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General Maximum or The Law of the Maximum was a law created during the course of the French Revolution as an extension of the Law of Suspects on 29 September 1793. Its purpose was to set price limits, deter price gouging, and allow for the continued flow of food supply to the people of France.

Historical conditions enabling the General Maximum

Maximilien Robespierre

On 21 January 1793, King Louis XVI was executed for his role in conspiring against the public liberty in an attempt to return to the throne of France. After his demise, the French government came under the control of the Committee of Public Safety, chaired by Maximilien Robespierre, a lawyer-politician committed to the ideals of the French Revolution and ridding the country of counter-revolutionary agents and loyalists to the monarchy. Under these auspices, the Reign of Terror (1793-1794) began and Robespierre facilitated the ratification of the Law of Suspects on 17 September 1793. The Law of Suspects created revolutionary tribunals which executed over 17,000 suspected loyalists and sympathizers to the King.

Also at this time, the years of revolution, international conflicts, and poor climate conditions, had eventually led to an economic environment with very high inflation and food shortages throughout France. Coming as it did within the context of the French Revolution, committee members, including Robespierre who also had significant business and agricultural interests, feared new and more radical revolutionaries were being created by the crisis. This point had been further exasperated on 5 September 1793 when the sans-culottes (common people who did not wear the fine clothing of the upper classes) invaded the National Convention demanding change and attention for the impoverished.

The General Maximum is enacted

“The municipal police shall fine everyone who buys or sells merchandise for more than the Maximum… double the value of the item sold, payable to the person who denounced them; they will be recorded on the list of suspect persons and treated as such. The buyer will not be subject of these penalties if he denounces the seller’s violation and each merchant must post in his shop a table of the Maximum or the highest price of the merchandise.” Article 7 of the General Maximum, 29 September 1793

On 29 September 1793, The Law of Suspects was extended to include the General Maximum. Although the Law of Suspects was initially created to deal with counter-revolutionaries loyal to the crown, hunger and poverty were seen by the Committee as equally dangerous to both the national interest and their positions within the government. As decreed, the law set forth uniform price ceilings on grain, flour, meat, oil, onions, soap, firewood, leather, and paper; the sale of these products were regulated at the maximum price set in 1790 value, plus one-third.

Written into the text of the General Maximum law were a series of regulations and fines. Merchants had to post their maximum rates in a conspicuous location for all consumers to see and were subject to repeated inspections by police and local officials. Furthermore, the law gave legal protection to consumers who reported violations of the Maximum to local officials. Provided the consumer did not have a role in the infraction and gave report to the proper authorities denouncing the merchant, fines would only be levied against shop owners.

Effects of the General Maximum on the French public

In 1793, France was still in the throws of the Revolution and fighting subsequent wars with Austria, Prussia, Great Britain and Spain. The government continued to function during the economic and political crises through a series of loans, bonds and tax increases. As the years of war continued, the daily life of the French began to suffer; with higher taxes, less government subsidies, and finally a food shortage, the French began to look to their own revolutionary government for answers to these problems.

In creating the General Maximum, Robespierre shifted the attention of the French people away from government involvement in widespread shortages of money and food to a fight between consumers and merchants. The text of the General Maximum was written towards businessmen who were profiting on a large scale from the demise of the French economy. However, in practice, the law ultimately targeted local shopkeepers, butchers, bakers and farmers; the merchants who were profiting the least from the economic crisis. With the General Maximum, Robespierre offered the people an answer regarding whom to blame for their poverty and their hunger. Furthermore, considering its association with the Law of Suspects, when a citizen informed the government about a merchant who was in violation of the law, they had done their civic duty.

Conclusion

By turning the crimes of price gouging and food hording into crimes against the government, France had limited success. With respect to its overt intention, that of ensuring the people were able to purchase food at a reasonable rate, the Maximum was mostly a failure. Some merchants having found themselves forced into a position to sell their goods for a price lower than what it cost to create it (i.e. cost of baking bread, growing vegetables, etc.,) chose to hide their expensive goods from the market, either for personal use or for sale on the black market. However, the General Maximum was very successful in deflecting a volatile political issue away from the Committee of Public Safety and Robespierre, enabling them to focus on larger political issues more closely related to completing the French Revolution.

Ultimately however, the General Maximum proved to be too controversial, unenforceable, and intolerable for the people of France. In July 1794 Robespierre was himself executed, followed by a Reaction against governmental extremists. In December 1794, the General Maximum was repealed.

References

Darrow, Margaret H. . "Economic Terror in the City: The General Maximum in Montauban." French Historical Studies 17, No. 2 (1991): 498-525.

Popkin, Jeremy. A History of Modern France, third edition (2006)

White, Eugene N. . "The French Revolution and the Politics of Government Finance, 1770-1815." The Journal of Economic History 55, No. 2 (1995): 227-255.

Category:French Revolution Category:Legal history