) argues that the Annales School paradigm underestimated the role of the market economy; failed to explain the nature of capital investment in the rural economy, and grossly exaggerated social stability.


title: Economic history of France

text: After 1597, the French economic situation improved and agricultural production was aided by milder weather. Henry IV, with his minister Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully, adopted monetary reforms. These included better coinage, a return to the livre tournois as account money, reduction of the debt, which was 200 million livres in 1596, and a reduction of the tax burden on peasants. Henry IV attacked abuses, embarked on a comprehensive administrative reform, increased charges for official offices, the "paulette", repurchased alienated royal lands, improved roads and the funded the construction of canals, and planted the seed of a state-supervised mercantile philosophy. Under Henry IV, agricultural reforms, largely started by Olivier de Serres were instituted. These agricultural and economic reforms, and mercantilism would also be the policies of Louis XIII's minister Cardinal Richelieu. In an effort to counteract foreign imports and exploration, Richelieu sought alliances with Morocco and Persia, and encouraged exploration of New France, the Antilles, Sénégal, Gambia and Madagascar, though only the first two were immediate successes. These reforms would establish the groundwork for the Louis XIV's policies.


title: Economic history of France

text: Louis XIV's glory was irrevocably linked to two great projects, military conquest and the building of Versailles—both of which required enormous sums of money. To finance these projects, Louis created several additional tax systems, including the "capitation" (begun in 1695) which taxed every person including nobles and the clergy, though exemption could be bought for a large one-time sum, and the "dixième" (1710–1717, restarted in 1733), which was a true tax on income and on property value and was meant to support the military. The "Taille" remained the chief direct tax, but its weight fell differently depending on the fiscal status ("généralité") of the province. The "Pays d'états" were at a great advantage because they paid the "Taille Réelle", which was based on a fixed percentage of a property's value. The "Pays d'élection" enjoyed no such privileges, their "taille" rate was assessed behind closed doors by the Council of State, which raised the "taille" arbitrarily to try and close the widening government deficit. The differences in terms of material prosperity between the two types of province was noticeable. To exasperate the burden of the "taille", it was levied quarterly rather than annually, and was a heavy burden on rural peasants, tending to fall heaviest on the poorest "généralités" and parishes. This acted as a disincentive on farmers to increase their productivity, since a larger yield was inevitably offset by a higher "taille" assessment.


title: Economic history of France

text: Louis XIV's minister of finances, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, started a mercantile system which used protectionism and state-sponsored manufacturing to promote the production of luxury goods over the rest of the economy. The state established new industries (the royal tapestry works at Beauvais, French quarries for marble), took over established industries (the Gobelins tapestry works), protected inventors, invited workmen from foreign countries (Venetian glass and Flemish cloth manufacturing), and prohibited French workmen from emigrating. To maintain the character of French goods in foreign markets, Colbert had the quality and measure of each article fixed by law, and severely punished breaches of the regulations. This massive investment in (and preoccupation with) luxury goods and court life (fashion, decoration, cuisine, urban improvements, etc.), and the mediatization (through such gazettes as the Mercure galant) of these products, elevated France to a role of arbiter of European taste.


title: Economic history of France

text: Unable to abolish the duties on the passage of goods from province to province, Colbert did what he could to induce the provinces to equalize them. His régime improved roads and canals. To encourage companies like the important French East India Company (founded in 1664), Colbert granted special privileges to trade with the Levant, Senegal, Guinea and other places, for the importing of coffee, cotton, dyewoods, fur, pepper, and sugar, but none of these ventures proved successful. Colbert achieved a lasting legacy in his establishment of the French royal navy; he reconstructed the works and arsenal of Toulon, founded the port and arsenal of Rochefort, and the naval schools of Rochefort, Dieppe and Saint-Malo. He fortified, with some assistance from Vauban, many ports including those of Calais, Dunkirk, Brest and Le Havre.


title: Economic history of France

text: Colbert's economic policies were a key element in Louis XIV's creation of a centralized and fortified state and in the promotion of government glory, including the construction they had many economic failures: they were overly restrictive on workers, they discouraged inventiveness, and had to be supported by unreasonably high tariffs.


