ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to provide an assessment of the importance of rail construction, and of communications more generally, to the development of the rural economy in France. It examines the state of communications and agricultural market structures in France prior to the development of a railway system. The book considers the significance of the survival of a low-productivity agricultural system and a compartmentalized economic system in terms of living standards and social relationships. It explains the development of railway networks and the modernization of communications in general, the effects this had on the organization of the market, the stimulus provided to agriculture by improved access to urban markets and the increasing competition to satisfy those markets. Britain, the first industrial nation, has been described as ‘a small country with integrated commodity markets adequately served by water-borne transport into the major centres of population’.
