ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to discuss the primary characteristics of the pre-rail transport system in France and attempts to assess how effectively it met the transport needs of the economy in the first half of the nineteenth century. The period of Revolution and Empire, through neglect of other than strategic roads, had seen a general deterioration in transport conditions. Historically the waterways and access to the sea were important determinants of urban location because of their capacity for bulk transport, which facilitated the feeding, warming and housing of relatively large populations and provided both fuel and raw materials and a means of marketing finished products. The capacity of the pre-rail communications system to cope with the growth of traffic, in the absence of major technological innovations, was limited by geographical conditions and by dependence on animal power. Over the centuries those relatively efficient communications networks that existed stimulated economic activity, which in its turn encouraged efforts to improve communications.