title: Economic history of France

text: The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 created additional economic problems: of the more than 200,000 Huguenot refugees who fled France for Prussia, Switzerland, England, Ireland, United Provinces, Denmark, South Africa and eventually America, many were highly educated skilled artisans and business-owners who took their skills, businesses, and occasionally even their Catholic workers, with them. Both the expansion of French as a European lingua franca in the 18th century, and the modernization of the Prussian army have been credited to the Huguenots.


title: Economic history of France

text: The wars and the weather at the end of the century brought the economy to the brink. Warfare accounted for three quarters of government expenditure between 1689 and 1697, while overall government expenditure doubled. Conditions in rural areas were grim from the 1680s to 1720s. To increase tax revenues, the taille was augmented, as too were the prices of official posts in the administration and judicial system. The government also resorted to currency devaluation - there were around 40 changes in the legal value of French coinage, while the "Livre tournois" lost one third of its metal value over a 20-year period. There was also a short-lived experiment with a paper currency, "billets de monnaie", which were issued in 1701. They immediately declined in value and were withdrawn in 1710.


title: Economic history of France

text: With the borders guarded due to war, international trade was severely hindered. The economic plight of the vast majority of the French population — predominantly simple farmers — was extremely precarious, and the Little Ice Age resulted in further crop failures. Bad harvests caused starvation—killing a tenth of the people in 1693–94. Unwilling to sell or transport their much-needed grain to the army, many peasants rebelled or attacked grain convoys, but they were repressed by the state. Meanwhile, wealthy families with stocks of grains survived relatively unscathed; in 1689 and again in 1709, in a gesture of solidarity with his suffering people, Louis XIV had his royal dinnerware and other objects of gold and silver melted down.


title: Economic history of France

text: France was large and rich and experienced a slow economic and demographic recovery in the first decades following the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Birth rates were high and the infant mortality rate was in steady decline. The overall mortality rate in France fell from an average of 400 deaths per 10,000 people in 1750, to 328 in 1790, and 298 per 10,000 in 1800.


title: Economic history of France

text: Monetary confidence was briefly eroded by the disastrous paper money "System" introduced by John Law from 1716 to 1720. Law, as Controller General of Finances, established France's first central bank, the Banque Royale, initially founded as a private entity by Law in 1716 and nationalized in 1718. The bank was entrusted with paying down the enormous debt accumulated through Louis XIV's wars and stimulating the moribund French economy. Initially a great success, the bank's pursuit of French monopolies led it to land speculation in Louisiana through the Mississippi Company, forming an economic bubble in the process that eventually burst in 1720. The collapse of the Banque Royale in the crisis and the paper currency which it issued left a deep suspicion of the idea of a central bank; it was not until 80 years later that Napoleon established the Bank of France. In 1726, under Louis XV's minister Cardinal Fleury, a system of monetary stability was put in place, leading to a strict conversion rate between gold and silver, and set values for the coins in circulation in France. The amount of gold in circulation in the kingdom rose from 731 million livres in 1715 to 2 billion in 1788 as economic activity accelerated.


title: Economic history of France

text: The international commercial centers of the country were based in Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, and Bordeaux. Nantes and Bordeaux saw phenomenal growth due to an increase of trade with Spain and Portugal. Trade between France and her Caribbean colonies (Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, and Martinique) grew ten-fold between 1715 and 1789, with Saint Domingue the single richest territory in the world by 1789. Much of the lucrative imports from the Caribbean were re-exported to other European countries. By the late 1780s, 87% of the sugar, 95% of the coffee, and 76% of the indigo imported to Bordeaux from the Caribbean was being re-exported. Cádiz was the commercial hub for export of French printed fabrics to India, the Americas and the Antilles (coffee, sugar, tobacco, American cotton), and Africa (the slave trade), centered in Nantes. The value of this export activity amounted to nearly 25% of the French national income by 1789.


