ABSTRACT
Throughout the last century there were considerable population movements as a result of changes in the economy. Alongside the overall population increase (from 36.5 million in 1851 to 60 million in 1999) there has been a population shift from regions with a declining economic base towards other areas with promising development potential. Industrial development in nineteenth-century France took place in the areas of natural resources such as the north and Lorraine, where coal was found, and where the iron and steel industries developed alongside textiles in the north and in the Vosges. Thus a large proportion of manufacturing industry was established on the eastern side of a line drawn between Le Havre, Reims and Lyons, with pockets elsewhere (for instance, a number of relatively isolated industrialized towns around and in the Massif Central, such as Le Creusot, Saint-Étienne and Clermont-Ferrand, or shipbuilding in the main coastal towns). The pre-eminence of Paris as the main French market also helped the development of industry there and made it the core of service activities.
