The Double Life of Property: Mobilizing Land and Making Capitalism in Modern France

Abstract

Nineteenth-century France was host to a vigorous public debate on how real property—land and buildings—should function in the marketplace. Proponents of what was called the mobilization of land sought to enhance the circulation of real property, whereas its opponents aimed to prevent the dissipation of durable patrimonies in the unreliable world of commerce and finance. This article analyzes the articulation of the mobilization question by jurists, politicians, and political economists in early nineteenth-century France and argues for its importance—and the centrality of real property relations—to understanding the imaginative and institutional construction of modern capitalism. Focusing on contentious innovations in the financial life of real property of the 1789 and 1848 revolutions, it reconstructs the repetitive character of mobilization programs and argues that this mimetic quality stems from a persistent and enduring misapprehension regarding nature and the material as sources of economic value.