title: Economic history of France

text: Industry continued to expand, averaging 2% growth per year from the 1740s onwards and accelerating in the last decades before the Revolution. The most dynamic industries of the period were mines, metallurgy, and textiles (in particularly printed fabrics, such as those made by Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf). The advancements in these areas were often due to British inventors. For example, it was John Kay's invention of the flying shuttle that revolutionized the textile industry, and it was James Watt's steam engine that changed the industry as the French had known it. Capital remained difficult to raise for commercial ventures, however, and the state remained highly mercantilistic, protectionist, and interventionist in the domestic economy, often setting requirements for production quality and industrial standards, and limiting industries to certain cities.


title: Economic history of France

text: In 1749, a new tax, modeled on the "dixième" and called the "vingtième" (or "one-twentieth"), was enacted to reduce the royal deficit. This tax continued until the end of the ancien régime. It was based solely on revenues, requiring 5% of net earnings from land, property, commerce, industry and from official offices, and was meant to touch all citizens regardless of status. However, the clergy, the regions with "pays d'état" and the parlements protested; the clergy won exemption, the "pays d'état" won reduced rates, and the parlements halted new income statements, effectively making the "vingtième" a far less efficient tax than it was designed to be. The financial needs of the Seven Years' War led to a second (1756–1780), and then a third (1760–1763), "vingtième" being created. In 1754, the "vingtième" produced 11.7 million livres.


title: Economic history of France

text: Improvements in communication, like an expanding network of roads and canals, and the "diligence" stagecoach services which by the 1780s had sharply reduced travel times between Paris and the provincial cities, went a long way towards expanding trade within France. However, most French markets were overwhelmingly local in character (by 1789 only 30% of agricultural produce was being sold in a place other than where it was produced). Price discrepancies between regions and heavy internal customs barriers, which made for exorbitant transportation costs, meant that a unified national market like that of Britain was still far off. On the eve of the Revolution, a shipment of goods travelling from Lorraine to the Mediterranean coast would have been stopped 21 times and incurred 34 different duties.


title: Economic history of France

text: Starting in the late 1730s and early 1740s, and continuing for the next 30 years, France's population and economy underwent expansion. Rising prices, particularly for agricultural products, were extremely profitable for large landholders. Artisans and tenant farmers also saw wage increases but on the whole, they benefited less from the growing economy. The ownership share of the peasantry remained largely the same as it had in the previous century, with around 1/3 of arable land in the hands of peasant smallholders in 1789. A newer trend was the amount of land which came into the hands of bourgeois owners during the 18th century: fully 1/3 of the arable land in France by 1789. The stability of land ownership made it a very attractive investment for the bourgeois, as did the social prestige which it brought.


title: Economic history of France

text: Pivotal developments in agriculture such as modern techniques of crop rotation and the use of fertilizers, which were modeled on successes in Britain and Italy, began to be introduced in parts of France. It would, however, take generations for these reforms to spread throughout all of France. In northern France the three-field system of crop rotation still prevailed, and in the south the two-field system. Under such methods, farmers left either one third or half of their arable land vacant as fallow every year to restore fertility in cycles. This was both a considerable waste of land at any one time which might otherwise have been cultivated, and an inferior way of restoring fertility compared to planting restorative fodder crops.


title: Economic history of France

text: Farming of recent New World crops, including maize (corn) and potatoes, continued to expand and provided an important supplement to the diet. However, the spread of these crops was geographically limited (potatoes to Alsace and Lorraine, and maize in the more temperate south of France), with the bulk of the population over-reliant on wheat for subsistence. From the late 1760s onwards harsher weather caused consistently poor wheat harvests (there were only three between 1770 and 1789 which were deemed sufficient).


title: Economic history of France

text: The hardship bad harvests caused mainly affected the small proprietors and peasants who constituted the bulk of French farmers; large land owners continued to prosper from rising land prices and strong demand. Bread shortages could cause steep price rises, which in turn might lead to mass disruption and rioting. The average wage earner in France, during periods of abundance, might spend as much as 70% of his income on bread alone. During shortages, when prices could rise by as much as 100%, the threat of destitution increased dramatically for French families. The French government experimented unsuccessfully with regulating the grain market, lifting price controls in the late 1760s, re-imposing them in the early 1770s, then lifting them again in 1775. Abandoning price controls in 1775, after a bad harvest the previous year, caused grain prices to skyrocket by 50% in Paris; the rioting which erupted as a result (known as the Flour War), engulfed much of northeastern France and had to be put down with force.


