General maximum

The General Maximum, or Law of the Maximum, was a law during the French Revolution, as an extension of the Law of Suspects on 29 September 1793. It succeeded the 4 May 1793 loi du maximum that also set price limits, deterred price gouging, and allowed for the continued flow of food supply to the French people.^[1]

Background

Competing theories exist as to the causes of the conditions the General Maximum was intended to ameliorate.

Eugene White, in his 1995 publication "The French Revolution and the Politics of Government Finance, 1770–1815", views that years of revolution, international conflicts, and poor climate conditions had led to an economic environment with massive inflation and food shortages throughout France.^[2]

Andrew Dickson White, Professor of History at Cornell, suggests that the ever-greater and ultimately uncontrolled issuance of paper money authorised by the National Assembly was at the root of France's economic failure and most certainly the cause of its increasingly rampant inflation ^[3]

Although it varied according to region, the maximum price for first necessity goods was about a third higher than the 1790 prices, and the legal maximum fixed to the wages was about half higher than the average level in 1790. Committee members feared new and more radical revolutionaries were being created by the crisis.The fear was intensified on 5 September 1793, when the sans-culottes invaded the National Convention demanding "Food- and to have it, force for the law."^[4]

Content

On 29 September 1793, the Law of Suspects was extended to include the General Maximum. The Law of Suspects was initially created to deal with counter-revolutionaries, but hunger and poverty were seen by the Committee of Public Safety as dangerous to both the national interest and their positions within the government.^[5]

The law set forth uniform price ceilings on grain, flour, meat, oil, onions, soap, firewood, leather, and paper; their sale were regulated a third over the maximum price set in 1790.^[6][7]

Written into the text of the law were regulations and fines. Merchants had to post their maximum rates in a conspicuous location for all consumers to see and were subject to repeated inspections by police and local officials. Furthermore, the law gave legal protection to consumers who reported violations of the Maximum to local officials. If the consumer did not have a role in the infraction and gave report to the proper authorities denouncing the merchant, fines would be levied against only shop owners.

Effects

In 1793, the French Revolution caused wars with Austria, Prussia, Great Britain and Spain. The government continued to function during the economic and political crises by a series of loans, bonds and tax increases; an increasingly large amount of paper money issuance was a vain attempt to stimulate the economy.^[8] Matters were worsened by food shortages that seemed to have resulted from bad harvests but more importantly from the unwillingness of farmers to bring products to the market at prices below the cost of production. Shortages, however, were widely blamed on speculators, hoarders and price gougers.

The law was written with an eye towards businessmen profiting from the demise of the French economy. However, in practice, the law targeted local shopkeepers, butchers, bakers and farmers; they were profiting the least from the economic crisis.^[9]

With the General Maximum, the Convention offered the people someone to blame for their hunger and poverty. Furthermore, the Law of Suspects made a citizen who informed the government about a merchant in violation of the law do his civic duty.^[10]

Conclusion

Turning price gouging and food hoarding into crimes met with limited success. The Maximum was mostly a success with regards to its intentions of ensuring that citizens could afford to purchase goods at a reasonable rate, evidenced by the mass riots when the law was abolished. Some merchants, finding themselves forced to sell their goods for a price lower than what it cost to create it (i.e. cost of baking bread, growing vegetables, etc.,) chose to hide their expensive goods from the market, either for personal use or for sale on the black market.^[11] The National Convention's attempt to enforce the General Maximum by repressing, detaining and executing those who didn't respect it made of it one of the symbols of the Terror. The Maximum more than served its purpose although it was met with all of the problems to be expected of strict wartime economic regulation during what was effectively a siege, and with its repeal in December 1794 came inflation, mass economic strife and riots that ultimately lead to the rise of the Directory and the end of the Thermidorian period.

References

Further sources

• Darrow, Margaret H. . "Economic Terror in the City: The General Maximum in Montauban." French Historical Studies 17, No. 2 (1991): 498–525.
• Popkin, Jeremy. A History of Modern France, third edition (2006)
• White, Eugene N. . "The French Revolution and the Politics of Government Finance, 1770–1815." The Journal of Economic History 55, No. 2 (1995): 227–255.