Articles

Abstract This paper introduces a unique regional panel data set reflecting steam power use in the French départements from 1841 to 1911 and investigates, on this basis, the time and spatial patterns of steam technology diffusion in nineteenth-century France. While in the existing literature most quantitative assessments of steam power use in French industries rely on statistical information coming from the industrial censuses conducted in 1839–1847, 1860–1865 and 1896 [see Chanut et al. (2000)], our data provide an exhaustive overview of the spread of steam power in France based on the French mining engineers’s reports that followed the early introduction in France of regulations on the use of steam engines. By controlling for a number of geographical, demographical and structural factors and initial conditions, we provide statistical evidence that intensity in the use of steam engine within close proximity was a strong and robust predictor of steam engine adoption among French industries. Our results therefore confirm that economic development in the prime time of industrialization benefited from spill-overs in neighboring regions, while this is not found over longer distances.

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Société de législation comparée, 2022, 454 p.

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This article traces the history of Amélie de Dietrich in her role (1806 to 1855) as the head of one of the oldest family-owned businesses in Europe: the De Dietrich Company. Economic history has long given a very minor place to women entrepreneurs. Recent analyses nevertheless tend to show that women business leaders were not exceptions in the nineteenth century. This paper is a further attempt to bring women entrepreneurs – and their contribution to the industrial take-off – out of invisibility. Amélie de Dietrich took important strategic decisions to adapt the company to the new economic opportunities which arose in the first half of the nineteenth century. Her choices were decisive for the future of the company; what is more, she succeeded in restoring the familial ownership. Drawing on Amélie de Dietrich’s own unpublished correspondence, this contribution examines the factors that explain her success in imposing herself as a Maître des Forges.

Les écoles françaises de droit du Moyen-Orient ont, de leur création jusqu’à l’après seconde guerre mondiale, fonctionné en recourant aux services pédagogiques de docteurs en droit non agrégés. L’article analyse les profils et les motivations de ces candidats à l’expatriation, mais aussi les déconvenues, voire les renoncements, auxquels l’absence, délibérément organisée, d’un quelconque statut n’a pas manqué d’exposer ces informels ambassadeurs de la culture juridique française.

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Les historiens ont tendance à classer l’institution médiévale du sacre et du couronnement français dans le registre du droit divin des rois selon lequel le pouvoir vient de Dieu sans la médiation constituante du peuple. Selon cette logique, le sacre solenniserait une donation unilatérale du pouvoir de la part de Dieu en faveur de l’oint et du couronné. Mais la doctrine du droit divin des rois apparaît comme une invention moderne née en réaction aux guerres de religion sous la plume de Jean Du Tillet en 1566. Aussi, l’étude des sources médiévales liturgiques, historiographiques, doctrinales et juridiques de la tradition française du sacre et du couronnement révèle que la nature juridique de cette cérémonie consisterait, entre le prince et Dieu, en la double donation d’un pouvoir constitué par le peuple.