Private networks and economic institutions in 19th century Paris: an unstable complementarity

19th-century France has often been described either as totally centralized, with an already strong State, or as lacking any kind of economic regulation after the abolition of guilds and quality norms during the Revolution. During the last 15 years, however, historians have demonstrated the influence and efficiency of various meso-level "institutions" (in the loose sense of the word), including family firms as well as notaries, conseils de prud'hommes (arbitration boards between employers and employees) and Chambers of Commerce (Hirsch, 1991, Plessis (ed.), 1993, Hirsch and Minard, 1998, Hoffman et al., 2000, Cottereau, 2002). My own PhD thesis about the Paris Chamber of Commerce in the 19th century (Lemercier, 2003) and my current research dealing with a broader system of meso-level economic institutions aim at going one step further (...)