CHAPTER 22 
THE FraNCO-GERMAN INDEMNITY OF 1871 
THE international trade of France during the period chiefly 
considered in the present series of chapters — the second half of 
the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th — had the fea- 
tures characteristic of a country which has long been exporting 
capital and is still doing so. Her merchandise imports regularly 
exceeded her exports. As in Great Britain, loans had reached by 
the middle of the 19th century the stage where interest pay- 
ments on what had previously been advanced to foreigners ex- 
ceeded the annual outgo for new loans. Had it not been for the 
persistent new loans — the continuing export of capital — there 
would have been an even greater balance of payments in favor of 
France, and an even greater excess of merchandise imports. As 
it was, the “unfavorable” balance of trade was steady, and dur- 
ing the generation preceding the Great War tended to become 
greater. 
There were other non-merchandise items in the international 
account. Such, for example, were the considerable payments on 
account of tourists visiting France and of foreigners domiciled there. 
The amounts were substantial and added to the excess of mer- 
chandise imports. These items, however, and other minor ones of 
similar tenor, and indeed the general course of the country’s inter- 
national payments, had not the somewhat spectacular character 
which we find in some of the non-merchandise transactions of 
Great Britain and the United States; such, for example, as the 
surprising remittances by American immigrants, or the British 
bursts in the export of capital. The international trade of France, 
like her internal commerce, moved on a comparatively even keel. 
A careful study of wages and prices in France, with attention to the 
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