Paper's abstract

Laurence Depambour-Tarride, A few remarks about French lawyers and the idea of market in history
France and its traditions are often presented as recalcitrant to the idea of market: the weight of State, its colbertism, the corporatisms would definitely prevent any authentic adhesion to the market mechanisms. Revisiting the great historical currents of French law may cast a new light on this point. In the limits of a short paper, one can only aim at spotting some chronological frames. From the 18th century on, lawyers contributed to build the market into a system, a machine providing material happiness : but before, as early as during the Middle Ages and probably more deeply, French law greeted an original and efficient conception of the market, torn between the spirituality of the Christian current and the individualism of the Roman founded current. Therefore the French tradition, born of a play of influences all taken into account, offers a version of the market viewed as a figure of freedom intending to bring abundance but whose specificity was not to ignore necessity or poverty.

Key Words : market, France, history, colbertism
t. 40, 1995 : p. 264-285

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