Marche Noir: Capitalism's Black Heart in France, 1939-1950

SSHRC Awarded IG 2013: Black markets in wartime expose serious economic and social tensions; the choices faced in wartime are instructive for understanding contemporary issues in economic regulation. In France, wartime shortages and state controls accentuated stresses that reveal critical state-market and market-consumer relations. My primary objective is to research and write a history of the proliferation of black market activity in France in the 1940s in the context of shortages and state controls during the Occupation and the postwar years. I will examine state policy, business efforts to... Mehr ...