‘Economic Tyranny’ and Public Anger in France, 1945–1947

Abstract

French price controls and rationing after the Second World War sparked opposition from a broad range of economic actors – farmers, shopkeepers, manufacturers and consumers. Towns rang their church bells to mobilise residents against controllers, whom they attacked with verbal abuse and physical violence. They associated the controllers with Vichy and collaboration with the Nazis, and rejected controls as ‘economic tyranny’. Implicitly, they accepted moderate inflation as the path to economic recovery. This article explains the development of hostility, from wartime frustrations to the violent conflicts that forced the state to retreat and relax controls in 1947.