GOVERNMENT REGULATION AND GROWTH IN THE FRENCH PAPER INDUSTRY DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Papermaking apparently originated in China about two centuries before the Christian Era. Arabs learned the art in the eighth century and diffused it along North Africa, whence it spread into Spain in the twelfth century, into Italy in the thirteenth, and into France either near the beginning or near the middle of the fourteenth century. Around 1700 the French economy was in the middle of a protracted period of stagnation, and the paper industry was especially depressed. Several intendants stated at that time that papermaking had greatly declined over the past two decades, and the newly established Council of Trade learned from the survey it ordered in 1701 that the number of active mills was everywhere much smaller than formerly. Most of the evidence the author has sketched in this article reveals a direct correlation between the industry's expansion and the relaxation of direct governmental controls in France. After recovering from a long period of depression at the end of the seventeenth century, papermaking perhaps doubled its output between 1720 and 1789, with most of the growth coming after 1750.