ABSTRACT
It has long seemed impossible to investigate the dark side of the early modern market economy, particularly because of the spatial dimension of illicit businesses and the variety of protagonists involved. Having reached the end of our journey along the many pathways through the Old Regime economy, a number of conclusions can now be put forward, together with several hypotheses for future research. These conclusions clearly demonstrate the inherent interest in studying economic history from the perspective of the people involved in a wide range of commercial activities. Writing history in this way requires a systematic comparison of normative sources and judicial archives in order to uncover the practices and itineraries of actors who, by definition, seek to remain invisible. Archives relating to royal tribunals (salt warehouses, Valence’s Commission du Conseil, courts of justice) and local institutions (municipal councils, city guilds and manufactures such as the Grande Fabrique) have emerged as an extremely rich source of information for reconstructing the mechanisms of the illicit economy and for reflecting on the tangled web of formal, informal and criminal activities.
