What is it about?
It is about patents of inventions and how this primary source can be used to address the question of the social groups involved in promoting technical and economic development in the Age of the Industrial Revolution
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Why is it important?
Building upon Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret's revisionist approach of the nobility in 18th century France, this contribution shows that, as a group, heirs to Old Regime nobility were very much involved in economic development, partly because of landownership (mines) and capital (money, education, social network), etc., Quantitative analysis of the patents of invention taken by nobles in the first half of the 19th century shows that nobles were very much at the forefront of progress, part and parcel of the general willingness to catch up with Britain after Napoleon's fall. In many cases, patents of invention taken by the nobility protected technological advances or new products developed in their own factories in areas such as mining, textile, steam engines, arms and ammunition, carriages, etc.
Perspectives
1. Although France did not produce many crucial technical inventions in the era, technological progress was key to its modernisation. Patents of invention, which were published in the Journal Officiel, gives an appreciation of the activity in this area. 2. Focusing on a corpus defined by its socio-economic background helps better understand the whereabouts of economic development.
Joel Felix
University of Reading
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This page is a summary of: Avant-garde aristocrats? French Noblemen, Patents, and the Modernisation of France (1815–48), January 2000, Nature,
DOI: 10.1057/9781403932747_13.
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