title: Economic history of France

text: The slaving interest was based in Nantes, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, and Le Havre during the years 1763 to 1792. The 'négriers' were merchants who specialized in funding and directing cargoes of black captives to the Caribbean colonies, which had high death rates and needed a continuous fresh supply. The négriers intermarried with each other's families; most were Protestants. Their derogatory and patronizing approach toward blacks immunized them from moral criticism. They strongly opposed to the application of the Declaration of Rights of Man to blacks. While they ridiculed the slaves as dirty and savage, they often took a black mistress. The French government paid a bounty on each captive sold to the colonies, which made the business profitable and patriotic. They vigorously defended their business against the abolition movement of 1789.


title: Economic history of France

text: The agricultural and climatic problems of the 1770s and 1780s led to an important increase in poverty: in some cities in the north, historians have estimated the poor as reaching upwards of 20% of the urban population. Displacement and criminality, mainly theft, also increased, and the growth of groups of mendicants and bandits became a problem. Overall about one third of the French population lived in poverty, approximately 8 million people. This could rise by several million during bad harvests and the resulting economic crises. Although nobles, bourgeoisie, and wealthy landholders saw their revenues affected by the depression, the hardest-hit in this period were the working class and the peasants. While their tax burden to the state had generally decreased in this period, feudal and seigneurial dues had increased.


title: Economic history of France

text: In these last decades of the century, French industries continued to develop. Mechanization was introduced, factories were created, and monopolies became more common. However, this growth was complicated by competition from England in the textiles and cotton industries. The competitive disadvantage of French manufactures was sorely demonstrated after the 1786 Anglo-French commercial treaty opened the French market to British goods beginning in mid-1787. The cheaper and superior quality British products undercut domestic manufactures, and contributed to the severe industrial depression underway in France by 1788. The depression was worsened by a catastrophic harvest failure during the summer of 1788, which reverberated across the economy. As peasants and wage earners were forced to spend higher proportions of their income on bread, demand for manufactured goods evaporated.


title: Economic history of France

text: The American War of Independence had led to a reduction of trade (cotton and slaves), but by the 1780s Franco-American trade was stronger than before. Similarly, the Antilles represented the major source for European sugar and coffee, and it was a huge importer of slaves through Nantes. Paris became France's center of international banking and stock trades, in these last decades (like Amsterdam and London), and the "Caisse d'Escompte" was founded in 1776. Paper money was re-introduced, denominated in livres; these were issued until 1793.


title: Economic history of France

text: The later years of Louis XV's reign saw some economic setbacks. While the Seven Years' War, 1756–1763, led to an increase in the royal debt and the loss of nearly all of France's North American possessions, it was not until 1775 that the French economy began truly to enter a state of crisis. An extended reduction in agricultural prices over the previous twelve years, with dramatic crashes in 1777 and 1786, and further complicated by climatic events such as the disastrous winters of 1785-1789 contributed to the problem. With the government deeply in debt, King Louis XVI was forced to permit the radical reforms of Turgot and Malesherbes. However, the nobles' disaffection led to Turgot's dismissal and Malesherbes' resignation 1776. Jacques Necker replaced them. Louis supported the American Revolution in 1778, but the Treaty of Paris (1783) yielded the French little, excepting an addition to the country's enormous debt. The government was forced to increase taxes, including the "vingtième." Necker had resigned in 1781, to be replaced temporarily by Calonne and Brienne, but he was restored to power in 1788.


title: Economic history of France

text: French economic history since its late-18th century Revolution was tied to three major events and trends: the Napoleonic Era, the competition with Britain and its other neighbors in regards to 'industrialization', and the 'total wars' of the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Quantitative analysis of output data shows the French per capita growth rates were slightly smaller than Britain. However the British population tripled in size, while France grew by only third—so the overall British economy grew much faster. François Crouzet has succinctly summarized the ups and downs of French per capita economic growth in 1815-1913 as follows: <br>


title: Economic history of France

text: For the 1870-1913 era, Angus Maddison gives growth rates for 12 Western advanced countries—10 in Europe plus the United States and Canada. In terms of per capita growth, France was about average. However again its population growth was very slow, so as far as the growth rate in total size of the economy France was in next to the last place, just ahead of Italy. The 12 countries averaged 2.7% per year in total output, but France only averaged 1.6%. Crouzet argues that the:


