ABSTRACT
In economic history France and bimetallism are inseparable. France was prominent in the huge movements of gold and silver which occurred during the Renaissance and which are known as the 'great bimetallic flows'. The standardization of the franc of 1803 is supposed to have created a stable currency on which the French economy and savings in particular, thrived for the next 120 years. In some respects this is true, but the new currency had to compete with earlier forms which continued to circulate alongside it for much of this period. It is reported that liards circulated in poorer regions such as Brittany and Burgundy until well into the 1850s; that fourteenth-century blancs, obsolete crowns and reaux, were still in use in the 1860s. The French Commercial Code of 1807 gradually became the basis of company law in Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Italy and Spain, and even Germany.
