When Colbert converted France to the war economy

Emmanuel Macron's use of the expression “war economy”, in June 2022, did not fail to raise eyebrows among historians. “A first definition corresponds to the way in which the State allocates, or even reallocates, from civilian industry to defense industry of resources that it considers critical. This can correspond, depending on the era, to coal, steel, wheat, as today to rare metals. There we find three essential dimensions: allocate, plan, decide”reframes Guillaume Lasconjarias, associate professor at Sorbonne University. For the historian, this nationalization of means for defense purposes dates back in France to the affirmation of the so-called “absolute” monarchy, under Louis XIV.

To compete with the Dutch East India Company, France needs resources. However, the royal navy only had 18 ships in such a state that they were incapable of protecting French merchant ships against pirates and privateers.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, advisor to the king, will imagine a complete economic project: equipping ports, modifying tax legislation, creating trading companies (like the East India Company), building arsenals, building a navy war. He went so far as to rethink the management of royal forests and require that part of each forest be preserved in high forests for shipyards. When Colbert died in 1683, France had 276 warships, all made from French wood.

“Reorganization of industrial tools”

The American Civil War is another illustration of the mobilization of an economic tool in the service of a conflict. The first war that could be described as total, it spanned four years (1861-1865) and mobilized 3 million combatants. But above all, it will pit an industrial North, whose production tools and logistics are efficient, with a rural South, which has only “king cotton” as its main resource.

On the European continent, during the first and then the second world war, a tool of war will also develop, mobilizing all possible human and material resources. “No one expected the conflict to last this longrecalls Guillaume Lasconjarias. State ownership will be necessary to reorganize industrial tools. »

From 1915, the shell crisis, which concerned the entire supply of the armies with weapons and ammunition, led to measures coming from the top of the State. In France, the decision was made to withdraw workers from the front to reintegrate them into arms factories. New workshops were created, such as that of Michelin on the Gravanches site, in Clermont-Ferrand, which produced 60,000 shells per day in 1916, or two to three trains of ammunition per day.