title: Economic history of France

text: "The French Revolution abolished many of the constraints on the economy that had emerged during the old regime. It abolished the guild system as a worthless remnant of feudalism." It also abolished the highly inefficient system of tax farming, whereby private individuals would collect taxes for a hefty fee. The government seized the foundations that had been set up (starting in the 13th century) to provide an annual stream of revenue for hospitals, poor relief, and education. The state sold the lands but typically local authorities did not replace the funding and so most of the nation's charitable and school systems were massively disrupted.


title: Economic history of France

text: The economy did poorly in 1790-96 as industrial and agricultural output dropped, foreign trade plunged, and prices soared. The government decided not to repudiate the old debts. Instead, it issued more and more paper money (called an "assignat") that supposedly were grounded seized lands. The result was escalating inflation. The government imposed price controls and persecuted speculators and traders in the black market. People increasingly refused to pay taxes as the annual government deficit increased from 10% of gross national product in 1789 to 64% in 1793. By 1795, after the bad harvest of 1794 and the removal of price controls, inflation had reached a level of 3500%. Throughout January and February 1795, the Seine River(the main source of import and export of goods at the time) froze, making it impossible to transport anything through there, such as food, luxury goods, and materials that factories depended on in order to keep running. Many factories and workshops were forced to close because they had no way to operate, this led to an increased amount of unemployment. With unemployment soaring, many of the poor (most of the population) were forced to sell their belongings. On the other hand, the very few who were wealthy, could afford anything they needed. "The markets were well stocked, but the food could only be bought at excessive prices".


title: Economic history of France

text: The value of the assignats "had plunged from 31 percent of that of the silver currency in July 1794 to 8 percent in March 1795" The main cause of assignat depreciation was over-issuance by successive revolutionary governments, who turned to printing more and more paper notes to fund escalating expenditure, especially after the advent of war in 1792. Some 45 billion livres worth of paper had been printed by 1797, which collectively were worth less than one seventh that amount based on 1790 prices. The depreciation of the assignat not only caused spiraling inflation, but had knock-on effects across the entire economy. Because assignats were legal tender, they could be used to service debt repayments at face value, although their real value stood at only a fraction of this. The losses that lenders suffered as a result led them to tighten credit and raise interest rates. Likewise the real value of national lands, which the assignats were pegged to, sank to only 25% of their face value. The assignats were withdrawn in 1796 but the replacements also fueled inflation. The inflation was finally ended by Napoleon in 1803 with the gold franc as the new currency.


title: Economic history of France

text: The diminution of the economic power of the nobility and the clergy also had serious disruptive effects on the French economy. With the closure of monasteries, chapters, and cathedrals in towns like Tours, Avignon or Bayeux, thousands were deprived of their livelihoods as servants, artisans, or tradesmen. Likewise, the exodus of nobles devastated the luxury trades and led to still greater hardship for servants, as well as industries and supply networks dependent on aristocratic consumption. For those nobles who remained in France, the heated anti-aristocratic social environment dictated more modest patterns of dress and consumption, while the spiraling inflation of the assignats dramatically reduced their buying power. The plunging market for silk, for example, meant that output in the silk capital of Lyons fell by half between 1789 and 1799, contributing to a loss of almost one-third of Lyons' pre-revolutionary population.


title: Economic history of France

text: In the cities entrepreneurship on a small scale flourished, as restrictive monopolies, privileges, barriers, rules, taxes, and guilds gave way. However, the British blockade which began in 1793 severely damaged overseas trade. The wartime exigencies enacted that year by the National Convention worsened the situation by banning the export of essential goods and embargoing neutral shipping from entering French ports. Although these restrictions were lifted in 1794, the British had managed to usurp transatlantic shipping lanes in the meantime, further reducing markets for French goods. By 1796, foreign trade accounted for just 9% of the French economy, compared to 25% in 1789.


