pstarr wrote:Tanada wrote:Newfie wrote:If Louis XVI had been smart enough to buy foreign grain and sell it directly to the bakers the people would not have been so desperate that they revolted and beheaded him.
Doesn't that assume a global trade in grain? If the wheat harvest in France was no good, how likely was it that its neighbors had more?
Rebalancing of international commodity pricing requires international markets. And international markets require inexpensive petroleum. they didn't have that at the time.
If the ancient Romans were so successful importing grain from Egypt why do you think the Ottoman Empire would totally refuse to sell them grain? Most people know Napoleon invaded Egypt but few seem to realize the region was still considered a 'breadbasket of the world' at time of the French famine. Of course even as Napoleon was invading the famine was abating because the flooding rains had stopped killing the fields every year, but by then it was too late for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Point being, there was an international trade around the Med basin going back to ancient times, that is why the Phoenicians, Greeks and Persians set up those colonies that became Carthage and London and Lisbon and Naples ect ect ect... Failing that the harvest in the UK, the Germanies and Scandinavia was much less impacted than it was in France. Even worse in those other regional countries people had a more diverse diet including the famous potato, that were not as badly impacted as the Wheat was, so even though the wheat harvest was down the ability to shift in diet to alternatives was far more successful regionally outside of France.
