temporary decree for a period of five years

Issues - Les Echos - today fifth world economy, the France was a political, cultural and military power. But Paris has never elevated to the status of capital of the "world economy" such as Venice, Amsterdam or London in their time. Why

François Rachline - except for the Carolingian Empire of Charlemagne franc-germain, the two major periods of domination and influence of the France were those of the reigns of Louis XIV and Napoleon, two more sovereign but that surfing ever on the economy. It is subordinate to them. Napoleon expressed in one sentence: "the trade unit men;" all that unites combines them; the trade is detrimental to the authority. "One cannot say this and promote trade." Montesquieu in turn wrote in the spirit of the laws: "If the prince is merchant, any species of industry is ruined." This clear separation between the political and economic activity is typical of the France, but here the policy outweighs trade. And Colbert ask. It is well synonymous with economic development, but under the rule of the State. Still seen today. The great period of liberalization of the economy from 1983 to 1986 is driven but also by the State. This is not a private initiative which appealed to the authorities but the reverse. So, no, the France has never been a world economy in the sense that the historian Fernand Braudel gave this term. She lives as a power of balance, "South of the North and South North", a country which, economically, always sought to be in the movement, y has often succeeded, but never pre-empt the other.

Is that explains the preference for the economy and trade policy

F. r. - the trade and finance are basically traffic and flow. The France is rather a country where it stops. The reasons are both demographic and geographic. This primacy of the political result. Gaul, who will become the France, was invaded by the Italiotes and Greek peoples to the Southwest by the Goths, and Visigoths to the East and by the Normans to the North, and then the Arab Southeast. Found in the archaeological and cultural traces because these people have settled. The France, it is the Atlantic. Of course the Ocean was not an obstacle for the Normans, or the Spanish or Portuguese then, but the France was and still for it to be a country with a mild climate where vivre good is it. The invaders are conquered. Consider the Normans! They landed, they plunder, they leave more. A very old German saying also recalled this attraction: "happy as God in France". But this diversity of stand had the consequence that the countries to be had over the centuries to keep these people together, fix them. The France was not immediately a nation. It is the need for an authority of a cement which has promoted the State over the nation. Finally, the coincidences of geography and geopolitics have been that the France was, if I may say, the misfortune of not being in an in-between like Venice, for example, who took advantage of his position intermediate between the East and the West after the separation of the two empires in 476 a.d. Similarly, in contrast to the larger islands, may not deploy in the shade of a giant like the Greece to Egypt or the Japan to China.

Have the France been a sort of Western China A country that invented everything but which also burns, as this Chinese emperor who ordered to destroy paper money which he had yet authorized traffic to...

F. r. - I will not say that the France is a species of China. It is not correct. On the other hand, an observation is required: the more central power is strong and absolute, less the economy can develop independently. It is so embedded in the policy. Evidenced by Babylon with the Hammurabi code (1750 BC ad the India with the Arthashastra Treaty (300 BC ad the Greece under Mycenaean sovereignty (1550 BC).)) In France, the pressure of this power, necessary for us as a national entity, did not the escapement, these vents in the steel supply and propagate combustion. Of course we had enlightened princes, as Theobald the great, count of Champagne, who understood the interest of the trade, granting franchises in cities, and leave his peasants to sell their products. But they were exceptions. Similarly, we have a few large commercial as Jacques Coeur (1400-1456) figures, adventurers as Saint-Malo privateers in the 17th and 18th centuries, browsers, bankers, explorers. But we have not seen this species of deep movement that animates the England since the great Charter of freedoms in 1215. In fact, Rudyard Kipling could say

French: "The first to find the idea, the last to adopt it." We have seen in the 19th century with photography, automotive, the cinema, the aircraft; in the 20th with the flat screen, the minitel or the deciphering of the human genome. Innovations born in France are most often industrialized and then dominated by others, starting with the Americans. I like much in this regard remind the misadventures of the baron von Drais, a German who testifies in Paris in 1817 a surprising patent: place one behind the other two wheels connected by a framework that simply ride for moving. The laufmaschine, ancestor of the bicycle, first was the laughingstock of the country. Traffic premium not in France. Anecdotal detail: a hub, France, marked the need for a decision. The roundabout, he gives the rule the continuous movement. We have just gradually...

This is another foreigner, the Scots John Law that will provide the France the conceptual innovation décorréler the paper money of its metal reference. But it will precipitate the collapse of the Ancien Régime. Historian Niall Fergu - its (1) said of him that he had at the time the equivalent of the functions of Secretary of the Treasury, President of the Fed and pattern of the largest 500 companies...

F. r. - this man was a genius, he had two centuries in advance. But it has cost us dearly. His error, indeed, was thinking was to impose forced March the separation of the metal its currency and, therefore, have the power to do so, that he was the Regent. Result, the French will be sustainably vaccinated against paper money and the stock exchange. Must await the 19th century to have financial institutions worthy of this name. In England, there will be exactly the opposite. The fiduciary currency and institutions that regulate the will to impose gently. The need for a Central Bank was born of the conflict between the jewellers and silversmiths, first using the King to emancipate mates. The King create in 1694 (this will be the second in history after the Sweden) by a... temporary decree for a period of five years. The Bank of England is still governed by this text he would stay for it! The United States followed the same route. The first version of the Federal Reserve Bank was created in 1791, but was not renewed from 1812 to 1913. In other words, on the one hand the surfing power on economic activity, the other it Redoubt. Alphonse de Lamartine said: "trade, need for freedom by interest, eventually acquiring the feeling." It's just, and this is what feared Napoleon. More power is strong, less he could accept the freedom of trade. And when high power is exercised on a well-defined territory stating that nothing will happens there that it had controlled, then the wind of the world economy the bypasses and passes alongside. So the France came in globalisations past and present that shyly, almost backwards.

It is also said that Catholicism, in contrast to Protestantism, is less favourable to trade and capitalism. This has not prevented the very Catholic Spain and the Italy where the Holy see to be of world economies throne...

F. r. - you are right. As eldest daughter of the Church but also as heir to the Roman law, the France is impregnated with Catholicism, into the foundations of its educational system: the command is to be "received" (review, competition), and as soon as possible. In the Protestant ethic, must be above all show what it is able, to demonstrate a capacity. The two logics are very different. Let us not forget that the Spain lived on the gold and silver from the mines of America and that the "Italian" world economy was first Genoa, Florence and especially Venice. More generally, in his vocabulary of Indo-European institutions, Emile Benveniste shows that the word "commerce" appears very late in those languages, as indeed the word "work". Trade is not popular in Rome. The free man is one who can focus on the life of the city: the otium. Must work for a living, without necessarily being a slave cannot to indulge. Is necessary to the nec otium, unable to participate. From there comes the word "trading". Talk about sale or trade in France, add immediately: "in the noble sense of the term." This precision is unnecessary in an English, an American, a German, a Swedish or a Dutch. For them, the trade is neither better nor worse than the industry. It is one activity like any other, which allows the enrichment. The French admire those who have money but do not too like those who work to enrich themselves... It does not prevent them from fully succeed when they are.

You discuss the French. After having dominated the world, it patina...

F. a. - Yes. Today, however, he suffers. It is a language dominated the adjectives, which characterize the difference of English which is all wood verb: to