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 features
 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 payments
 on what had previously been advanced to foreigners exceeded
 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 during
 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 merchandise
 imports. These items, however, and other minor ones of
similar tenor, and indeed the general course of the country’s international
 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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