Rise of the Rentier: France and the Making of Financial Modernity, 1830-1930

The global financial crisis of 2008 and the great recession that ensued have made economic inequality an urgent issue, sparking intense debate over the role of finance in modern life. Rise of the Rentier: France and the Making of Financial Modernity, 1830-1930 will explain how average people starting in the nineteenth century came to view financial investment as an ordinary, mundane activity, one increasingly entwined with their daily lives. This was the period in which capital experienced its first globalization, and the number of investors grew dramatically, incorporating even very small savers as members of a new investor 'class.' This research focuses on France, one of the largest capital-exporting nations of the modern era, but also one that pioneered techniques of the modern mass investor society. Paris was the world's second largest financial market by 1900, and the depth and breadth of France's investing public was exceptional among advanced capitalist countries. Particularly eager to send capital abroad, modest French investors rewrote landscapes and lives from Panama to South Africa, from California to Russia. Their steps into financial markets were supported by state, judicial, and corporate measures that made investment easier and more accessible, but which also helped turn the 'small saver' or 'petit rentier' into a potent political category, able to make demands on their representatives. The nature of France's investing public and the country's republican traditions placed finance at the heart of political contestation, allowing us to study how people simultaneously came to think of themselves as national citizens and members of a global economic order.

Unlike conventional economic histories, which typically appraise financial markets chiefly as elements and indicators of national economic growth, this research approaches mass investment as a political and cultural as much as economic project, arguing that small investors are crucial to how financial systems gain legitimacy and persuasive capacity despite generating destabilizing inequality in democratic polities. It excavates the understandings, aspirations, and activities of ordinary people as they plunged - and were pulled - into finance, opening intimate realms in which individuals imagined and built their (economic) futures. These personal projections refracted through the political arena, helping configure relations between wealth and political power. From the pocketbook of the small investor, then, we can build a history of finance from the bottom up that takes seriously the hopes, anxieties, and traumas that both motored and resulted from financial development.

This perspective demands new sources and voices in our histories of economic life, and the project will incorporate analysis of financial ephemera, like manuals and circulars; traveling securities' salesman; investor letters to state and financial institutions; journalistic accounts of financial scandal; and police surveillance of financial probity. It also requires new research strategies, such as approaching financial behavior through the lens of consumption studies; analyzing the aesthetics of investment instruments and advertising; reconstructing the spaces of financial engagement, from exchange districts to bank lobbies. I will privilege and expand on methodologies that allow us to incorporate lay knowledge and practice into our examination of rarified economic realms. Both the subject matter and methodology of this project thus encourages a more pluralistic and democratic engagement with the economic, within and outside the academy.

By inquiring into the social and cultural history of finance and the elaboration and understanding of global inequalities, this research addresses pressing social issues and stands to make important contributions to skills development, enhancing the knowledge economy, and enriching quality of life in the UK. It has been designed from the outset with an eye to engaging a set of non-academic beneficiaries, summarized below, and will be managed to expand the scope of these beneficiaries as the research progresses.

Key beneficiaries in the private sector are the Business Archives Council (registered charity) and several corporations whose archivists will participate in a 'day school' that will place these professionals in contact with researchers in the interdisciplinary study of capitalism. Through these collaborations, corporate archivists will be better positioned to shape the development and exploitation of their collections, and the BAC will enjoy expanded opportunities to publicize its mission (especially to new enterprises developing archival collections) and enhance its organizational capacity within the sector.

Third sector and the wider public will enjoy benefits from this research via public events crafted around two themes and modes of engagement. The first involves collaboration with organizations concerned with improving financial literacy and capacity, such as the Citizens' Advice Bureau Manchester. The second will take the form of a public event organized with creative artists addressing the themes of emotions and communities of debt. This project will thus support the work of third sector organizations and creative professionals, delivering new knowledge and perspective for both groups, and extending opportunities for improving the knowledge and skills of the publics they engage.

Professional/practitioner beneficiaries of this research include professional bodies concerned with financial transparency and reporting such as the Financial Reporting Council, the body that regulates auditors, accountants, and actuaries in the UK. This project will extend research currently ongoing on the Accounting Standards Committee (1952-1990) and Auditing Practices Committee (1971-1991) collections at the Special Collections of the University of Manchester. This research will provide opportunities to the FRC to develop public awareness of its work and expand its public consultation program, thus informing developments in professional practice.