Difficulty: Intermediate | Prerequisites: Familiarity with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the early stages of the French Revolution.
The Decree Against Profiteers (1793) was an emergency law passed by the Committee of Public Safety to crack down on hoarding, price gouging, and economic exploitation during the Revolution. It imposed severe punishments, up to and including execution, on anyone found manipulating the supply of essential goods. It is a key example of how revolutionary governments balanced economic control against individual liberty.
Profiteering
The practice of making excessive profits by charging inflated prices for scarce or essential goods, particularly during a crisis.
Think of it as charging ten times the normal price for bread because people have no other option.
Hoarding
Deliberately stockpiling goods to create artificial scarcity and drive up prices.
In simple terms, hiding supplies so you can sell them later at a higher price.
Committee of Public Safety (Comité de salut public)
The executive body that effectively governed France during the most radical phase of the Revolution (1793 to 1794), led most prominently by Maximilien Robespierre. It held sweeping emergency powers over military, economic, and judicial matters.
Think of it as a small, powerful emergency government within the government, created to deal with threats from inside and outside France.
Reign of Terror (La Terreur)
The period from September 1793 to July 1794 during which the Committee of Public Safety pursued suspected enemies of the Revolution through mass arrests, show trials, and executions.
In simple terms, the phase of the Revolution when the government used fear and violence to maintain control.
Price controls / the Maximum (Loi du Maximum)
Government-imposed caps on the prices of essential goods (bread, grain, fuel) and wages, intended to prevent profiteering and ensure access to necessities.
In simple terms, the state telling sellers: "You may not charge more than this amount."
Issued by the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution
Written in 1793, during the Reign of Terror
Issued in France as official government policy
Purpose: to combat economic exploitation and hoarding of goods during a period of crisis
Reliability is moderate. It represents the Committee's own policies and priorities, which makes it a useful primary source for understanding revolutionary governance, but it is not a neutral account of economic conditions
By 1793, France faced simultaneous military threats (war with Austria, Prussia, Britain, and others), internal rebellion (the Vendée), and severe economic disruption. Food shortages and inflation hit the urban poor hardest. The sans-culottes (working-class Parisians) demanded price controls and action against merchants they saw as exploiting the crisis.
The Committee passed the Decree to stabilise the economy, control prices, prevent hoarding, and ensure essential goods reached the population. It was, in effect, a wartime economic measure.
The Decree imposed a sliding scale of punishments for non-compliance:
Fines for initial or minor violations
Imprisonment for repeat offenders or larger-scale hoarding
Execution in severe cases, particularly where profiteering was deemed to endanger public safety
The severity of these penalties reflects the Committee's view that economic sabotage was as dangerous to the Revolution as military opposition.
Question: To what extent did the Decree Against Profiteers contribute to the protection of the Revolution?
Preliminary answer: The Decree addressed a real problem: food shortages and price inflation were destabilising the Republic and fuelling popular unrest. In the short term, price controls did help make essential goods more accessible. However, the severe punishments (including execution) generated fear and resentment, and the controls themselves discouraged production and trade. The Decree illustrates a broader tension in revolutionary governance: the more aggressively the state intervened to protect the Revolution, the more it risked undermining the freedoms the Revolution claimed to stand for.
Governments still debate price controls during crises. Rent freezes, anti-gouging laws during natural disasters, and wartime rationing all echo the same logic as the Decree Against Profiteers: the state intervening in markets to protect vulnerable populations. The debate over whether such controls help or harm is one of the oldest in economics.
Students sometimes assume the Decree was universally popular. Many merchants, farmers, and producers resisted it because price caps made their work unprofitable and disrupted supply chains.
Students often conflate the Decree Against Profiteers with the Law of the Maximum. They are related but distinct: the Decree targeted hoarding and profiteering behaviour, while the Maximum set specific price and wage ceilings.
It is a mistake to treat the Committee of Public Safety as a single, unified voice. Members disagreed on the scope and severity of economic interventions, and these internal tensions eventually contributed to the Committee's downfall.
⚠️ Be ready to explain the economic context: war, inflation, food shortages, pressure from the sans-culottes.
⚠️ Expect questions on the tension between protecting the Revolution and restricting economic freedom.
⚠️ The punishment structure (fines, imprisonment, execution) is a favourite close-reading question.
⚠️ Comparative questions may ask you to weigh the Decree Against Profiteers alongside the Declaration of the Rights of Man: does a law that punishes economic behaviour with death contradict a declaration of individual rights?
True or False: The Decree Against Profiteers was issued by the National Constituent Assembly. Answer: False. It was issued by the Committee of Public Safety.
Fill in the blank: The maximum punishment under the Decree was ______. Answer: Execution.
True or False: The Decree was passed during the early stages of the Revolution in 1789. Answer: False. It was passed in 1793, during the Reign of Terror.
Fill in the blank: The Decree targeted two related economic behaviours: price gouging and ______. Answer: Hoarding.
Q: Why did the Committee of Public Safety pass the Decree Against Profiteers?
A: To control prices, prevent hoarding, and ensure the availability of essential goods during the economic turmoil of the Revolution. The urban poor were bearing the brunt of inflation and shortages, and popular pressure demanded government intervention.
Q: What does the severity of the punishments (including execution) tell us about the Committee's priorities?
A: It reveals that the Committee viewed economic sabotage as a threat to national security on par with military opposition or political treason. The willingness to use extreme punishment also reflects the atmosphere of the Reign of Terror, in which perceived enemies of the Revolution faced little due process.
Q: Assess the reliability of the Decree as a primary source. What does it tell us, and what does it not tell us?
A: As an official government decree, it reliably documents the Committee's stated policies and legal framework. However, it does not tell us how effectively the law was enforced, how many people were actually punished, or whether it achieved its goal of stabilising prices. For those questions, additional sources (court records, market data, personal accounts) would be needed.
Q: How does the Decree Against Profiteers illustrate the tension between revolutionary ideals and revolutionary practice?
A: The Declaration of the Rights of Man promised liberty and property rights. The Decree Against Profiteers restricted property rights and economic freedom in the name of collective security. This tension, between individual liberty and state control during a crisis, is one of the central themes of the Revolution.
This connects directly to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which promised property rights and individual liberty. The Decree shows what happens when those principles collide with a crisis that demands state intervention.
It also connects to the Law of Suspects, since both were products of the same Committee and the same period (the Reign of Terror). Together they illustrate how the Committee used legal instruments, economic and political, to consolidate power.
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