Who's ready for a thread about the Flour War of 1775? Too bad, you're getting one anyway!

Disclaimers: I am not an economist or historian. I am a fantasy writer with a polisci degree, currently working on my sourdough and a novel set in 18th c France.
I've read a lot about this period, but this is an extremely complex issue with many layers and interpretations.

So as you may have heard, bread was important in 18th century France. It's fair to say bread on the table was the compact between the king and the people. In the French Revolution, when people talked about "The Baker and the Baker's Wife", they meant the king & queen.

Throughout the 18th century, population growth in the cities and towns put increasing pressure on grain supply. Every aspect, from who could sell, where, to whom and for what price, was literally policed. Grain was seen as a finite national resource that had to be distributed.

This system had problems. Like all complex bureaucracies and monopolies, it was vulnerable to corruption and abuse. There were shortages. There were times when the harvests weren't bad, but prices were high anyway, and people accused officials of dumping grain to maintain prices.

Meanwhile, France kept looking to its rival England, getting richer. And this being the Enlightenment, some people wondered if maybe all individuals should be allowed to pursue their own happiness and prosperity, instead of being told what to do by people who rarely have a clue.

There was never an economic system that "worked" in 18th c France. It was a cruel, hideously unequal economy that relied on forced labour. Reforms of that system were disastrous in many ways but liberalization wasn't an ideological lark; it was an attempt to solve real problems.

Also worth noting, the whole problem gets unduly pinned on Louis XVI not being up to the job in the 1770s and 80s. As with the war debt and all of France's many problems, he inherited a long history of lurching, contradictory economic policies from his grandfather, Louis XV.

In the 1760s, Louis XV was persuaded to deregulate the grain trade. Then there were bad harvests, and some people speculated and hoarded, and the people who benefited from the system that enforced the rules were unhappy, and the king said "never mind!" This will become a pattern!

The same thing happened in 1774, just after Louis XVI became king, when his new minister of finance, Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot, said a lot of things were going to have to change around here. This guy.

Mary Wollstonecraft really admired Turgot: "this most excellent man, suffering his clear judgment to be clouded by his zeal, rouzed the nest of wasps, that rioted on the honey of industry in the sunshine of court favour."

Simon Schama is much less admiring, and writes (in Citizens) that Turgot "had an excessively dim view of human nature but an excessively cheerful view of the possibility of its improvement."

The obvious problem with produce-what-we-consume is that sometimes Nature intervenes, so you need reserves (which sometimes rot) and rations.

Turgot argued for each region to always be trying to produce more than its locals needed, so a shortage in one area could be overcome by trade, between regions and even between countries, counter to the traditional French view of grain as the nation's property in some sense.

So among other things, Turgot replaced forced labour with a property tax, ended the guild system and implemented free trade reforms in grain. Hoo boy, people hated all of it!

I'm paraphrasing the excellent book The Flour War: Gender, Class and Community in Late Ancien Regime French Society, by Cynthia A Boulton: people thought the authorities ought to be taking better care of them in their regions, not worrying about distant concerns and fancy ideas.

So the common people hated Turgot, but so did the elites, since he was also trying to do away with a tangle of ridiculous privileges that were contributing to France's dire financial position. He was also, um, a bit prickly. Told the king off for being weak, for example.

As Turgot was making his stand, there was a terrible harvest. There were shortages, there was speculation, the prices rocketed. Poor people suffered greatly. By May 1775, there were riots: The Flour War. Just as Louis XVI took the throne.

Subsistence protests were not new in France but the Flour War was serious and basically told Louis XVI who was boss (not him)! It consisted mainly of "public taxation", ie a mob showing up at a mill or bakery and demanding to be sold a certain amount of flour for a "fair price."

And that's when Louis XVI, a man not known for his luck with timing, went off to be crowned with great pomp, along with his wife of five years, with whom he had not yet had sex, which everyone knew, so it was hard to stir up dynastic enthusiasm.

About said wife: Antonia Fraser writes: "Now if at all, during the period of the Flour War, was the occasion when Marie Antoinette might have uttered the notorious phrase: 'Let them eat cake' (Qu'ils mangent de la brioche."). She did not say that.

Back to Mary Wollstonecraft: "The king, who had not sufficient resolution to support the administration of Turgot, whom his disposition for moderation had chosen, being at a loss what measures to take, called to the helm the plausible Necker." I love that: the Plausible Necker.

Wollstonecraft continues: "He, only half comprehending the plans of his able predecessor, was led by his vanity cautiously to adopt them; first publishing his Comte-rendu, to clear the way to popularity. This work ... alarming the courtiers, Necker was, in his turn, dismissed."

So that's the Flour War! The precursor and warning bell of the French Revolution, about 15 years before it.

I've been thinking about it because I think the run on flour isn't just about the fact that bread has been in short supply, or about baking to pass the time.

I think some of us have a deep cultural memory saying a bag of flour in the pantry means our family survives. It means public welfare and the survival of institutions. The Romans even had a goddess that personified the public grain allotment.

Food systems are complicated and fragile, good policy takes into account both long term effects and the immediate circumstances of implementation, and history can teach us. Fin.