ABSTRACT
In the middle of the eighteenth century, France began to depart from the pattern of the past in several significant ways. The beginning of growth in the overall population and in the productivity of the economy, were hardly noticed at the time. The development of a secular culture and the articulation of challenges to the absolutist monarchy and the traditional social hierarchy, were readily apparent at least to the educated and literate. Predominantly agricultural and definitely "preindustrial", the eighteenth-century French economy was nevertheless not backward by the standards of its day. The consensus of modern historical research is that the rate of French economic growth from 1700 to the time of the French Revolution was comparable to that of England, but that the growth was less concentrated in areas suitable for the adoption of new power-driven machinery. The limitations of France's transportation system, which made it difficult to export goods over long distances, contributed to the dispersal of manufacturing.
