While Britain's colonies were working toward becoming the United States of America, France was suffering from economic crisis and on its way to its own revolution -- a revolution that would use some of the same language used by British liberals and the American revolutionists. In fact, changes in Britain, and the reading of Newton and Locke had been pushing numerous French into believing that their kingdom's old monarchical system could be and should be reformed.
Between 1715 and 1771, French commerce had increased almost eight-fold. France was second only to Great Britain in trade. It was exporting sugar, coffee and indigo that had been developed in its Caribbean colonies. Transportation was improving. In the 1780s, for example, the 600 miles between Paris and Toulouse was only an eight-day journey, rather than the fifteen days it had taken in the 1760s. But the advance in commerce did not produce well-being for the common people. The population of France had grown to between 24 and 26 million -- up from 19 million in 1700, without a concomitant growth in food production. Farmers around Paris consumed over 80 percent of what they grew, so if a harvest fell by around 10 percent, which was common, people went hungry. There was insufficient government planning and storage of grain for emergency shortages. Agriculture was three-quarters of the economy but it was backward compared to the agricultures of Britain and the United Netherlands, and it was still burdened by feudalistic arrangements. People suffered too with a decline in the 1780s in France's textile industry. The importation of British textiles, cheaper and of better quality than French textiles, created unemployment among France's spinners and weavers.
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