Description

Few aspects of economic development have had such a widespread or profound impact on the reshaping of contemporary France as transportation. As a result, transport policy has brought many of the major social forces into conflict. Monopolistic railway companies, closely aligned with the banks, combated the defenders of the regions and small towns. The fiercely independent truckers and barge-haulers, proponents of the small family firm, collided with the forces of the state. Apostles of the transatlantic gospel of free enterprise and technical progress clashed with supporters of a planned, socialist society. Joseph Jones's study focuses on the period since World War I. In these years the stability of the transport world was shaken by the effect of automobile competition upon the railways' near monopoly. A republican tradition based on fear of monopoloy and protection of local facilities had emerged in the era when rail was king. In the 1930s and 1940s transport policy became a tug of war between supporters of this tradition and those who felt that a new approach was needed to cope with competition, economic depression, and war. Legislative proposals led to heated discussion as railway companies, car manufacturers, truckers, oil companies, small business, local authorities, and trade unions fought to defend their interests. Dr Jones's study of these conflicts, based uopn extensive archival research, illustrates the tension between state planning economic liberalism wihch has been the central issue in economic policy in twentieth-century France.