Includes bibliographical references and index.

Problematising capitalism -- Importing capitalism to France -- The old regime false start : attempts at liberal reforms and the absence of a transition to capitalism in absolutist France -- Absolutist France vs capitalist England -- British competition and French liberal reactions -- An extensive mode of economic development -- Non-capitalist industrialisation in post-revolutionary France -- Nineteenth-century France economic development : the revisionist account -- Contrasting French and English nineteenth-century industrial development -- The non-competitive nature of French markets -- The development of cotton production and metallurgy -- Opportunity-driven growth in non-competitive markets -- The French revolution and the customary regulation of labour -- Reassessing the French revolution -- Guilds and workers' struggles under the old regime -- The persistence of customary regulations and aspects of labour emancipation in post-revolutionary France -- The absence of labour subsumption by capital in post-revolutionary France -- The rise of the French working class : republican and socialist struggles against extra-economic exploitation -- The composition and the making of the French working class -- Notables, the state, and the perpetuation of non-capitalist surplus appropriation -- Pinning down social ills, naming the antagonists -- The revolution of 1830 and the rise of a republican-socialist working class -- The revolution of 1848 and the (interrupted) rise of the democratic and social republic -- The state-led capitalist transformation of French industry -- Geopolitical competition and capitalist industrialisation -- Building foundations: the making of a competitive market -- The erosion of customary regulations and the subsumption of labour -- The emergence of capitalist patterns of investment -- Changing modes of surplus appropriation and (partial) state restructuring -- Capitalism and the re-making of the French working class -- The re-composition of the working class -- The labour movement under the second empire and the Paris Commune -- The rise of the strike : refusing the depoliticisation of production -- The transformation of class relations and the rise of an autonomous socialist working-class movement.

2