In a hurry...this weekend to Paris...and not forgetting to comment further on my Capitalism vs. Socialism thread.
On a French forum some intervenant poses this question...
In the BBC time I made some research, why the French weren't that much involved in trade and industry as their English counterparts. But then it was not a question of nobility, but rather when Richelieu and later Mazarin (Louis XIII and later the Queen regentes, mother of Louis XIV) tried to start maritime companies as those from the Low Countries and later from England they didn't succeed, because the great landowners weren't interested to risk their money. The two cardinals were even going that far as to offer old ships of the French navy to start the companies...I found evidence all this in a French book (or was it an English one) about Cardinal Richelieu. Perhaps I will find it back on the old BBC pages...

But now again about the nobility...in my reading of yesterday evening...it was a mixed picture...
On one hand the French nobility seems not to be allowed to got involved in trade...and you had the nobility of the sword and those of the "robe"...and nevertheless some of the nobility were  in trade and industry entreprises...but perhaps not in "companies" as in England...
On the other hand in England some landed gentry who received expropriated goods from the church (Henry VIII, Queen Elisabeth) got involved in trade and industry and there seems in England not to have been a derogatory law forbidding the nobility to enter trading companies...

I found some background reading on the internet, but will give it apart for fear to loose my message...
My question: Have the honourable members of this board some thoughts...? Nordmann for instance...?

Kind regards, Paul.

Addendum to the previous message.
https://goo.gl/j8cvMI
http://www.historytoday.com/nigel-aston/privilege-and-profit-business-family-18th-century-france
https://goo.gl/tkVVeY
http://fh.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/1/129.extract#
http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/see/18thCentury.pdf
https://goo.gl/lHO4cN


Kind regards, Paul.

https://goo.gl/lHO4cN

On page 27 of that book: "The emergence of International Business 1200-1800: Enterprise and empire."

"Investors in companies according to social class"
"1,177 gentry and nobility represents approximatively one in every 50 of their class, who lived in England between 1575 and 1630. And the entire gropup of investors 6,336 would represent one in every 700 men in the nation. token as the basis for calculation the estimate that England's male population in the two generations was roughly 4,500,000. Such a large proportion bespeaks the intensity of the enthusiasm that was generated during these years"

Kind regards, Paul.