title: Economic history of France

text: Agriculture was transformed by the Revolution. It abolished tithes owed to local churches as well as feudal dues owed to local landlords. The result hurt the tenants, who paid both higher rents and higher taxes. It nationalized all church lands, as well as lands belonging to royalist enemies who went into exile. The Government in Paris planned to use these seized lands to finance expenditure by issuing assignats. With the breakup of large estates controlled by the Church and the nobility and worked by hired hands, rural France became permanently a land of small independent farms. The rural proletariat and nobility both gave way to the commercial farmer. Cobban says the revolution "bequeathed to the nation "a ruling class of landowners." Most of these new landowners were bourgeois in origin, as the economic uncertainties of the 1790s and the abolition of venal office made land ownership an attractive and safe investment.


title: Economic history of France

text: However, the recruitment needs of the wartime French Republic between 1792 and 1802 led to shortages of agricultural workers. Farmers were also subject to requisition of their livestock by passing armies; the consequent losses of manure negatively impacted the fertility and productivity of the land.


title: Economic history of France

text: Overall the Revolution did not greatly change the French business system and probably helped freeze in place the horizons of the small business owner. The typical businessman owned a small store, mill or shop, with family help and a few paid employees; large-scale industry was less common than in other industrializing nations.


title: Economic history of France

text: Napoleon after 1799 paid for his expensive wars by multiple means, starting with the modernization of the rickety financial system. He conscripted soldiers at low wages, raised taxes, placed large-scale loans, sold lands formerly owned by the Catholic Church, sold Louisiana to the United States, plundered conquered areas and seized food supplies, and did requisitions on countries he controlled, such as Italy.


title: Economic history of France

text: The constant "war-footing" of the Napoleonic Era, 1795–1815, stimulated production at the cost of investment and growth. Production of armaments and other military supplies, fortifications, and the general channeling of the society toward the establishment and maintenance of massed armies, temporarily increased economic activity after several years of revolution. The rampant inflation of the Revolutionary era was halted by not printing the new currency quite as fast. The maritime Continental Blockade, implemented by Napoleon's opponents and very effectively enforced by the Royal Navy, gradually cut into any economic arena in which the French economy was not self-sufficient. 1815 saw the final defeat of the French forces and the collapse of its war footing.


title: Economic history of France

text: This gave rise to a relatively peaceful period in the whole of Europe until 1914, during which important institutional reforms such as the introduction of a highly rationalized legal system could be implemented.


title: Economic history of France

text: Napoleon's impact on the French economy was of modest importance in the long run. He did sweep away the old guilds and monopolies and trade restrictions. He introduced the metric system and fostered the study of engineering. Most important he opened up French finance by the creation of the indispensable Bank of France. However, entrepreneurs had little opportunity to take advantage of these reforms. Napoleon provided a protected continental market by systematic exclusion of all imports from Britain. This had the effect of encouraging innovation in Britain, where the Industrial Revolution was well underway, and diverting the need for innovation in France. What innovation took place focused on armaments for the army, and was of little value in peacetime. In France the business crisis in 1810-1812 undermined what successes entrepreneurs had achieved.


title: Economic history of France

text: With the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814, the reactionary aristocracy with its disdain for entrepreneurship returned to power. British goods flooded the market, and France responded with high tariffs and protectionism, to protect its established businesses especially handcrafts and small-scale manufacturing such as textiles. The tariff on iron goods reached 120%.


title: Economic history of France

text: Agriculture had never needed protection but now demanded it from the lower prices of imported foodstuffs, such as Russian grain. French winegrowers strongly supported the tariff – their wines did not need it, but they insisted on a high tariff on the import of tea. One agrarian deputy explained: "Tea breaks down our national character by converting those who use it often into cold and stuffy Nordic types, while wine arouses in the soul that gentle gaiety that gives Frenchmen their amiable and witty national character." the French government falsified the statistics to claim that exports and imports were growing – actually there was stagnation and the economic crisis of 1826-29 disillusioned the business community and readied them to support the revolution in 1830.


title: Economic history of France

text: Perhaps the only successful and innovative economic sector was banking. Paris emerged as an international center of finance in the mid-19th century second only to London. It had a strong national bank and numerous aggressive private banks that financed projects all across Europe and the expanding French Empire. Napoleon III had the goal of overtaking London to make Paris the premier financial center of the world, but the war in 1870 reduced the range of Parisian financial influence. One key development was setting up one of the main branches of the Rothschild family.


