ABSTRACT
When switching from national scale to regional scale, the convergence is far from obvious; the same goes for the existence of a true national nancial system in France in 1914. It is exactly what the example of the Lille region shows. Controlled by the ‘grand families’ of the commerce and textile industries (which were the dominant activities), this marketplace centralized the capital of a large Northern region (departments of the Nord, Pas-de-Calais and Somme), far beyond the Lille district. Lille was the only regional stock exchange market, and the main banking marketplace, but not the only one. Roubaix, where the Banque de France opened a branch in 1871, sought to emerge as an autonomous banking marketplace relative to Lille (for example, in 1893, the Crédit Lyonnais1 turned its sub-branch in Roubaix into a full- edged agency). Nevertheless, it relinquished that role at the beginning of the twentieth century. In consequence, it is moreover signi cant not to study the regional nancial system as a homogeneous whole, but using local peculiarities, in particular in terms of credit. Nevertheless, Lille was one of the rst French provincial banking and nancial marketplaces with Lyon and Marseille, and powerful enough to resist, if not integration into the national nancial system, at least the standards which the Parisian centre tried to impose upon it. In 1881, the branches of the Banque de France in Lille and in Roubaix respectively ranked h and sixth on national scale (a er Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and Le Havre) according to the total volume of their transactions. In 1900, they respectively ranked third (a er Lyon and Marseille) and sixth (a er Le Havre and Bordeaux). In 1900, the Lille Stock
Exchange had become the primary stock exchange among French provinces in terms of stock capitalization, ahead of Lyon.2
