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HISTORY

The Claim

Poor harvests in France in the late 1780s contributed to food shortages and rising bread prices in France.

Verified by Lenz ·

The Short Version

The evidence strongly supports this link. Multiple high-quality historical sources state that poor harvests in the late 1780s, especially 1788, reduced grain supplies in France and drove bread prices sharply upward, worsening food shortages. Other economic and political factors were also involved, but the claim only says harvests contributed, which is accurate.

Caveats

  • The claim is causal in a limited sense: poor harvests were a major contributing factor, not the sole cause of food distress or unrest.
  • The strongest evidence centers on 1788-1789; treating the entire late 1780s as equally severe would overgeneralize the timing.
  • Bread-price spikes also depended on distribution, market structure, and broader economic stress, so harvest failure alone does not explain the full crisis.

The Receipts

  1. The Year Leading to the Revolution of 1789 in France

    JSTOR

  2. 18th-Century Price-Riots, the French Revolution and the Jacobin Maximum

    Cambridge University Press

  3. Harvest failures

    Alpha History

  4. Flour War | History | Research Starters

    EBSCO

  5. When Food Changed History: The French Revolution

    Smithsonian Magazine

  6. The Problem of Bread and the French Revolution at Bordeaux

    JSTOR

  7. Flour War

    Encyclopaedia Britannica

  8. Crises agricoles et crises de subsistances en France de la fin du Moyen Age à l'époque moderne

    Agri Mutuel

  9. Histoire : les crises alimentaires en France sous l'Ancien Régime

    Futura-Sciences

  10. The long and short reasons for why Revolution broke out in France in 1789

    Swansea University

+ 14 more sources — see the full list on Lenz

Filed Under

France

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