title: Economic history of France

text: In 1812, James Mayer Rothschild arrived in Paris from Frankfurt, and set up the bank "De Rothschild Frères". This bank funded Napoleon's return from Elba and became one of the leading banks in European finance. The Rothschild banking family of France funded France's major wars and colonial expansion. The Banque de France, founded in 1796 helped resolve the financial crisis of 1848 and emerged as a powerful central bank. The Comptoir National d'Escompte de Paris (CNEP) was established during the financial crisis and the Republican revolution of 1848. Its innovations included both private and public sources in funding large projects and the creation of a network of local offices to reach a much larger pool of depositors.


title: Economic history of France

text: The Péreire brothers founded the Crédit Mobilier. It became a powerful and dynamic funding agency for major projects in France, Europe and the world at large. It specialized in mining developments; it funded other banks including the Imperial Ottoman Bank and the Austrian Mortgage Bank; it funded railway construction. It also funded insurance companies and building contractors. The bank had large investments in a transatlantic steamship line, urban gas lighting, a newspaper and the Paris Paris Métro public transit system. Other major banks included the Société Générale, and in the provinces the Crédit Lyonnais. After its defeat in 1871, France had to pay enormous reparations to Germany, with the German army continuing its occupation until the debt was paid. The 5 billion francs amounted to a fourth of France's GNP – and one-third of Germany's and was nearly double the usual annual exports of France. Observers thought the indemnity was unpayable and was designed to weaken France and justify long years of military occupation. However France paid it off in less than three years. The payments, in gold, acted as a powerful stimulus that dramatically increased the volume of French exports, and on the whole, produced positive economic benefits for France.


title: Economic history of France

text: The Paris Bourse or stock exchange emerged as a key market for investors to buy and sell securities. It was primarily a forward market, and it pioneered in creating a mutual guarantee fund so that failures of major brokers would not escalate into a devastating financial crisis. Speculators in the 1880s who disliked the control of the Bourse used a less regulated alternative the Coulisse. However, it collapsed in the face of the simultaneous failure of a number of its brokers in 1895–1896. The Bourse secured legislation that guaranteed its monopoly, increased control of the curb market, and reduced the risk of another financial panic.


title: Economic history of France

text: France in 1815 was overwhelmingly a land of peasant farms, with some handicraft industry. Paris, and the other much smaller urban centers had little industry. On the onset of the nineteenth century, GDP per capita in France was lower than in Great Britain and the Netherlands. This was probably due to higher transaction costs, which were mainly caused by inefficient property rights and a transportation system geared more to military needs than to economic growth. Industry was dominated by small and medium-sized firms, which continued using traditional techniques of production because transportation barriers protected their local markets from outside competition. According to Roger Price, "modern forms of concentrated production were exceptional and coexisted with the typical establishments of a pre-industrial economy." In 1851, only 1.5 million people worked in firms which employed more than ten people, while 3 million were employed in smaller workshops. Restraints on the growth of heavy industry included poor transportation infrastructure, the slow growth of agricultural production, of demand from the agricultural population, and a lack of raw materials and power sources.


title: Economic history of France

text: Historians are reluctant to use the term "Industrial Revolution" for France because the slow pace seems an exaggeration for France as a whole. The Industrial Revolution was well underway in Britain when the Napoleonic wars ended, and soon spread to Belgium and, to a lesser extent to northeastern France. The remainder remained little changed. The growth regions developed industry, based largely on textiles, as well as some mining. The pace of industrialization was far below Britain, Germany, the United States and Japan. The persecution of the Protestant Huguenots after 1685 led to a large-scale flight of entrepreneurial and mechanical talents that proved hard to replace. Instead French business practices were characterized by tightly held family firms, which emphasized traditionalism and paternalism. These characteristics supported a strong banking system, and made Paris a world center for luxury craftsmanship, but it slowed the building of large factories and giant corporations. Napoleon had promoted engineering education, and it paid off in the availability of well-trained graduates who developed the transportation system, especially the railways after 1840.'